Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

 

I like a paradox as they contain truth. Every light casts a shadow and we do not care too much for the darkness of things but often the darkness gives us the true meaning of its essence. How true this is with music. How many great songs are written by people who are not particularly great on the instruments that they play? In fact for many being great at playing is a draw back as a writer with only a few exceptions such as Hendrix and Clapton.  

Success is often like that, when you give up measuring yourself by your markers of success it flows more freely. This is something sighted by entrepreneurs that money becomes a marker not the goal often the goal will be something less obvious like the challenge of making something happen.

Better to fix the mind on things that success would afford you instead of the success itself, so for the pupil and the teacher do not focus on the grade but what the grade will enable you to do. Playing in a band that performs a particular style of music requiring that level of knowledge is a better motivator than the examination day and the piece of paper at the end of it.

In business instead of focusing on the money look at what it would do for you and focus on that. The mind seems to have a way of flagging up possibilities of acquiring the ways and means of achieving that possibility. I often use the story of somebody buying a new car, once they have made the decision on which model and which colour that they are going to buy one starts to see that colour and that model car everywhere. Now that is a good example of how alert we become to the possibilities of acquiring that which we desire. There are some theories that take this idea and apply it to belief systems that once we have a belief system the unconscious will find evidence of the truth of that belief in the world around us. Now if we take this as a fact for the time being it means that the things that appear to be wholly true maybe just a fabrication of how we think and by exploring the shadow side of that or the opposite side of that we get a much rounded picture that may be ignored by the unconscious searching out the things that satisfy our belief systems.

So back to the happiness: by searching out the result of happiness, being with friends having connections with family the feeling of support and assistance there is much to point these as being where happiness can be found.

So what about making music having an effect on people? Songs that allude to the results that an emotion will give you will then in turn in its shadow give the listener the emotion that you are attempting to engender in the listener.

Best way to try this out is to work on yourself.  Listen to some music that makes you feel in a particular way and notice carefully the things that appear to trigger that response. What are the lyrics doing? What is the feel of the piece of music? Does it make you think of anything?

So success with music is giving success to others ………………………

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk