Well, it's January 24, and I'm sitting in my girlfriend's house in DC in the middle of a crazy big snowstorm. The snow has stopped falling, the sun is bright and some streets are somewhat plowed, but everything is still pretty much shut down.
It's beautiful. It's an amazing vacation. It's time to enjoy being with the people you love and doing nothing, just being. Movies, coffee, crosswords, relaxing.
Unless that's not where your mind is at. If you're a musician, today may be a day that your church gig was cancelled (like mine). Maybe Friday or Saturday night you had a club date, or a theater performance, or a private party gig, that was cancelled because of the snow. I myself am waiting to see what happens with a school concert I'm playing on Tuesday morning, not to mention my band auditioning some new bass players Tuesday night as well as playing for a handful of prospective clients, a night that could turn into a few thousand dollars in bookings.
When most of the jobs you do only pay if you show up – which is how most artists live, it can be hard to enjoy an unexpected snow vacation (or any time off for that matter). When you come from a mindset of scarcity then every job you've booked is precious, and could be the last, and every job that is cancelled is a disaster, a huge wrench thrown into the works of your life, and a sign of just how hard it is to make a living doing this thing we say we love. Choose a mindset of abundance, though, and you will know that the money that is meant to come to you will come in the way that it's meant to, and that there is plenty of money out there for you, for everyone.
For me, this weekend has become transformational. I spent a few hours feeling quite stressed about the gigs that would hopefully not, then maybe, then probably, then almost definitely be cancelled. As that progression...um...progressed, it became clear that what I was doing with all the stress was trying to control what happened. I got an email about snow cancellation policies from my church and responded saying that the policy was confusing, and asking about what kind of compensation would be given if church was cancelled with this much notice, or that much notice.
I was trying to control what happened. But it was out of my control. The policy was pretty much out of my control, but the policy didn't really matter anyway: 2 feet of snow were coming, and there is no convincing or figuring out I can do to make gigs happen that are clearly going to be cancelled.
This attempt to control is resistance, and it is what causes all pain in the universe, all stress. The opposite of resistance is acceptance, and this is where the transformation is.
In accepting that gigs would be cancelled, that the money from those gigs wouldn't be coming to me, I started being able to truly enjoy this new moment. I realized that, when someone asks me how I'm doing, the measure of how I'm doing doesn't have to be how much I'm working and how much money I'm making. That in fact, there doesn't have to be any measure of how I'm doing, how my experience of life is.
I can experience life as GREAT, by choosing to, no matter the circumstances. Life isn't about gigs, work, money, business or busy-ness. They are a part of life but they are not what life is about.
You get to say what life is about! It is your CHOICE!
If you are reading this and having trouble taking in that gigs and money aren't what life is about, that life can be experienced however you choose; if what I'm saying offends you, scares you, or makes you upset, my challenge to you is to look at what you are choosing to make your life about, how your are choosing experience life, and make a different choice.
These snowed in days are an AMAZING opportunity to have a breakthrough in your experience of life and your relationship to your work and yourself. And the more gigs that have been cancelled, the more money you've "lost" from this snow, the bigger the opportunity is the bigger breakthrough.
I choose for this weekend to be a celebration of time with the love of my life, time with myself, a celebration of relaxing, doing creative projects for myself (even just writing some music on GarageBand on my iPad), of simply enjoying life on its own terms, without measuring it by the amount of work I'm doing or money I'm making, any more than I'm measuring it by how many pages of a book I read each day or how many shrimps I eat each week.
What experience of life will you choose? What will you learn from this amazing weekend and how will you take it into your life going forward?
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