I ended part 3 with the question, “who do I want to be?” Simple. I want to be Bat Man. I always have. Problem solved!

OK, obviously I’m still going to be me. The question, “who do I want to be?” is not designed to get me to think of who else I want to try to be like. The question is designed to get me thinking of how to go about being my best self. It’s supposed to make me think of the qualities I want to embody and the physical manifestations of those qualities. At least that’s how I think of it!

And I could be “different” people at different times. I might bring different qualities to say the time I spend with our son vs. time I spend booking gigs. But answering the question, “who do I want to be?” before I approach either situation puts me in a much better place than if I just jump in unconsciously or worse yet, look at these things as just tasks to be crossed off a list.

The other great thing about that question is that it demands that I be totally present in whatever it is that I’m doing and that’s something that for me, rarely happens when I’m in my DOING mode!

But even asking and trying to answer the question, “who do I want to be?” can seem like a chore if I’m in a bad mood or really stuck in my DOING mindset. So I came up with a companion question that to me, is even more motivating. I based this new song and this video on that question:

In My Son’s Eyes from mattwahl on Vimeo.

Thanks For Being Here!
Matt

Related Articles:
Which Is More Important? Part 1
Which Is More Important? Part 2
Which Is More Important? Part 3

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When we last left off, our widgeteer was pondering his three choices:

1) keep pursuing his widget business as is even though it often makes him miserable.
2) give up his widget business even though it’s been a dream of his for so long and there are still many aspects of being a widgeteer that bring him pleasure.
3) find a way to continue the widget business and be happy!

Luckily, our widgeteer has discovered a very important truth: if you want to be happy doing something you need to first be happy!

He knows now that he cannot keep plowing ahead, hating the process and hope for a happy ending.

In part 2 I suggested that there might be a hybrid choice, a combination of options 2 and 3. Option 2, giving up, sounds like the quitters way out but it can be healthy sometimes to give up! It might be better to say “letting go” instead of “giving up.” If there is something in your life that makes you miserable you can keep that thing in your life and work hard to change the way you feel about it. But if you can’t change the way you feel and that thing makes you miserable, it might be best to let it go.

I did this several years ago with the news. I don’t watch or listen to any news at all. I haven’t for years and it feels great! I used to feel some sort of sense of obligation to be an informed citizen but it got to the point where it was either watch/listen to the news or feel good. I decided to feel good! I’m not totally oblivious to what goes on in the world. If I hear about something that piques my interest, I’ll look it up on line and read about it but I’m not going to spend my time ingesting information that makes me feel bad. It’s just not worth it!

What we are really talking about here is being selfish. That word gets such a bad rap when we are kids. But it’s important to be selfish about the way you feel. If there are things in your life that make you miserable you have the same three choices as the widgeteer: 1) keep those things in your life, 2) let them go, 3) find a way to be happy with those things in your life.

Your not doing anyone any good when you are miserable. Not yourself, your loved ones, strangers you encounter, tasks you try to complete, etc. No matter where you are or what you are doing, you bring yourself along. I would argue that it is better to be selfish about how you feel and then bring a cheerful, happy person with you everywhere you go than to keep a bunch of stuff in your life that makes you miserable out of some sense of obligation.

With all that in mind, the widgeteer would be best off doing options 2 and 3. Find the aspects of his business that no longer bring him pleasure and to the extent that he can, let them go. Keep whittling it down until he is left with a widget business that feels good. Even if that means starting over! He would be bringing more to the world with his skills as a widgeteer by starting completely over with a business that thrills him than he would carrying on with something that makes him miserable out of fear of loosing the little ground he has gained.

It might be sort of obvious that the widgeteer is not totally fictional or hypothetical. A lot of what I typed is based on my career as a musician. The story of the widgeteer in part 1 is a much more dramatic but there are aspects of that story that are true. And the problems I described came about because of the simple fact that I was focused on doing and not on being.

