It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking binary as a musician. You either have “made it” or you haven’t. You’re a winner, or a loser.

The reason we think in terms of winners and losers because of conditioning. From the very beginning of schooling, we’re drilled that in sports, grades, and even social circles we are either winners or losers.

When we get out of the artificial environment of school, it’s very, very rare that we’re directly competing with our peers. We’re almost always competing against ourselves, and against the fatigue that sets in from the marathon effort necessary for making a music career. But we’ve stuck in a mental rut. We still believe the lie that someone has to lose.

The reason I love music is that we don’t have to differentiate. We either play music, or we don’t. Some of us are financially more successful than others or play higher profile gigs, but someone doesn’t have to lose or win for this to happen.

If your friends are successful, your odds of being successful go up, not down. The more we help each other, the more likely we are to be helped.

The more we connect, give, share, help, encourage, and cheer on our friends that play music, the more we build a beautiful community of musicians living their dreams.

Everybody wins, and when we don’t it’s because we fail ourselves. Let’s build a culture of celebrating music and each person’s unique gifts, not fighting for a spot at the imaginary top of the heap.