You must love what you do enough to do it every day

We often underestimate the importance of this concept in the world of performing arts.

We think, “Sure I love it enough to do it every day.  Why would I go through all that school, stress, hard work, and pay all that money for training if I didn’t?”

 Good question.  

Perhaps because it’s convenient at the time, or easier to go down that road than others. Maybe you pursue it because it allows you to delay that uncomfortable moment of accountability when you have to decide if you are a “hobby singer” or a professional singer.  Perhaps your feeling about music changes at some point because you  lose that group of people who can support you financially or because you have people who begin to depend on you for financial support and it no longer seems a viable choice to earn a living. 

Many people from different walks of life sing in some form or another, even if they don’t pursue it as a career. There are in fact many talented individuals with marketable voices that never pursue a career.  There are also many without a great deal of skill that passionately pursue a career. Why?   

They love it enough to do it every day.

We either they truly love the profession, or we don’t. What are some of the reasons that we don’t stick with it? First and foremost, because it is a HARD LIFE. 

At the heart of it though, I believe that it’s because many find out that they don’t love music as much as they though they did.  Not enough to pursue it with the drive and passion necessary for success.

 If something is important enough, you will find a way to do it, usually at all costs. 

The obstacles involved are mostly known entities, but the individual who really wants to sing,  who HAS to sing, will power through because at the end of the day, they love it too much to do anything else.  They want that end goal enough to endure whatever it takes to get there. It won’t make it easier, but if the desire to get to where you want to go is stronger than the discomfort you experience along the way, you make progress.

What IS important to you? health, family, religion, food, sleep, certain comforts of life, money? What do you do on a daily basis to to ensure that those things happen on your terms in your day to day life? What are you unwilling to give up?  What are you willing to sacrifice.  Are you sure?  Do you ensure that you get your 8 hours of sleep every night?  Never miss a meal or a day at the gym? Are you the kind of person always working overtime shifts and side jobs for those extra few dollars? Identify those things for yourself, those things that you make happen every day to understand how passionately (or not) you feel about singing for a living.

Do you love singing as much as those things you fight for every day? Are you willing to work every single day to develop your voice and your skill set into something that is and marketable? Or, are you casual about it, and only really enjoy it and apply yourself when things are going well?  Ar you only truly engaged when you’re doing one particular element of the process such as the sitzprobe or staging rehearsals or the actual performance.  Do you often find yourself making excuses as to why you couldn’t practice that day or why you haven’t been able to figure out a tricky technical hurdle?  Then is singing really a priority?

Do you have multiple back-up plans and safety nets? Do you find yourself saying “we’ll see,” when people ask if you’re going to be able to make a living with singing? Or, do you hear yourself saying: “if this doesn’t work out by such and such a date, I’m going to medical school.”

Many students find opportunities even while in school, to sing and enjoy the experience, but as soon as school is over and they have to work harder to find those opportunities, they decide they are not interested in working that hard for those same opportunities.

Some find ways to go back to school to gain additional experience or to pursue a degree in a related area that may increase marketability. Sometimes this is to ensure success in the field, and sometimes it is to hide out for a few more years before facing reality.

Are you willing to work multiple jobs to keep singing? Go without many of the basic comforts of life? Live on a very modest budget for many years, possibly forever? Eat a lot of ramen?  Sleep on couches or mattresses on the floor.  Use a phone with a cracked screen?  Deal with the success of others all around you even if you are not having success as you’ve defined it? Are you willing to find ways to pay for lessons, auditions, application fees and take gigs that don’t pay but provide necessary experience, even if it means “missing out on life,” occasionally? 

If you love it enough, you’ll be able to endure the hardships and the frustration associated with the profession.  If not, it will seem like a torturous existence you have to endure until something better comes along. You’ll be bitter about the experience the whole time and the greatest tragedy that can happen to a musician may occur, which is losing your love of singing all together.

My advice? Strive to figure out how much you love singing by eliminating safety nets, back-up plans and escape routes. Yes, you have to live and eat, but if you’re not invested enough, you won’t achieve the level of success you want and need in order to be successful. You will spread yourself too thin, and find that you are constantly frustrated, as you won’t be devoting enough time to your craft to actually find success.  You have to invest yourself to the point of growth.  Casual effort produces casual results.  As a wise man, Neal A. Maxwell said, it is easy to be lost “in the thick of thin things.”

Decide how badly you want to have a career. It may take time to figure this out and school is not a bad place to explore that. Before you get 2 or 3 academic degrees in to the process, however, ask yourself and your team of supporters tough questions like these.  You’ll need to ask with a willingness to hear the truth.  

• Do I actually have career potential?

• Am I willing to sacrifice comfort and stability to find success?

• After performing, auditioning, and practicing etc., am I renewed, encouraged, determined and energized? If not, am I tired, overwhelmed, frustrated and defeated?
• Am I always complaining about how unfair the business is, or explaining away other’s success, citing unfair advantages or dumb luck?

• Am I constantly making excuses as to why I’m not where I want to be?

The answers to these questions are often painful and we don’t like to ask them because we’re afraid of what the answers may be.

It is ok to love singing, but not enough to pursue it as a career. Many singers fund tremendous fulfillment in singing part-time, or on the side.   You can still make music at the highest levels even when it is not your sole source of income. Just because you love it, or have a gift for singing, doesn’t mean you have to do it full-time to find joy in it. Make sure it is the right place for you and take the necessary steps to ensure that you never completely lose your love for singing.