It’s so easy to let that happen. Take getting in shape for instance. When I decide that I don’t like that way that I look or feel and I decide I’m going to do something about it I make a list. I’m going to do the following exercises on the following days. I’m going to eat these certain foods for these specific meals on these specific days. I make a plan and then I do my plan. But like I said before, wherever I go and whatever I do I take myself along. If I’m miserable all the while I’m trying to follow my plan eventually it will be difficult if not impossible to stick with it.

I made the same mistake with my musical career. I had big dreams and great things that I wanted to accomplish. I didn’t know exactly how to go about making these things happen but when I quit my full time job I did anything and everything I could to try to move in the direction of those dreams. The mistakes I made where that I never got clear about what I really wanted and I never payed any attention to how the things I was doing made me feel.

It’s not hard to notice how something makes you feel. It’s pretty easy if you are paying attention. But you have to pay attention! Once I got going with my music I was so focused on trying to do all the things I thought I needed to do that I never payed any attention to how I was feeling or who I was being. Frankly, I didn’t think it really mattered. I figured if I could just do enough I would eventually get to where I wanted to be. I forgot that if I want to be happy doing something I have to first be happy! So I put my happiness aside and spent years plowing through tasks thinking that once I made enough money, had enough fans, sold enough CDs, played big enough venues, etc. etc. then I would be happy.

Just like the cross country move or the long drive I described in part 1 I thought that if I could just get through some of the “hard” stuff I would eventually get to the fun stuff. But the fun stuff never showed up. Because of the DOING mindset I had adopted I turned everything into just another task to be suffered through on the way to what I figured would eventually be good. And the worst part about living that way is all the great things I miss on the journey. Sure I’ve had to stay in a tent when it’s snowed and I’ve had to drive 20 hours straight and I’ve had to play places I didn’t really want to play and listen to people yell requests that I REALLY didn’t want to play (or hear yelled) but there’s been tons of great things too. I’ve met so many wonderful people and I’ve gotten to travel to great places and for 10 years I’ve gotten to play the guitar and sing for a living!

Those are all great things but for some reason, those are the things that are easily over looked when I’m in my DOING mindset. So the key is to figure out who I want to be and how I want to feel and then bring that person and those feelings along to everything I do. And after doing that, if there are still aspects of my music business that drive me nuts, I need to let those go.

So who do I want to be?

More to come!

Matt

Here is Part 4!

Related Articles:
Which Is More Important? Part 1
Which Is More Important? Part 2

Where we left off last time our widgeteer had a tough choice. From the outside looking in it’s easy to say, “just sell your widgets and be happy.” But that is easier said than done. Have you ever gotten yourself stuck in a place mentally about a certain subject, person, task, etc. and no matter how hard you try, every time you are faced with that subject, person, task, etc. you go right back to that same mental place and right back to all the emotions that come with it? I know I certainly have!

Our widgeteer basically has three choices:

1) continue on as is hoping life and the widget business somehow improve.
2) give up the widget business and the dreams that go with it.
3) find a way to be happy AND be a widgeteer.

None of these are easy choices. Let’s look at them in more detail.

Choice 1: things are probably not going to improve. I’m a big believer in the Law of Attraction. “What you think about you bring about.” If the widgeteer is constantly focused on how badly the business is going he is only going to bring more of that into his life. How much more time does he want to spend being miserable hoping for a happy ending?

Choice 2: this could certainly seem tempting. There could be a great deal of relief and freedom for our widgeteer by simply letting go. But this has been a dream of his for a long time and it’s not easy to let go of a dream. And for all the misery this widget business brings, it still brings many, many happy moments too. The widgeteer is never happier or more “at home” than when he is actually in the act of selling widgets. The misery comes from all the screwing around that goes into the planning, the set up, the travel etc. So to give up the misery also means giving up the pleasure.

Choice 3: Ah! The best choice! But also the hardest. Especially with something as important to the widgeteer as his widget business. When something is a huge part of our lives, it’s easy to develop what some people call an “emotional set point.” What that means is basically, when you are faced with a certain subject, person, task, etc, you jump right back to your set point. The best example of this is someone that you have to deal with on a regular basis. I know that I often find myself slipping right into my standard set point for a particular person.

