THE WELL-GROUNDED MUSICIAN

By the point at which a musician is applying for auditions, studying music formally or working professionally in the industry, in one form or another at least, you’ve had to do a whole bunch of studying.

Thousands of hours spent in the practice room, exploring fine motor skills, memorising, ‘internalising’, reading, talking about theories with teachers and peers, exploring ideas, concepts. This is the stuff you spend most of your attention on as an aspiring musician. You know it well. And – the chances are – if you’ve ever achieved any degree of success in the world of music, it’s because you’ve become very good at solving these kinds of DOING-centric problems. You’re not someone who is ‘struggling’, on the whole, at least.

This world of DOING is a world that craves MORE. More information. More skills. More gigging experience. More hours in the shed. More achievements. More accolades. More money. More ideas. And more neural pathways being strengthened; more myelin sheaths around nerve cells. You’ve probably read or watched videos all about these neurological, biological *consequences* of learning before.

All that DOING is often referred to as musical ‘mastery’:

HOW TO use your body to make the optimal sound in the various ranges of the instrument.

HOW TO ingrain a new physical habit so that it becomes second nature.

HOW TO best study from lots of different sources of information and explore how to express yourself in a way that’s right for you, in an integrated way.

HOW TO design a career that finally pays you for your passion and expertise.

The so-called HOW TO is your ‘zone of genius’ you might say – high-level problem solving and creating tangible results as a musician. Without all these skills you could never have learnt to play as well as you do. But here’s the problem. This world of DOING is only one side of the story. (I would say it’s *half* the story, but that’s not quite true - it's much less than that). The world of doing may be based on this ‘visible’ (or rather ‘known’) side of life, but we can easily (mistakenly) end up believing that that which is visible EQUALS that which is important.

And, on the periphery, there are these trifling, petty matters like your emotions, states of mind, new ways of thinking. To many action-biased musicians who value ‘real world’ experience it’s as if the ‘inner’ world (so-called) is a kind of second-rate citizen to the ‘outer’ world. The tacit assumption is that this DOING is all you really need to understand to be happy and successful. It’s not that the inner world is irrelevant, but for many musicians it just feels like something that is only ever worth paying lip service to. Never something worth understanding in the same level of depth as the other side of life that you prefer to spend time ‘mastering’.

“I’m definitely not a basket-case, so if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”

But here’s the thing I’ve noticed. High-achieving musicians and music professionals all hit their own version of the following scenario…

After creating a high-functioning ‘push’-style work ethic that finds you constantly striving for ‘more’, ‘better’, ‘faster’, ‘higher’ etc, there is always a point at which the NEXT level of success seems embarrassingly elusive to you. And no-one is immune to this and it can happen at any point. I’ve spoken to Grammy winners, festival headliners, number-one artists, orchestral principals, award winners, successful youtubers, PhD’s, Olympians, competition winners and they all hit it.

The dreaded plateau.

You may be at the top of your game musically, but financially something is missing. Or perhaps you know that your 80% musical game is better than most other musicians’ 100%, but secretly you’ve realised for a while now that you’ve never actually dared to explore what your full 100% would actually look like, because you’ve never needed to.

Sometimes, people may seem to be at the peak of their career to everyone else, but inside they find themselves experiencing an identity crisis, a wobble of confidence, or an emptiness that just won’t stop calling them to investigate it.

Whatever the cause, there is a point that ALL high achievers get to where they start to realise that mastering the DOING game is no longer delivering everything it promised. It turns out that mastering your instrument can’t MAKE you feel ‘good enough’; practising 12 hours a day won’t GIVE you confidence and growing a huge engaged following doesn’t MAKE you financially successful.

Equally, people find that there seems to be something missing with the whole ‘control’ side of what you were taught.

On the familiar territory of the outer game, you may be able to seemingly ‘control’ your fingers, or tone production, but on the inside, you can’t just mentally ‘control’ your thoughts and feelings. You get to a ‘high-stakes’ audition – a time when you tell yourself you *need* to have everything under full control, but again and again something else seems to actually be happening.

‘I’m putting in the hours, I’m sticking to the plan, I’m doing the visualisations like I was told, I’m following the CBT or NLP reframe, but why do I still feel overwhelmed, anxious or so negative about myself – why don’t I have control yet?’

And as soon as you’ve insightfully asked yourself that question, THAT’S the turning point – the point at which so-called ‘personal development’ ends. And true self-inquiry begins. The decades-old ‘mastery’ obsession begins to show cracks and the focus begins to shift…

From DOING….to BEING….

This shift…this psycho-spiritual ‘reality check’ is what I call deepening GROUNDING.

And although you may never have thought about it in quite this way before, I know it will be familiar to you.

You’ve encountered someone who is not only an elite musician, but they make it look and feel easy. Almost too easy. Their playing feels different somehow. Not only that, but when you talk to them after a gig or in a lesson you feel how fearless, authentic, at peace, straightforward and emotionally resilient they seem compared to you. You convince yourself that they achieved that peace by all the practice. But that’s not the case. And it's not about talent, either.

There’s something about their way of BEING that reminds you it’s possible to somehow stay true to yourself, rather than to emotionally be blown around like a leaf in the wind, as you are at times. You notice it’s possible to feel deeply OK in your own skin, but that YOU don’t. I used to both love and hate meeting people like that…

I loved it because I felt safe in their presence, but I hated it because after all the efforting and DOING I had spent my attention on, in that moment for myself I could tell that something mysterious was out of kilter.

So – now what I do is to teach musicians this ‘grounding’ piece. The bit that no-one else is teaching. And it’s not about MORE of anything. Not MORE thinking. Not more DOING. Or controlling your thoughts so you feeling BETTER. It's actually about LESS. Less 'overthinking'. Uncovered by simply understanding what is. Understanding who you are and how you relate to life. And the implications of this pre-existing truth. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle. From that one foundational understanding, everything else becomes a reality.

And your unique path ahead becomes obvious.

American scientist E.O Wilson once famously said that:

‘We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.’

Grounding is about ‘mastering’ (understanding) the foundations to the WHOLE LIFE you create. And any shift in grounding leads to an exponential shift in the DOING side. From this understanding you address the most leveraged part of the puzzle – the very foundations.

Imagine not understanding that a plant needed roots to sustain it and you wanted to take it home from the wilderness. You’d try to cut it off from the true source of nourishment and focus purely on the known. The stuff above the surface. But something crucial would be missing.

THIS is your psycho-spiritual GROUNDING. And it’s time that the music industry looked beneath the surface, to what creates the life in the first place.

Thanks for reading.

Nick

(P.S this week is Grounding week in the Project Domino group programme – a small, intimate group coaching experience for musicians and music industry professionals. This one is sold out, but if you’d like to know more info about the next one that will be opening its doors in April, either pop a comment below, or drop me an email at info@nickbottini.com and I’ll let you know a bit more about who specifically can apply and whether or not it might be for you).