I’m speaking in Charleston, SC this morning on making music with your life, family, and business.
Going for three years running now, Charleston has been called one of the best places to live and travel to.
Their formula?
Be friendly. Eat well. Breathe deep.
Life, family, and business can’t help but be drawn to such aspects of what it means to be human.
Thank you Charleston for showing us the way and the warm welcome. It’s easy to see why everyone is ‘friending’ you.
Music is learned.
Music is made.
Music is inspired.
Music is intentional.
Music isn’t random.
Music isn’t made by chance.
And music isn’t created by the lucky few.
Pursue your ideals.
Obey your conscience.
Bend with your giftings.
Romance your instruments.
Take your time.
Get it right.
This thing – The Music – is what we’re all after.
The music is the experience that is enjoyed and the story that is written when one’s passions, ideals, conscience, and core values intersect, collide, and crescendo in this world we exist in.
Running in circles of noise, often missing the point, it never hurts to get back to, define, and remember the point of it all.
The point is your music and your music is the point: our gift to receive and the fulfillment of your days.
The Internet has made us more cognizant our joy/happiness or lack thereof than ever before.
Collectively, we spend billions of hours locked into the small screens on our desks or in our palms watching the highlight reels of people we really don’t know.
We see their sepia filtered moments, compare it to our Sochi-filled night, and, in doing so, feel…less. Less fulfilled. Empty of excitement. Low on joy.
We don’t do this on purpose and it was never the goal of the medium’s creator(s). It has just become the norm of what such mediums now hold and when everyone on the planet owns their own media company (and they do now), eventually, “look at me” becomes the chorus of the music the masses posts.
Constant comparison is the hidden thief of our divine moments. Secret: there’s no such thing as a moment that’s not divine.
Click your own like button and see the three-dimensional world before through your own filters.
Then report back and change us.
I bet we’ll click your like button too.
So who is right? The artist or the scientist?
The artist, with his art instrument clutched in hand, feels a certain way and then paints what he feels. He felt something and, in doing so, found he is right. “You’ll see”, he says.
The scientist, with her proven algorithms and spreadsheets on display, has consistent, repeatable, and predictable proof. What goes up must come down. She knows she’s right. “Wanna make a bet?”, she says.
Back to the original question…who is right between these two? Thought: Just because the artist and scientist clash on their process of getting to what is true doesn’t make one of them wrong.
Leadership, today, recognizes that – simultaneously – the arts (if one finds joy in their experience) and the sciences (if proven in their research) are both right.
So what are you making with your life, your family, and your business? Whatever your answer is here I think, in order to be fulfilled, you need a dash of the both the arts and the sciences.
Some need to see it to believe it. Some need to feel it to believe it. But we all will believe something within an experience that lets us both feel and see.
And that’s what you’re here to give us: that thing you can explain and that thing you can’t explain.
You’ve got a big job don’t you?
Happy Monday in your happy mediums.
Ashton.Gustafson 