When I have a set point, I can avoid it for a while. I can put myself in a vacuum and stay away from people, situations, etc. that trigger my set point. I can stay conscious of how I really want to feel and guard against slipping into my “usual” emotions. But all it takes is one thing in an unguarded moment and I’m right back there.

In the case of our widgeteer he could do his thing for a while and avoid the aspects of the business that cause him pain but what happens when he gets that next rejection? What happens when the roster of wigeteers for the next big widget event comes out and he’s not on it? What happens when a fellow widgeteer puts together a big widget event and he’s not included? He’ll be right back to feeling the pain of his struggle!

Maybe there’s another way. Maybe there is a hybrid choice, a combination between choice 2 and 3 that is the perfect answer. Maybe there is a way to give up the aspects of his widget business that cause pain and keep the parts that are pleasurable. More on this later!

In the case of the widgeteer, pain is caused by two things 1) comparison and 2) lack which is really only one thing: focus! If you have a dream, some deep, burning passion, chances are really good that when you are by yourself doing what you are passionate about you feel great. The trouble comes when you try to share your passion with others. If you compare yourself to others who seem to be having more success than you and constantly look at, think about, talk about how your life, career, etc. is lacking you will be miserable. If you can take your focus off of the others and off of what you think is lacking you can get back to the pleasurable parts of chasing your dream.

That brings up the most important distinction: who you are being vs. what you are doing!

The widgeteer has got it backwards. The widgeteer is focused on DOING (making and selling his widgets) and then hoping that through his DOING he will cause others to DO something (heap love and praise on him for his widgets) and then he can BE happy. It’s never going to happen!

This is going to sound pretty simple but it’s so important: you can’t be happy doing something without first being happy! If you are only focused on what you are doing and hoping that in doing that something, it will eventually bring you happiness, you’ve got it backwards!

I think when you decide to try and make a living with a passion the whole thing crumbles when you need people to behave a certain way in order for you to be happy.

It’s easy to let that happen. If you try to make your living doing something creative, writing, painting, building, sculpting, singing, etc. you need people to react in a certain way. You need enough people to like, appreciate, approve of you and/or your product in order to continue doing what you love for a living. If you don’t get those reactions from enough people you are out of business!

But it’s a slippery slope and the danger occurs when you move away from doing your passion because it’s something you love, because it’s an expression of your soul and began to do what you do for the reaction you hope to get. Once you start chasing the behavior you think you need from others the misery begins!

There is no way you can win! Part of what draws people to creative things like music, dance, art and widgets is the passion they feel coming from the individual who is creating those works. Once the creative person feels like they NEED the approval, acceptance, love, admiration, etc. from others for the work they do that passion erodes and it is replaced by a palpable desperation. This is certainly the case with our widgeteer. The widgets may still be created and built with passion but one he enters the arena of selling his widgets his passion is gone as he desperately seeks out the admiration, respect and approval that he thinks he needs to create the career and life he’s dreamed about.

The irony is that the more the widgeteer seeks this approval the more he drives away the very people he was hoping to please. He gives off a vibe and people can feel it. They can sense and feel his lack of passion. He is rarely present, he doesn’t seem to enjoy what he is doing in the moment, it seems he is always thinking of the next thing. People can sense that instead of enjoying what he is doing he is focused on the lack. The more people can feel this from him the less they offer the behavior the widgeteer needs to feel good about himself and his widget business. Thus he tries harder to please and at the same time becomes more upset and frustrated about his widgets, his business and his life.

This cycle continues and creates a downward spiral until the widgeteer wakes up one day and realizes that he has somehow turned his dream, his love, his passion into something that makes him miserable! But there is hope!

Realizing that something you do makes you miserable is the first step to figuring out why and from there you can figure out how to change it. Which brings our widgeteer back to his three choices: 1) keep going as is 2) give up or 3) find a way to be happy and keep going.

More to come!

Matt

Here is Part 3!

