Hearing voices in your head?

Embrace them!!  Well, not all of them….

In this episode, Rich talks about the conversations we have in our heads, which voices to embrace and how – and how to overcome limiting beliefs.

Transcript:

Hey guys, welcome to another session of the trailer music composer’s podcast.  In this podcast I wanted to talk to you specifically about something, it kind of ties in with things I’ve talked about before, and that little something is the fact that you are under the eyes of some people crazy, everybody is a little crazy.  And when I talk about this, it’s like you know if you see somebody walking down the street and they’re like talking aloud to themselves, much as I am doing now, if I didn’t have a phone, some people might suspect me to be a few slices of bread short of a loaf.  But what we’re doing, we’re all walking around right, we’re all walking around with a conversation in our head.  All the time.  Whether that conversation is imagined arguments, whether that conversation is lyrics, somebody is talking, if something is talking in your head right.  And that could be the inner critic, and you probably heard me mention before about having multiple voices, and I don’t think, I want to clarify something, it’s not crazy to have multiple voices, they’re just thoughts in your head.  But there is one special voice, ok, and this is what this episode is all about.  The special voice and it’s usually the quietest.  The little one.

We’re walking around, we’re dealing with our daily lives, we’re trying to connect our daily life and our daily thoughts, our daily emotions, and transform it into something, transform it into music.  And amidst all this noise, there is a whisper, and that whisper is the voice that I would like you guys to start to listen to.  

Now a lot of my podcasts, a lot of my videos, a lot of my courses, I want and encourage you to do the things you enjoy.  And sometimes it’s quite hard to know what it is you enjoy, or what it is you should focus on.  But the way that you can find that is by light.  And listening intently to that little whisper.  

Now the reason I talk about this is because I want to encourage you guys to think about the way you’re going to approach your creativity.  So obviously you’re sitting down, and this little whisper is going to help you throughout the whole process, throughout the entire process, it’s very important in the minutia and it’s very important on the grand scale of your career.  Whether you want to call that little voice your true self, your higher soul,. God, the universe or your mind, whatever name tag you give that voice doesn’t matter, what matters is you start to listen to it.

Sometimes that little voice gives you a little warning, like when I lost six months worth of work because I didn’t listen to that little voice saying back up your hard drive, dude backup your hard drive, I was like I’ll do it tomorrow, backup your hard drive, no I’ve got other things to do.  No I’ve got other things to do, backup your hard drive, no I’d rather just write this piece of music, it’s awesome.  Oh what’s going on with my hard drive?  Hard drive failure.  I was getting little warnings from that little whisper, because something was coming.  And that was just one aspect of it.  

The other aspect of it is in the creative process.  When you’re deep in the nuts and bolts and strings and skins and things of writing music, there’s a little voice that sometimes when you’re writing will be like do this.  And out of nowhere this amazing idea comes in.  and that idea then shapes the way your career goes.  And what it could be is it could be like a compound effect of lots of little whispers then making lots of changes to your direction.  But it’s so important that you listen.  

And how do you listen if you’ve got all this noise?  Now this is one thing, you know I know Christian Henson talks about this all the time and this has been a thing for all of time, especially with composers, you read up any biographies about most composers and they will go on walks.  A lot happens when you’re walking, I mean honestly a lot happens in your mind, your mind quietens down, especially if you’re walking in nature.  Your mind quietens down, so the volume of everything else is quieter, so that quiet voice becomes louder.  Sometimes that quiet voice is whispering a tune, sometimes that quiet voice is telling you to take a certain path in your career.

So that’s what you need to do, find ways to get in touch with your inner composer, with your inner voice. Because that little voice is going to be your guide throughout your whole career, throughout every single day of your writing process.  That little voice is kind of telling you you’ve got a fight, use it.  Stop playing PlayStation, stop scrolling on Facebook, stop listening to this blooming podcast.  That little voice, if you what that voice say that, stop listening to this podcast, you know because of the message I get through today is for you to listen to that little voice that’s telling you to go write your epic album, do it.  Just do it.  Let that little voice guide you.

If that little voice is saying you know what, it’s time we saved our, we took our nest egg out, quit the day job and go for this, obviously I’m highly recommending you think about that career choice, securely, make sure you’ve got enough money set aside.  And I’m obviously not advocating you do it, without the proper financial and career advice, but if that little voice keeps telling you, if that keeps popping up and saying you know what, you’re not meant to be working here, you’re meant to be doing music.  Find any way you can to make that happen.  Because then  what happens and you will notice this, the more you get in touch with that little whisper, your inspiration, your higher soul, whatever it is that you call it, the louder than voice becomes, the easier it is to decipher amongst all the noise.

