Is Your Intuition Keeping You Stuck?

A lot of the time we rely on our intuition. We do what “feels” right. And we avoid doing things that don't feel right. We think if it feels right, it must be the right thing to do. And there are times where that is certainly true. But when it comes to achieving our goals, often the reason we get stuck and don't make progress is because we rely on our intuition. That probably sounds counter-intuitive to you, or maybe even crazy. To really understand this dynamic, we need to travel back in time to our ancestral past. This is a little bit of a long walk, but indulge me. Stick with me and I promise there’s a payoff at the end.

I'll start by giving you an example you can relate to. Before we invented agriculture about 10,000 years ago, we were hunter/gatherers. We evolved in a time where food was scarce. Sometimes humans would go days or weeks with very little food. So as a result, we evolved this propensity to eat a lot of food when it was available because we didn't know when our next meal was coming. This was an evolutionary adaptation, a survival mechanism that kept us alive.

Fast-forward to today and we live in a different reality than our ancestors did. There's almost zero chance of us starving. We can go to the supermarket any time we want to buy food. You can't drive down the street without coming across multiple fast food joints. Food is abundant. So our environment has changed dramatically, but we still have the same evolutionary programming that drives our behaviour. Why is that significant?

We have this propensity to gorge ourselves on food, but because food is so abundant now, we're gorging every day instead of every few days or once a week like our ancestors did. And to make matters worse, we're doing it with highly processed, sugar-laden, calorie-dense foods that didn't exist in the time of our ancestors. The sum total of all this is that we become obese and develop diabetes. Those two diseases have reached epidemic levels. So what developed as a survival mechanism is now killing us because the environment has changed; the context has changed.

In other words, we humans were programmed by evolution for a time that no longer exists. Our instincts and intuitions are often counter-productive in our modern environment. To succeed in this new artificial reality we have constructed, we have to learn new things, and those things are not intuitive and many of them won't feel natural.

Eben Pagan has a concept called “The Critical Counter-Intuitive.” His idea is that the next step on the path to success is not obvious, and it's typically counter-intuitive.

When you go into a new domain or to the next level in your current domain, it requires you to see reality in a different way; to understand things from a different perspective. If you remember that what you'll have to do won't feel natural or intuitive, then it makes it easier to figure out that thing and then to actually do it. But if you just stick with what feels right to you and what your intuition is telling you in a domain where those things don't work anymore, you'll keep hitting a brick wall and getting frustrated.

This also gives you permission to try new things. If what you're doing isn't working, even trying something random is more likely to get you better results.

It feels good to eat junk food and sugary soft drinks. They taste really good. It's counter-intuitive or even uncomfortable to eat food that's not so sweet, like vegetables. It's even more uncomfortable for most people to fast; to intentionally not eat food for a period of time. It's uncomfortable to exercise. And yet, if you want to improve your health or lose weight, these are useful or even necessary things to do.

What has all this got to do with your music career and your music business?

It's comfortable for you as a musician to sing or play your instrument, to write songs, to record, and even to perform (although many people do find performing uncomfortable). When you decided you wanted to become a musician, you probably thought those things were all you needed to do to make a sustainable living from your music.

But we're in a different musical and cultural environment than we were even 20 years ago. We're now in the New Music Business. It's a new reality that's as different to the traditional music industry as our modern urban landscape is from the plains of Africa where our ancient ancestors evolved.

If I told you that you also have to learn about marketing your music, branding, business and sales, do audience research, build an email list, post regularly on social media, and do livestreams, they probably don't feel intuitive or comfortable to you. And I've observed many musicians who are resistant to doing these things. They feel fear about doing these things. They're outside of their comfort zone. And yet, these things are essential if you want to make a living as an independent musician in 2020.

This is why it's so important for you to get outside of your comfort zone. Your success won't come from doing the things that feel comfortable. Remember, the next step on the path to success is not obvious, and it's typically counter-intuitive, which means it will probably feel uncomfortable.

The fear we feel when we have to do something outside of our comfort zone is based in that evolutionary hard-wiring that protected us and kept us safe. The fear is an artefact of our evolutionary past more so than being based on the current reality.

In our modern environment, if you ignored your fear and did the thing that scared you, you wouldn't get eaten by a predator, you wouldn't starve, you wouldn't be ex-communicated from your tribe and left to fend for yourself with little chance of survival. It's no longer a matter of life or death. Your fear is trying to protect you from paper tigers. That fear is irrational in the modern environment. It's counter-productive now.

So, when something feels weird, uncomfortable or unnatural, you can remember the critical counter-intuitive. Know that it's going to feel weird a few times until you acclimate, but that it's ultimately the right step for you to take. And when you see it work, that will be the feedback you need for it to take root so you can really go to the next level.