Related Articles: Which Is More Important Part 1

Sometimes there are things that are just downright unpleasant to do but you know the discomfort of the task is temporary so you put off your happiness, suffer through it and get it done. Moving is a good example for me. It’s a pain, there are boxes and things everywhere, it’s a ton of work, most of it is no fun but after a few days and some suffering, it’s over.

The same is true with the last few hours of a really long drive. I’m tired, over-caffeinated, my back hurts and I just want to get home! I know that if I can just make through the next few hours I’ll be home and that thought makes it easier to get through the suffering and get the unpleasant task over with.

But what if the particular thing your doing isn’t something like moving or driving, both which are usually over in a relatively short period of time. What if the task is a decade long or life long project? Then which is more important, the task or the happiness?

Let’s say you are an inventor and stealing from every Econ course I ever took, you have an idea for a widget. (not the Apple computer Widgets but a nameless, unidentified product used as an example) And let’s say that you feel like this widget is a reflection of your personality, a piece of your soul, so to speak and you truly believe, in your heart of hearts that if people would be exposed to your widget (get your mind out of the gutter!) it would enhance and improve their lives. And while we are saying things, let’s also say that this widget is sort of a work in progress. It’s not a concrete item that you would produce once and be done with it. It’s something that you continue to develop, tweak, modify, pour your life into and hopefully improve upon. You have a widget that you can take and show people but you are constantly reinventing it and coming up with slightly different widgets hoping all the while that the constant improvement and reinvention will pay off.

For years you’ve dreamed about getting this widget to as many people as possible hoping that the widget will add massive value to their lives. For 15 years you’ve loaded up your car and driven thousands of miles with your widgets. You’ve traveled by airplane and by boat. You’ve sold widgets from the back of your car, you’ve sold widgets at trade shows, shopping malls, coffee shops, bookstores, bars and restaurants, colleges, festivals, you’ve sold widgets on the street in the baking sun, the pouring rain, the bitter cold all the while clinging to the belief that your widgets will enrich the lives of the masses.

When you first started dreaming of creating and selling widgets the dream was a dream of pure joy. You were ready for the challenge. No drive was too long, no challenge was too tough! You looked at the widget business with an attitude of fun. You knew there were no guarantees, everyone said the widget business was a tough business but you were undaunted. You had faith that it would work out and you looked forward to the process, the journey and you truly believed that even if you only sold one widget to one person and that person smiled and told you it changed their life, it would be worth everything you had poured into your dream. You dreamed the dream and chased the dream not only for what you thought could be a glorious end result, but for the fun you’d have along the way.

But as the years went by the miles started to add up. You found out that the widget business is a tough business. You’ve met many great people who care about you and really love your widgets but most people really don’t seem to care all that much. To make ends meet and to keep people happy you’ve had to sell other peoples’ widgets, widgets that maybe aren’t any better than yours but they’ve been around a long time. People know those widgets, they like the familiarity of widgets they know. When you are out selling widgets you hope people will ask for one of your widgets but often they don’t. They ask for the same tired old widgets that have been around forever, the same ones everyone else is selling. Especially that one f@#$%ing widget that people yell out every five minutes and think it’s the funniest damn thing in the world.

Each time someone tells you “no.” Your faith crumbles just a little bit. Each time there is a big widget event and no one invites you, your faith crumbles just a little bit more. Everyone told you that there would be a lot of rejection and heartbreak in the widget business but what no one told you is that if you’re not careful, each rejection and each heartbreak gets stored somewhere and you think about them, you relive them and each time you do so, the foundation of guts and heart you had when you started crumbles just a little bit more.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, little by little over time, your focus and your attitude have changed. Everything else about your business has gotten better and better. Your widget making equipment has improved 100 fold as has your knowledge of that equipment. Your selling techniques have been honed over years and years of experience. Your widget business should be running at peak efficiency but the two most important assets seem to be damaged beyond repair. The only two pieces of equipment you had when you started your widget business, your heart and your mind, your most valuable equipment, is ruined.

