Welcome to Episode 7 of THANKS FOR THINKING, the music business podcast centered around self-reflection and proactivity for thoughtful music production professionals. I’m your host, Carl Bahner.
Today’s topic: The Currencies of Self-Worth
As I mentioned briefly in episode 5, many freelance creatives, like myself, sometimes fall into a trap of falsely equating our self-worth to the price that people pay for our services, but that’s not the only trap. Sometimes the trap the number of views or streams our projects get or the balance of our bank accounts.
Falling into a trap like that sucks. A lot. I don’t believe any of us WANT to feel that way, but I know I’m not the only one who has felt that way at some point.
And I’ll be honest - I’ve been avoiding writing this episode. Not because I don’t think it’s valuable, but because this is a topic that I still struggle with every day.
All of the topics on this podcast “hit home” for me because they’re all based on internal dialogs I’ve had throughout my career, or conversations I’ve had with friends and peers. But this one has been way more prominent in my life than I want to admit.
But I guess it’s time to admit it.
I’m a mix engineer - and there are still times when I get really bummed out if songs I worked on don’t gain traction or get big streaming numbers.
I hate feeling that way. I hate, hate, HATE feeling that way because I KNOW that’s an irrational response to the situation - I mean, there are so many variables involved in making a song a commercial success, and to think that my mixing is going to make or break a song, that would be arrogance of cartoonish proportions. I know better than to fall into that trap.
Right?
Here’s a more specific, real-world example:
218 songs that I worked on were released in 2021. A few of them did pretty well, all things considered - but the vast majority of those songs had the dreaded “less than 1000” streams on Spotify.
Now, should this matter? Of course not! Intellectually, I know that those streaming numbers are not directly proportional to how good my mixes are or how excited the artists were to share a piece of themselves with their friends and fans… or even just how much fun I had in the process.
But does it matter to me whether I want it to or not? Unfortunately, yeah.
It really bums me out. And I hate that it bums me out. I hate it so, so much because, like I said, intellectually I understand that vanity metrics like streams or likes or views shouldn’t be the “currency” I use to measure my self-worth…
But emotionally?
I’ll be honest - just because I know that it’s irrational to feel bad about myself, doesn’t mean that my emotions agree with that.
Now, this is not meant to be an instructional podcast and I’m not going to try and tell you what your benchmarks for success should be - let alone the benchmarks for your own happiness or career fulfillment. Only you can discover those. But, what I can do is pose some questions that may enable you to look yourself in the mirror and find some ways to help avoid those traps.
Find a comfortable space without distractions. I'd like you to spend the next few minutes thinking about ways you’ve defined your own self worth - whether they were healthy or not.
Today's reflection question is: What “currencies” do I use to measure my own self-worth? And what currencies do I want to use?
This is going to help you only if you are brutally honest with yourself. How you want to measure your self-worth and how you actually measure it might be two very different things, and the only way to shift toward a healthier mindset is to be as honest and self-aware as you can be. There are no objectively right or wrong answers with this. Though I will say after working through this exercise myself, I feel like I am much more self-aware during those moments where I start to feel tempted into a mindset that I don’t want to have. And honestly that’s the main goal: just being more conscious and aware of how you’re measuring your self-worth.
So, once again, today's reflection question is: What “currencies” do I use to measure my own self-worth? And what currencies do I want to use?
I’ll be back in a few minutes.
If you need more time, hit pause and come back when you’re ready.
Thanks for sticking with me on this. It’s not easy to look ourselves in the mirror and ask these kinds of uncomfortable existential questions. And it may be even harder to change our attitudes and behaviors.
But that’s what we’re about to try.
To complete today's action item, all you’ll need is a word processor or a pen and paper.
Today’s action item is: write down three ways you can start investing in your self-worth using the currencies you want to be using.
This will be a deeply personal list for you, so I won’t try to rattle off a couple examples like I typically would at this stage. But to bring the episode full circle, I will say that one of the currencies I want to pay more attention to is how much positive impact I can have on the creative freelancers around me.
And one of the ways I began investing in that “currency” was to start this podcast, and try my best to present difficult but necessary topics in a format that is, let’s face it, a bit unusual. Only time will tell if it will be a good “investment” and actually create a big positive impact, but even a small step in the right direction is better than standing still.
So once again, today’s action item is: write down three ways you can start investing in your self-worth using the currencies you want to be using.
Alright, time to get started. I’ll be back in a few minutes.
If you need more time, hit pause and come back when you’re ready.
Ok, so I acknowledge that this episode was a bit wordier than others, since I typically prefer the “say the important parts then shut the f***up” approach. But, I genuinely felt that a topic so important to our mental health and it just deserved a little bt more time. So I wanted to say I appreciate you sticking with me on this. Besides. If you thought today’s episode was daunting, just wait til episode 8.
I hope you learned something about yourself today. Maybe it was something small, or maybe it was a significant revelation. As far as I’m concerned, any growth in your self-awareness enhances both your business and your life.
If you found this episode helpful, please like, subscribe, and share this with someone you feel would benefit from exercises like these. You can join the Discord Community using the link in the show notes, connect with me on social media at @carlbahner and @thanksforthinkingpodcast, or reach out directly to info@carlbahner.com
Until next time - Thanks for thinking.