I've been reading this phenomenal book called ”Limitless” by Jim Kwik. It's all about removing the limitations to your success and learning how to learn better. I can't recommend it highly enough. In the book, Jim tells the story of when he was having dinner with Stan Lee, the editor of Marvel Comics and co-creator of many of the most famous comic book superheroes – Spider-Man, The X-Men, Iron Man, Black Panther, Hulk, Thor, The Fantastic Four.

Jim asked Stan Lee a question he always wanted to ask him. He said, “Stan, you've created so many great characters over the years. Who is your favourite?” Stan said, “Iron Man. Who's yours?” Jim answered, “Spider-Man.”

Stan nodded and then quoted Spider-Man's motto. You've probably heard it before: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Jim said, “That's so true! And the opposite is also true: with great responsibility comes great power.”

What he meant by that is when we take responsibility for something, we're imbued with great power to change and improve it. Even though our culture and circumstances have influenced who we are, we have to take responsibility for who we become. We have to realise that we're responsible for our beliefs, attitudes, mindsets, and, ultimately, our results. And when you accept that your potential is entirely within your control, then the power of that potential grows dramatically.

Jack Canfield, one of the most successful and famous life coaches in the world and the co-author of the Chicken Soup For The Soul book series, has a book called “The Success Principles.” His first principle of success is: Take 100% responsibility for your life. The reason why this is his first principle of success is that if you don't master it, none of the other success principles are going to matter. Everything hinges on you taking 100% responsibility for your life. The biggest limitations in your life are those you impose on yourself.

Often when you ask independent musicians why they're not having the success that they want in their music careers and in their lives, they'll usually externalise and blame their parents, their boss, their partner, the government, the economy, corporations, the medical system, the education system, COVID, the Russians, the internet, social media, Mark Zuckerberg, the music industry, Spotify, people with short attention spans, people with no taste in music, God, Santa Claus, the deep state, the Illuminati, chemtrails, gay frogs...

They refuse to take responsibility for creating or co-creating the outcomes in their lives - their lack of results.

By contrast, if you talk to or study successful people in any walk of life, you'll see they take 100% responsibility for their lives and their results. In other words, they've worked on their Inner Game, and that's set up the conditions for them to create success in their lives.

The most powerful thing you can do, not just in your music career but in your life, is to take 100% responsibility. Taking 100% responsibility means that you adopt a no-excuses mentality. You refuse to make excuses or blame someone or the circumstances you're in or the obstacles you've encountered.

Psychologists call this a shift in the locus of control. If you have an internal locus of control, you believe you have internal control over your life, as opposed to having an external locus of control where you believe that your life is determined by external forces beyond your control.

People who have an internal locus of control are far more motivated, productive, and successful in life. This means that becoming more motivated, productive or successful is often just a matter of taking responsibility for your choices. When you take 100% responsibility for your life, you don't have to worry about what happens to you or how other people might treat you or what obstacles might come your way, because ultimately you are in control. Even if you can’t control your circumstances, you can control your response.

Taking 100% responsibility isn't easy. Unfortunately, we're socially conditioned to externalise our problems and blame other people or circumstances for our lack of success. The victim mentality is very seductive. It's far easier to look for a scapegoat than it is to take responsibility for our own lives or our lack of results.

I believe there are two reasons why we do this. The obvious one is that it lets us off the hook. We absolve ourselves of any responsibility for creating the sub-optimal outcomes in our lives. The second, less-obvious reason is that by blaming other people or circumstances and complaining about them, we're unconsciously attempting to get someone else to regulate our feelings.

As children, we don't have the ability to regulate our own emotions when we get upset, scared, nervous, or angry. We rely on our parents to regulate our feelings, to calm us down and soothe us. As adults, even though we have the ability to regulate our own emotions, most people haven't learned how to do this. And so they're still like upset, scared little children who are dependent on other people to regulate their emotions and make them feel better. Often that burden falls on our romantic partner.

Because we haven't learned this skill of emotional regulation, and we have an inability to cope with and experience intense feelings, we develop avoidance patterns.

A sense of anxiety comes up and we subconsciously think that we don't want to feel that feeling, so we distract ourselves by reaching for the junk food, or the cigarette, or the alcohol, or the drugs, or have sex compulsively, or watch porn, or binge-watch TV, or play video games.

All of our sub-optimal behaviours, compulsions, and addictions arise because we don't know how to cope with and experience certain feelings.

So, part of taking 100% responsibility for your life is taking responsibility for your emotions and learning how to regulate them.

In fact, this is the mark of mature adulthood, when you take responsibility for your own emotional state and don't blame your feelings on anybody else. You understand that you're co-creating your emotional state, whether consciously or unconsciously. Every time we get dysregulated, angry, sad, or afraid, and we do our avoidance behaviour around another person, they feel the energy of our emotions. In a dynamic between two people, if one person is having a feeling and doesn't know how to feel their feeling, the other person has to feel the feeling. It becomes a burden on them that they then have to cope with. We want to take responsibility for our feelings and not put that burden onto other people.

Remember: with great responsibility comes great power.

You can refuse to take responsibility and give away your power. Or you can take your power back and use it to do the things you need to do to build your music business and a life you love full of freedom, inspiration and creativity.

You can continue to externalise the problem and blame your circumstances and wait for them to magically become favourable to your progress and success. Or you can take 100% responsibility for your life and your lack of results and get out of your own way.

You can continue to be a victim of circumstances, or you can be the master of your own destiny.

You can be your greatest obstacle, or you can be your greatest asset.