A long time ago you forgot that you knew the widget business was full of challenges. You forgot that you got into the widget business not only with a dream of being a hugely successful widgeteer (that’s a person who makes and sells widgets) but also because of the journey and the lifestyle that go along with the widget business. Because you forget these things, the journey stopped being fun a long time ago. In fact, it hasn’t felt like a journey for years. It’s felt like the last few hours of a really long drive or those arduous final days of a cross country move. Only instead of lasting a few hours like the drive or a few days like the move, this has lasted for years.

Your whole thought process has changed. All you can think about is your lack of success in the widget business. Even when you have success you never see it as success. You could spend the bulk of your summer traveling to great spots, visiting with wonderful people all while selling widgets, something you are supposed to love doing!! And instead of enjoying that time and the journey you spend most of your time focused on why you aren’t selling more widgets, you wonder why some people seem to like other widgets better than yours. You take the rejections, the rudeness, the lack of camaraderie, the ambivalence, all the negative stuff personally and let it spoil any positive aspect of life as a wigeteer.

You’ve even put on what we’ll call a widget filter. You look at every aspect of your life through this widget filter. It affects not only your widget business but your self-esteem, your health, the way you treat friends, strangers and loved ones. Your widget business has become your entire life and you view it as being a failure and 1) you can’t get yourself to think of it any other way and 2) you have pretty much become hopeless about ever finding a way to fulfill your dream of becoming a successful widgeteer.

So if you are that wigeteer, which is more important, doing a particular something (your widget business) or being happy? Let’s just say for argument’s sake that as it stands now, it’s one or the other.

It’s an interesting question. At least it is to me.

More to come on this!

Matt

Here is Part 2

(To play the video click the play button in the lower left hand corner of the video box. Also, don’t forget to leave comments below. I’d love to hear what you think.)

I was sitting in a hotel room in Rochester, MN when I got a call on my cell phone from my dad telling me that my grandma (his mom) had passed away. My first thought was that I wish I had spent more time with her. My grandma and I lived in the same town and I saw her a couple times every week and we had a great relationship. But I think no matter how much you see someone and how much time you spend with someone there is nothing like the fact that they are gone to make you realize you would like more time.

I spent the day thinking about that. Loosing someone close to me made me realize that this could happen at anytime to anyone. My grandma was almost 90 and lived a wonderful life but there is no guarantee of that at all!

Everyday I make choices about how I’m going to spend my time and it is so easy, for me anyway, to let to-do lists, projects, work, etc get in the way of spending time with those I love. This song is my reminder not to do that.

A lot of people think I wrote this song for my Grandma. That isn’t the case. It was inspired by her passing but the song is fictional and I hope to keep it that way. It is a song of apology to someone who is gone. In the song I’m apologizing for all the chances we had to spend time together that I wasted. It’s an apology I hope I never have to make.

Thanks for being here!
Matt

Related Articles: Echoes Of Laughter

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(To play the video click the play button in the lower left hand corner of the video box. Also, don’t forget to leave comments below. I’d love to hear what you think!)

I made this video over a week ago and I’ve been trying to get myself to do this blog page ever since then. I keep putting it off because I can’t think of what more there is to say about this. I guess with this one I’ll let the video and the song speak for itself.

But I will add that whenever I play this song live I always follow it up with I Get To Choose. I think the songs go well together because we chose to find things in my dad’s passing that made us feel better about the situation. We told a lot of his old jokes, looked at tons of photos and shared a lot of good stories and memories. It brought us closer together as a family. I think it was a strong reminder that we are all getting older and helped us realize how precious the time we have together really is.

Thanks for being here!
Matt

Related Articles: I Get To Choose

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(To play the video, click the play button in the lower left hand corner of the video box. Also, please leave your comments below. I’d love to hear what you think!)

I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again! I wrote these songs and I’m writing these articles, not as someone who has this all figured out but as someone who wants to live this way and tries to live this way but often falls short of the mark. Especially with this topic!

I can feel great when I’m by myself. It’s easy to set up a little cocoon of goodness and hide there. But once I leave, I’m at the mercy of all those other people! At least I am if I’m waiting around for them to make me feel good!

