We Aren't Meant For One Thing

So often people define themselves by something they do, or a goal they have. The truth is, that's a dangerous game. Why? Because we are constantly changing, and often times we get so zeroed in on a dream, or how we define ourselves that we entirely miss our evolution.

There's a beauty in having a goal and learning to surrender. A common mistake is thinking we're solely responsible for making something happen, when in reality everything in life is a collaboration. When we take the pressure off, there's room to be someone other than what we've defined ourselves as. This doesn't mean we don't work tremendously hard towards what we want in life. It means that there's a reality in which it doesn't have to have our focus 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Nothing can thrive with that amount of pressure on it. Truly nothing. It also allows us to "meet" the other pieces of ourselves, and this is vital if we want to call long-standing, easily accessed joy into our lives. Think about it: If we define ourselves by goals or dreams, by the thing we believe we're supposed to become, and that doesn't pan out the way we had hoped...we would naturally feel lost. We would feel like we were nothing without it. And that's a lie!

We are a million incredible things all at once that make us who we are. Our friends and family would never define us as just a banker, or just a singer. So why do we do that to ourselves?

And truthfully, what our younger selves want for us might not fit who we are today. I'll share a personal story. My whole life all I ever wanted was to be a musician. I wanted to be legendary. I believed it with every fiber of my being. So much so that I sacrificed every other area of my life to make my career thrive, and for a decade that worked out really well for me. But then I started to realize I was anxious, depressed and borderline neurotic 100% of my time that I spent outside of a studio, rehearsal room or stage. That meant the majority of my day, most days, was spent fighting all those demons. Eventually, through a lot of spiritual and emotional work I found the root of it all.

My body, my mind and my heart couldn't sustain the pressure I was putting on myself. 15 year old Ariel made a choice that 25 year old Ariel couldn't find happiness with. My love for music didn't change, and my dream of being a legendary artist didn't change either. But what did change was my desire for other things. I wanted a thriving social life, I wanted a partner, I wanted to be at milestone events for the people I love. Suddenly the sacrifices that came with the job stopped feeling good to me. I used to wear it like a badge of honor, but now I was seeing the affects of being so hyper focused, and I didn't like what I saw.

Unfortunately, it took me another few years to change my reality. It took me YEARS to learn who I was outside of music. I deeply believe when we ignore an epiphany or a crossroad moment in our life, the Universe will force us to face it again. I kept ignoring the signs, and they kept sending me road blocks hoping I would pause long enough to get the message. At 29 years old I was faced with a diagnosis that put an ultimatum on the table. I had early onset hereditary hearing loss. My premature hearing loss was brought on by significant noise exposure. Let's be clear, this day was inevitable for me...but it would've happened in my old age rather than my young adulthood had I not been pursuing a career with constant noise exposure. The prognosis was grim. If I wanted to slow the progression and degeneration, I needed to remove any significant noise exposure from my life. The doctor explained it could be the difference of losing a decade of healthy hearing. He said,"Do you want to be deaf by 50 or 40?"

There is no cure, there's no stopping this train. Sure medical advances happen every day. But I couldn't base my future on the potential of a medical advancement. What does a musician do when they're faced with losing the ability to hear the music they make? Well, in my case I chose to ignore it before I was finally forced by the Universe to pivot. That's another story for another time. It's what came after my pivot that matters most for this story.

I started professionally pursuing music at 17 years old. It took me 2 years after my diagnosis to accept my reality. So for 14 years all I ever spoke about, thought about or breathed for was this one goal. Once it was gone I lost myself entirely. I was so depressed that I couldn't get out of bed. My muscles were beginning to ache and swell because of how little I was moving. My hair was falling out, I had no appetite. It got very dark, very quick.

It took months for me to pull out of the hole I was in. If not for my family, it would have taken much longer. I had to entirely surrender, I had to entirely quit music in order to start over. I got a "normal" job and started seeing what hobbies I was drawn to. For the first time in over a decade I made it to peoples birthdays, weddings, milestone celebrations, and I took stock of all the memories I had missed along the way because I was so blindsided by my aspirations. It was the first time, in a long time, that I was about of the real world.

About a year after I "quit" the industry I got a call to join in on a songwriting trip. It was the first time I was faced with my old self, the girl I thought I had left behind. I hadn't touched a guitar in a year. I hadn't sang or written in just as long. I don't know if it was my angels or my younger self who said yes, but it certainly wasn't me. Thankfully a force greater than me accepted that opportunity, because it sent me on a new life path that has brought so much joy into my life. But the most important thing was, I had allowed myself to become a whole person again. I was re-entering the industry with a entirely formed "self", and 90% of it had nothing to do with music.

Suddenly rejection didn't hurt as bad. A bad writing session wasn't personal. People critiquing my songs didn't feel like agony and I wasn't trying to prove myself to anyone anymore. I do it now because I love it. In a way, I'm finally reconnected with my 15 year old self. The one who had no idea how it was all going to happen, but she didn't care because she loved it so much it didn't matter. And the beautiful thing, the most unexpected thing, is that I'm finally ready to make another album for myself again. I realized that I could still be an artist in so many ways. Maybe it won't look the way I thought it would, but we all have a choice every single day to try and see something from a new perspective. Sure, I might not be in a legendary rock band playing a sold out Madison Square Garden, but maybe the songs I write will be performed there. Maybe I'll have a globally successful album that I'll do an acoustic tour for, or maybe I'll just make records because it makes me happy. Thankfully, I don't need to know how it will be pan out, I'm in a place where I'm ok with whatever the outcome will be.

So here's what I hope for you: I hope you meet yourself. I hope you never stop getting to know who you're becoming. And most importantly, I hope you allow yourself to dream more than one dream. Life is in-motion and so are we, we cannot possibly want one thing forever! Let the dream evolve as you do too!

Love,

Ariel