The Most Important Vote Of Your Life

Many of us have been caught up in the US presidential election lately. It's felt like an existential battle between the forces of good and evil. We've also just had state elections where I live.

A lot of people have been wondering who they should vote for.

There's a vote you can place that has a very direct impact on your success, wealth and prosperity.

That's to vote for yourself. Not in the presidential election, but in the election of life.

We get so caught up in the drama of politics and elections that we lose sight of how much agency we have over our lives. We think that the outward circumstances of our lives, like which political party is in power, ultimately determine our success.

But you can have a much bigger impact on your own life than whoever wins the election.

So voting for yourself is the most important vote of your life.

Usually, we don't vote for ourselves. We're waiting on others to vote for us. We're waiting on others to appoint us as worthy, to bestow legitimacy upon us. A lot of musicians are especially guilty of this. They try to win over the gatekeepers, to get signed by record labels, to get press and blog coverage and reviews, to get sync licensing placements in movies or TV shows or ads, to get on TV talent shows, to get placed on big Spotify playlists.

By waiting on others to vote for you, you're abdicating your responsibility for your own life and your results, and you're also outsourcing your self-esteem.

You're outsourcing your self-esteem to your partner, your parents, your kids, your friends, your band mates, your fans and followers, bloggers, playlist curators, record company executives, your boss, your co-workers.

Don't expect them to take care of your self-esteem. The responsible mature move is to reclaim that function for yourself. You do that by voting for yourself.

You can appoint yourself and then live up to that appointment.

This is really about self-appointment. Anyone who has accomplished anything great in life first appointed themselves as the person who does that.

I remember hearing a story several years ago from some actor or celebrity. They were backstage at some Hollywood event and Donald Trump was also in the room. This was years before he became president or even expressed any political ambitions. This celebrity was observing Trump as he was moving around the room, and he noticed that Trump had the air of a president. He had this air of authority, he was going around introducing himself and shaking hands, and he seemed very statesman-like. And so it’s interesting in light of that that Trump did end up becoming president. It’s a shame though that he didn’t seem to bring any of that earlier presidential, statesman-like behaviour into his actual presidency.

People appoint themselves to greatness before greatness happens, and they do it without a shred of evidence. It's just a decision.

You can appoint yourself as a successful musician.

You don't even have to have rock-solid self-confidence to appoint yourself. It's the act of appointing yourself that will cause you to become the person that lives up to the appointment.

You don't need confidence but you do need audacity. You have to have the audacity to know that you're the guy that's going to become president, for example.

If you appoint yourself to a position that's important to you, and then behave accordingly, then all the other stuff takes care of itself. You gradually enrol other people in your vision and it becomes a reality.

When you appoint yourself, your identity transforms. A really powerful way to support your self-appointment is to create an affirmation of your new identity.

Pick whatever words are meaningful to you. You can say: “I am a successful artist,” or “ I am a full-time musician.” If you really want to go to the next level, the ninja move would be to say “I am a marketer and a musician,” or “I am a marketer who sells music.”

When you say “I am a marketer who sells music,” you're integrating marketing into your new identity. Marketing is an essential component of being a successful independent musician in the New Music Business. And yet, most musicians have a paradigm that doesn't include marketing and sales as part of creating success in their music careers. It's just not part of their identity, and so they struggle to adopt the mindsets and take the actions that will build them an audience.

Declaring your affirmation to the world can have a stronger transformative effect than anything else you do because it changes the label you have for yourself and your self-conception.

You'll want to repeat your affirmation to yourself several times throughout the day. Write it out 10 times every morning. Whenever someone asks you what you do, tell them “I am a marketer who sells music.”

You'll notice a lot of aspiring actors do this. If someone asks them what they do, they'll say “I'm an actor,” even though they might just be a waiter or waitress. They've appointed themselves as an actor and so that's how they see themselves and refer to themselves.

Talk about yourself as if you'd already achieved your goal, then your mindsets, your habits, your behaviours and your actions will become congruent, aligned and catch up to your identity.

Don't say “I'll wait until I've released my album, or I've got 10,000 Facebook followers, or I'm making $100K a year from my music... and then I'll appoint myself.” No. You have to appoint yourself first if you ever want to achieve your dreams.

You can either be a prisoner of your identity or you can be the author of your life by intentionally shaping your identity.

Don't wait for someone to vote for you. Don't wait to be the person who can appoint yourself. Appoint yourself now, own that identity, and let yourself be transformed.