In “I Get To Choose” I talk about how when I first started reading self-improvement material I learned about the power to control my own thoughts. I also learned very early on in my studies that no one has the power to make me feel something I don’t want to feel. That blew me away!!!!

My whole life I’ve heard things like, “so and so made me mad,” or “you make me so happy.” I was conditioned into thinking that my happiness or lack there of was directly tied to the words and actions of the people I came across on a daily basis.

Imagine the freedom of untying my ability to be happy from all those other people! That would be one of the greatest things in the world….if I could only make it a reality!

I live with two other people and even though we all love each other very much, we still say and do things that drive each other nuts. Not to mention all those strangers out there who don’t know me, don’t care what I think or how I feel and who are constantly out there doing stuff that bugs me! Why won’t they all just shape up and act the way I want them too?

Anyway, I’ve wasted a lot of years being mad at people for all the things they did and said that bothered me. Then, a few years ago, my friend Jean Kowalski asked me if I would write a song to go along with a talk she was giving on acceptance. That’s when I wrote “It’s About Love.” And when I started thinking about it I thought, “wow! I could just let people do what they do.” I could watch someone throw their cigarette butt out the window, accept that and not get mad. I could encounter someone who has put their grocery cart right in the middle of the isle, blocking everyone and I could let that go. It’s my choice.

I’m not going to say anything or do anything about these people and their actions. I’m just going to sit there and stew about it. But what if I didn’t? What if I didn’t agonize over these things? What if I could let it go? What if I could feel good in the face of all these “injustices?” Now that would be something!!!

All it would take is for me to care more about how I feel than about the stuff other people do. I could cultivate feelings of love, not for the person throwing the cigarette out the window but for life and people in general and those feelings of love could allow me to forgive people for what I might think is wrong. And that forgiveness could open the door to acceptance!

And the thing is, I wouldn’t even be doing it for them. Most of the time, these total strangers don’t even know they did something that bothered me! I stress and stew about stuff I think they did wrong and I’m the one who suffers. If I can make life about love and let that love lead to acceptance I can see the world in a totally different light and feel a whole lot better as a result!

Thanks For Being Here!
Matt

Related Articles: I Get To Choose

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(To play the video, click the play button in the lower left hand corner of the video box. Also, please leave your comments below. I’d love to hear what you think!)

In The Answer Is Faith I talk about judging the present moment. That can be easy to do when things aren’t going well. But if you’re stuck in a situation that seems bad remember, it is what it is. Judging it and condemning it isn’t going to change it!

I firmly believe that you find what you think you’re going to find. If you keep an eye out for fun, sometimes you can turn what seems like a bad situation into something better. If not right in the moment, at least maybe you can find something to laugh about later.

It comes down to setting your sights on fun and remembering that ultimately, you get to choose how you feel about any situation.

Thanks for being here!
Matt

Related Articles: The Answer is Faith, Sunny Side Up, I Get To Choose

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But I have to admit that I have reservations about “On-Line Marketing.” Let me tell you a story.

I used to go to conferences where I would market my music to colleges and universities. They were loads of fun and I met tons of wonderful people. During this time I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the music business. One of the things everyone said you had to do was build a mailing list. The first conference I attended was in either 1998 or 1999, I can’t remember exactly and I had just started to build an email list.

So hoping I might meet some people at this conference who might want to hear more about my music, I put out a clipboard and a sign up sheet. The top of the sheet said, “Join The Matt Wahl Mailing List,” or something like that and I asked for peoples’ names, addresses, etc. and email addresses. Some people signed up and that was good. I went home and dutifully added their info to my email list.

When it came time for my next email to go out, I sent it to all the names and got back one of the most angry emails I have ever encountered. He called me names and kept yelling (at least I assumed he was yelling) about something called spam. I had no idea what he was talking about. To me, Spam was the meat in a can:

But I quickly gathered that he was accusing me of sending him “junk” email that he had not asked for. I was still quite new to the internet, email and all of this stuff. But this fellow had painstakenly drawn out, in lower-case x’s, a TIE fighter from the movie Star Wars:

This was the signature to his email! This TIE Fighter in x’s!!!! So clearly I was up against someone who had a lot of time on his hands and I figured he knew more about the internet and email than I did. I must have screwed something up!