 Now another tool for this is meditation.  Or mindfulness, which either or, I prefer the meditation route myself, and obviously I like these walks because I end up just blabbering, but I’m blabbering along a theme that somebody has told me to blabber on.  Whether that’s someone in my forums, or whether that’s the little voice.  Today I wanted you to know that you have tools to get in touch with that inspiration, that inspiring encouraging voice that’s going to help you write better music.  That’s going to help you make good career choices, that’s going to help you sleep better.

I know I’m going spiritual mindset here again.  But that little voice is undoubtedly encouraging you to grasp your gifts and run with them.  I mean I guarantee that if you’re hearing that voice and you’re ignoring it, it’s probably shouting in a very quiet tone, do some music, you’re supposed to be writing music.  That was music, just in case my shouted whisper was confusing, you’re supposed to be doing music dude.  Go and write music.  Go and share it.

And this ties in with the thing I was saying, sharing your gifts with the world, you write your music and you share it, and that is undoubtedly what the little voice is saying, and the little voice says it to me too.  I know this episode sounds crazy, I mean if you step out of this you’re like ok Rich has lost it, he is talking about the voices he’s hearing, but you would be crazy if you were to say to me that you don’t hear any.  

That voice is telling you to grab the bull by the horns and share your gifts.  This is like a PS to the last episode which was you know share, do service to the world, share your gifts.  And that voice will be helping you and telling you to do that.  And that’s so important.  Even if you just produce an album and upload it to Band Camp.  and one person buys it, amazing, success, tick, let’s do another album.  And see if we can get two people to buy it, or lets run an ad campaign, see if we can get five people to buy it.  Lets get crazy.  Invest in yourself by getting in touch with your inspiration by going for walks, by taking time to be quiet, and listen and meditate.  

I read a book called The Big Leap, it’s amazing, it’s all about this idea that we have limiting beliefs about yourself, whether we’re conscious of them or not and that those limiting beliefs will eventually kick in to stop us doing something.  But say for example a limiting belief for you might be I can’t land a trailer, I’m not good enough to get paid that much for my music.  So you will hit that limiting belief.  Consistently.  But what you will notice is that amidst this there is a quiet voice, even quieter than this limiting belief saying you can do this, you’ve got this  keep going.  And that is what you must do, you must push past that limiting belief.  

There was this amazing experiment done with fleas, so fleas can jump like a huge amount, like a huge amount times their height, I don’t know like thousand of times higher than they actually are, they can jump a huge amount.  This test with fleas right, they put these fleas in a  container with a glass lid and the fleas kept jumping and they kept them in this container for a set period of time and every time they jumped they hit this roof, so the fleas believed, this sounds crazy, but it was an actual experiment, done in scientific conditions, and stuff, and then what they did was one day they took the glass roof off and the fleas couldn’t jump beyond this roof.  And obviously this roof was placed, this glass lid was placed lower than the standard jumping height of fleas, so the fleas believed deep down they couldn’t jump higher than this glass lid.  And that’s insane.  

So if you imagine that glass lid is your limiting belief and whether that limiting belief glass lid is there or not, you believe that you can’t jump higher than that glass lid, wherever that glass lid is, you can’t.  So one of mine used to be that I found it hard to imagine getting, I don’t know more than five trailers a year, like a handful.  I don’t know if I get five trailers a year  that would be like a dream.  Do you know what earlier this year I got 12 placements in a single week.  Like my glass roof then was absolutely smashed.  And I put that down to listening to that quiet voice.  I keep thinking I’m saying choir voice, ahhh, keep writing music, keep working hard.  Keep writing the music guys, keep listening to that voice, go for walks, sit down and close your eyes, do some breathing exercises, do some meditation exercise so that you can hear that voice.  That voice might be telling you to write in a certain style, that voice might be telling you to make specific decisions when you’re writing, the voice might be telling you trailer music isn’t for you.  What you should be doing, what you really want to be doing, and that’s the important part is writing musicals.  You know, it’s not for me to decipher, it’s for you.  

Obviously that’s the tricky part and I’m trying to give you tools, walking, meditation.  They’re the dons really.  Go on those walks, sit down and meditate for a bit, and you will get in touch with that voice that will help you break through your limiting beliefs will help you be of service in the service that you are meant to be doing.  Obviously because you are listening to this that service deep down you believe is trailer music.   

For me, like that voice has guided me over many, many years, i.e. like I knew it was music, I don’t know what music, let’s just keep writing.  Oh little voice says not this music, ok I’ll drop that, all of a sudden and what happens if each time I put faith in my conscience or you know my inspiration, my higher soul, my soul whatever.  Each time I put faith in that it got louder.  

And then what happened was this, like for instance the day I decided to quit teaching and go full time as a composer, i was like this, I had enough money, I said to my wife you know I don’t want to teach anymore, I don’t know what to do but I don’t want to teach.  And I started actively like  thinking of any career I could do that would mean I didn’t have to teach so that I could pursue my career in writing.  And then all of a sudden I landed two adverts.  And a job to score a Japanese blockbuster.  A feature film that is.  You know.  And that came pretty much at the exact moment I listened to that voice saying stop teaching.  And that’s going to happen for you too, listen to that voice, it will guide you and it will reward you.  

