What does it take to succeed as a musician?

Have you always imagined yourself playing for huge audiences? Do you want to live the dream of every musician? Success is reserved for only a few, but everyone has the potential to achieve it.

Pursuit of a dream goes back thousands of years, so let's take a trip back to the days of Socrates:

"One day, a young man casually walked up to Socrates and asked, 'Socrates, how may I gain the secret of knowledge?' Socrates began to guide the young soul down to a nearby river, where he proceeded to force the man’s head under water. After about thirty seconds, Socrates let him up and asked, “What do you want again?” “Knowledge!” the man replied, though exasperated. Socrates repeated the process several more times, for longer increments of time, until finally, when asked “What is it you want?”, the man had no response but 'Air! I want air!'

'Good.' Socrates replied, 'When your desire for wisdom becomes as great as your desire to breathe, then, and only then, will you be able to find what you seek.'"

Do you want to succeed more than you want anything else in the world? Are you willing to risk your bank account, your close relationships, and whatever else the path to greatness calls for? Every single successful musician has taken an incredible chance to get where s/he is now. Are you willing to take that same chance?

I believe a huge reason so many people never achieve their music career dreams is because they don’t want to succeed more than anything. If there is any doubt in your mind about whether you want to do music, you should save yourself a lot of time and sort that out before you begin.

Take out a piece of paper and at the top write “What I want from my music career.” For the next few minutes, imagine you could live your perfect life. What would you want? Money and girls, a record deal, a huge fan base, music that touches people's hearts? Whatever it is, even if it's shallow, write it down. Take some time to really think of an answer that is true to who you are.

Now really think about what you wrote. Is the end result worth literally thousands of hours of dedication, frustration, possible failure? Is it a goal worthy of your life’s devotion? And most importantly, is it what you really want? Are you still comfortable knowing that (despite what some will tell you) there is no easy way to achieve your goals?

Take a LONG time to thing about this. It will be the most important decision you ever make in your life. You may not be ready to make a full commitment yet, and that’s okay too. I personally didn’t realize it till I was already in the midst of pursuing a college liberal arts education (I transferred to UNT’s music school after one semester). Even if you are unsure, I would still recommend taking a look around– see if anything in the next few articles applies to you. Most importantly, take your time before you make this decision. Think about it for days, weeks, or even more if you need to. But be honest with yourself– if you are not ready to make this decision yet, then don’t.

But keep in mind that at some point in your life, you will have to commit whole-heartedly to music, if you truly wish to succeed.

Questions? Comments? Don't hesitate to email me: Nehal@Musicians-Make-It.com

Visualization- The most valuable success tool

Want to be a successful musician? Think big.- You aren't average, but people will try to make you think you are. Don't let them hold you back from following your dreams-- every famous musician started out just like you.

Have you failed as a musician?- At what point do you just give up and "call it quits"?