But In those days, I kept copies of all the sign-up sheets that I had used a different shows and events in case my computer died and I needed to recreate my email list. I went back to the sign-up sheets from the conference and there he was! Luke Skywalker, plain as day. (I changed his name for the purposes of this story.) Ha! Now I had him!

I waited the 10 or 15 minutes for my computer to dial up and connect and I sent back an email with his full name, address, email and phone number. I told him exactly where and when he signed up on my mailing list. He didn’t have a lot to say after that. He sheepishly asked to be removed from my list, I obliged and that was the last I heard of him. I won the battle! But lost the war!

What I mean is that the whole incident made me realize how quickly people can be offended by the things they receive by email and see on-line. Here I had done everything I was “supposed” to do to try and build a following and connect with people and I made someone really mad at me. That was the last thing I wanted! It made me pretty gun shy about sending out emails and marketing myself and my music on the internet in general.

So for years I would send out my schedule of shows and when I released a new CD, I would timidly mention it in my monthly list of tour dates. Then just this spring I got brave! I made some pre-release copies of my new CD, Sunny Side Up, to bring with me on a trip out to San Diego and Laughlin, NV. I didn’t have the artwork and manufacturing done yet but the music portion was finished. The pre-release copies allowed folks to get the music right then and there and I arranged to send them the finished copy when it arrives (next week!!!)

Anyway, I ended up with some extras and I thought folks on my mailing list might be interested in getting a copy. It had 5 bonus songs, 3 never before released, that won’t be on the finished CD. So I sent out an email to the folks on my mailing list telling them about the pre-release copy and how to get one. I was thrilled to see emails coming in from old friends and fans ordering copies of the CD! Only 2 days after I sent out the emails, I got a response back from a woman in my home town. All the email said was “please delete me from your site, sorry.”

Wow! I felt awful. It totally spoiled all the good feelings I had from folks excited about the CD. Here is someone who took the time at one of my shows to fill out a postcard asking me to add her to my email list. And now she wants off the list. Why? I have to guess it is because I tried to sell something.

Man that’s tough! I don’t play in very many, if any places that charge a cover charge. So this person could come and hear me play music FOR FREE over and over again and the second I say, “hey, I have this product you might be interested in,” she’s gone. And what’s sad is that I’m about to send out my summer schedule with tons of free shows in her town and she will not get that email. The whole reason I started a email list was to communicate with folks who might enjoy my music!

But I have some things to say. Some things that I really, really believe might bring some joy and happiness to people if I can connect with them. As I’ve said in some other posts, I have had this idea of The Fun Side Of Life for a long time. I was scared to do anything about it and I had no idea what to do with all of this information!

Most marketing information will tell you to define your audience. I will admit right now that I have no idea who my audience is. All I have is an unshakable belief that there are people out there who might like this stuff. And I’m hoping that by starting a blog and posting some videos, I might help some of those people find me.

I guess my point to all of this is that I am now marketing myself and my message on the internet and I’m nervous about it. I don’t want to be an internet marketer! I’m just a guy who wants to create a community of folks who really believe that life is supposed to be fun and this seems the best way to start doing that.

But I’m new to a lot of this stuff so I’m probably going to screw up and in screwing up I’ll probably offend some people. I’ll either send out too many emails or I won’t send out enough emails. I’ll post too many blog articles or not enough. I don’t know how I’ll screw up yet! If I did know, I wouldn’t do it! All I know is that when I’m new to something, I’m bound to make mistakes and people seem so touchy about things they get on email or things they see on-line. I hope if I screw something up in trying to reach you that you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and I hope you’ll realize that my heart is in the right place, I have the best of intentions and that I’m doing the best I can!