Really lovely messages this and the last podcast episode, you know.  Kind of makes me feel emotional thinking about the importance of listening to your true self and the importance of seeing you and your work as a service, as a gift to the world.  It’s kind of like the little Rich inside me is crying because someone is acknowledging what they always wanted to do.  And for instance this podcast, I started, there was a little voice in me years back that said you need to be doing a podcast for composers, years back.  And I kind of chickened out a little bit, I kind of went into it, but I kind of hit a brick wall about like how I was going to approach the critic.  And so I gave up.  But that voice was still there.  Still saying do a podcast.

So one day obviously, my third child, my daughter was born. I thought yeah, I‘m on paternity leave for a few months, I’m going to do a podcast.  I don’t care what its about, it’s going to be about trailer composers, I’m going to go round, you know the first few episodes I’m going to tell my story obviously, I’m going to do that, and I’m just going to talk, I don’t; have any guests but I’ll talk because I guess I’ve got some important things to say.  I don’t know it was just a leap of faith.  And I have, this podcast has had more impact on my school and more impact on composers I believe than my YouTube output, which is still having a good impact.  But people are hearing what I’m saying and it’s really nice because even these kinds of spiritual mindset things, episodes that I’m doing, people are reaching out saying hey these are great, these are really helping me at the right time.  And that’s what I truly believe, I’m like ok I’m doing these at the right time for you guys.  

And I’m not getting paid for this, I mean I’m probably incidentally getting paid because someone’s listening to this going hey maybe I’ll try his course, great, thank you for any of those of you who have listened to my podcast and then bought a course, thank you I’m ever so, ever so grateful.  But I think I was resting on Tim Ferris book Tools for Titans which is awesome by the way, love it.  And he talks about his rule, I don’t follow this rule, but I think it’s a great rule.  His rule is like 99% free, 1% super premium.  So like he does his blogs and he does his books which he calls basically free, which I suppose they are, they’re like what £15.  And then he does these like events where he charges $10,000 for a seat, for a days talking.  And then he sells 200 of them.  And I just think that’s like a beautiful sentiment, that actually what you’re doing by doing all this free stuff is your saying look here are all the gifts I have I’m sharing them with you, it’s like I’m planting seeds, we’re planting seeds, we’re doing our service, we’ve giving out good karma, it will come back to us.  

And you will find this, you will write good music, it will go out, and then some of the gift will come back to you.  I mean I’m going very spiritual here, I do believe in karma and I do believe what you give out comes back to you 10 fold, so if you give out good stuff, good stuff is coming your way, if you spend your time moaning and complaining about everything then you’re just going to have more reason and find more things to moan and complain about.  You know I’m not saying you’re supposed to be jumping around singing happy-clappy all the time, because life cycles, you’ll have good days, and days, good weeks, bad weeks, but you must remember that you’re on a  journey and if you keep that trajectory, that’s a hard word to say, trajectory, on the up, then hopefully your bad days will be shooter and less bad.  Because you’re listening to that little voice and then you’re doing the service you want to do which is write music.  You’re giving it, you’re sharing it to publishers, to people, to friends to family, and then that good stuff, that good energy you’re giving out comes back.

And I talk about this a lot, the energy you put into your music is what people pick up on.  And I truly believe that, the tracks that have lit me up inside, I can’t think they’ve ever been placed.  They might have done some service to some people, some people might have enjoyed listening to them, but the ones that really lit me up inside were the ones that had a huge impact on me.  So for instance one of the tracks on Piano Works 7 which is the Piano Works album released by elephant music, Age of the Universe, that was like my favourite track on that album, like slow burn epic, loved it.

Nothing happening for years, nothing happened and then all of a sudden LinkedIn got in touch with us and were like hey we want to use this on our first brand campaign.  And they used it on tons of ads.  Great.  This year’s mortgage tick ensured that energy was there and I continued on the path that the little voice was telling me to continue on.

I mean I can give you tons and tons of examples from my side. I want you to start looking in your life when you’ve listened to that little voice and when it’s helped and how you can listen more now and how that can help your career because it’s going to make a huge impact.  

I mean you might even be going. I mean I tend to listen to podcasts when I’m walking and usually I listen to podcasts that inspire me and then I go home and do the thing I’m inspired to do.  So hopefully I inspired you to go home and write some good music, music that you love, music that you truly believe you can share.

Thanks guys In wall, really appreciate you listening, it’s so lovely for me to hear all the wonderful comments and feedback from you as well, so thank you for that, and please if you can grab a minute just to leave a review on iTunes, you know that would be amazing.  I really, really appreciate that.  Thank you.

Music.