Staying a Student Forever.

Good morning, I hope your day is starting off right, thanks for reading. Today I want to talk about adapting the mentality of being a student forever. This is something that helped me tremendously with being less impatient and more accepting of reality. It can be quite easy for us musicians, creatives, and entrepreneurs to want something in return for our efforts fast. Something numerical. Like money or attention. But for me, focusing on this has resulted in an attachment to what I get for what I do, and judging the quality of my work by what I get for it in return. In stead of seeing the value in what I learn by doing it over and over. I think that learning is the biggest return that you can get and should aim for, especially in the beginning. It’s one of the reasons why I do this podcast, because I just want to learn how to speak better. I want to learn how to give people an interesting and valuable experience, and I want to learn about ideas that can help me become better at building an independent music business. And this idea of just wanting to learn gives me peace. It reminds me that my podcast doesn’t have to have thousands of listeners, that I don’t have to get anything from it in return now. And with this mentality I will be able to do it forever. I think people give up when they want outside results fast, in stead of wanting the process. I think it can cause disappointment and shame. But learning and improving is forever valuable, so if you focus on that, you never have to quit. I hope you enjoy this post.

So, for me, what happened after my first success with music, is that I became kind of complacent. I started expecting massive returns for everything that I did. While to be honest, I wasn’t ready for it. It had a lot to do with luck that my music did that well. But I started sort of attaching my self-worth to those numbers. I stopped being a student and started to expect returns. Like I didn’t have to keep working to improve. By not trying to improve anymore, I was being arrogant, because doing that means I think that I’m already great and that I deserve the same as people who do try to improve always. That was a mistake.

So at some point, the numbers started to drop because competition got bigger and better. I got disappointed by how my music would perform and it killed my creativity. That disappointment was actually arrogance. I see now that If I would’ve just stayed humble and focused on making better new music. Keep the mindset of trying to improve, trying to learn forever. I would’ve never stopped enjoying making music. This is such an important lesson for me to learn. Maybe the most important one I ever learned. Never think you are so good that you can stop learning.

So now this is what I’m trying to implement in my life now. Whenever I feel disappointed by the lack of immediate returns, I try to remind myself that that’s actually arrogance. Because with being disappointed I’m saying to myself that it deserves attention that it obviously doesn’t yet. But when it’s about improvement in stead of outcome, you never have to be disappointed. You improve over time with repetition, and that’s the real return. Don’t focus on immediate returns. That’s unsustainable, you will give up when you don’t get what you want. People try to go viral, but a lot don’t try to become the best content creator they can be by accepting the reality that they are no that good yet and practicing every day. People want to make a hit song, but they don’t try to become better at making great music by accepting where they are now and doing it every day.

Right now, I’m reminding myself to accept the reality that I’m not that good at a lot of things. Podcasting for example, I just started, I don’t have to act like it’s amazing right away. And that that’s kind of exciting, because now that I’m realistic about at what level I am. I can learn and improve every day. And because I made the mistake in the past to give up on that learning mindset the moment I got lucky and had some success. I can now be aware of that and don’t make that mistake. I’m convinced that if you keep that learning and improving mindset forever. And don’t switch to wanting and expecting at some point. You don’t ever have a reason to quit doing what you’re doing. And that means you’re going to get better at it for as long as you keep doing it. Which can be forever. Which means that it’s going to increase in value over time, and that that value will always go up.

Stopping being a student and trying to improve is arrogance in my opinion. Where I’m from we have this TV-show where they invite experts to talk about things. What am I saying, there’s definitely a TV-show like that anywhere. But the point is that, when I hear these experts. I never want to listen to what they have to say because a lot of them have this way of talking like they are the authority. This arrogance. Like they own the truth about something and don’t have to be open to the ideas of other people. That they don’t have to learn anything. But there’s other people who speak with curiosity about a topic and excitement about this latest thing that they learned. They speak like they are a student of their craft. Those people are the ones that I enjoy listening to. And I really hope that when I speak I can sound like that one day. That’s one of my goals.

And I actually believe that people who stay students, stay excited and feel a sense of fulfilment with what they are doing. And people who decide that they are the expert, and stop being curious and stop trying to learn more. Try to get fulfilment from this status that they believe they deserve. Which is very fragile, because if you don’t get that idea of status validated by other people or the world. Everything you think you are is worth nothing. You’re sense of self-worth becomes dependent on outside factors that you have zero control over. That’s why I think that a lot of these experts are very bitter. They don’t seem happy, they argue to prove that they are right all the time, they shout. All I would have to do to piss someone like that off is to disagree with them.

I believe staying a student is staying humble and staying humble is the key to improvement and live a fulfilling life as an artist, as a creative person, as an entrepreneur, as a human. I want to become more humble, and learn as much as I can. Thank you for your attention again. I know that there’s many things you can do with your time, but you gave it to me, thank you. I hope you enjoyed this post. If you want to share your thoughts or feedback with me, I’d be very open to receive those. My WhatsApp number is on the website. And I hope you have an amazing day.