Thanks For Being Here!
Matt

Matt Wahl, The Fun Side Of Life from mattwahl on Vimeo.

(To play the video, click on the play button in the lower left hand corner of the video box. Also, I’d love to hear what you think. You can leave comments below.)

Welcome to The Fun Side Of Life! Thank you so much for taking the time to visit my site. I hope you’ll look around a little and watch all of the videos.

I have been playing and singing for a living since May of 1999 and The Fun Side of Life is born from my desire to give people more than just my music.

As I kept performing and kept writing new songs I noticed some common themes that ran through my music. About 8 years ago I started getting into self improvement material. I’ve read tons of books and listened to tons of audio programs on spirituality, The Law Of Attraction, health and wellness, psychology and on and on. As I would read these books and listen to these programs I would do a lot of writing of my own, either in a journal or on my computer. This writing helped my digest and understand the material I was absorbing. Often times, I would pull different ideas from different sources and combine them in ways that really rang true to me. And sometimes I’d make up my own ideas and observations and create ideas that helped me live a better life.

The more I read, listen and wrote, the more this material started creeping into my songwriting. All of these songs came from my desire to live a better, happier life full of fun. I don’t come at the Fun Side Of Life from the point of view that I have it all figured out and now it’s time to teach others. Sometimes I listen to the words of my songs and I think, “how I can write about that and not live it?!”

I’m just a guy who wants to play music and be happy!

I always wanted to be a cool musician. You know, the guy with hit songs who looks cool, acts cool and everyone loves everything they do! Which is kind of funny. I’ve never been cool at anything I’ve ever done so I’m not sure why I thought I’d be a cool musician! I think to be a cool musician I’m supposed to say “dude” and “man” a lot and write a lot of songs about “chicks.” Hair styles and leather wrist bands with buckles seem to fit in there somewhere too.

I’m being a bit facetious but if you read about the music business there are patterns people are supposed to follow in order to be popular musicians. Nothing ever felt right. I never really seemed to fit in any where. I felt like I was doing some of the right things but it always felt like something was missing.

About 5 years ago I had the idea to create something like I’m doing now with this blog and these videos. I wanted to take the themes from my original music and go deeper than I could in just a 3 minute song. I wanted to share the things that I learned and came up with as I tried to live a better life and I wanted to wrap all these ideas and messages into one big package called The Fun Side Of Life and deliver that package to the world with my music!

But I didn’t do anything. I kept banging my head against the wall, trying to force my way into different conventional music venues and markets hoping to someday be that cool musician. But every once in a while I would do a show in a venue where I could go a bit deeper with the idea of The Fun Side Of Life. I loved those shows. People would come up afterward and tell me that they loved the message! That felt so good and it just felt right but still I didn’t do anything about it. I didn’t know where to go with all of this. (I still don’t!) I didn’t know who would book me or where I’d perform (I still don’t!) and that kept me from taking any action.

I’d complain that I didn’t have any gigs. I’d complain that there wasn’t anywhere for me to play where people would actually listen to me and I grew more and more depressed about my music. I thought about quitting several times but every time I thought about my Fun Side Of Life show (that’s what I call the performance I’ve dreamed about giving where I share all of this) I would get excited.

Finally it dawned on me that I need to just put this stuff out there. I need to take a leap of faith and see what happens. It just feels right. It feels like the perfect combination of the material that has meant so much to me over the years and the songs that have sprung from my desire to be a happy music guy.

So in the last 2 weeks I filmed, edited and uploaded these 21 videos and created blog pages for each of the videos. Everything is far from perfect. I wouldn’t even let myself watch the videos all the way through. I didn’t want to get bogged down trying to make everything perfect. I knew if I watched them I’d see myself make faces I didn’t like or say things I could have said better. I know the sound isn’t wonderful either. I’m a nut when it comes to live sound but again, I just wanted to get things rolling.

Thank you again for being here. I would love it if you would tell me what you think of these videos in the comment section of each blog page. These 21 videos are just the beginning. There is a lot more to come!

Thanks for being here!
Matt

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