By GLYN MACLEAN
Staff Writer

If you’re anything like the rest of us, then it’s very likely that there has been at least one occasion when you wanted to give up on your musical dream. The question that eventually visits each of us is “should I give up, or should I keep on being musical?”

The answer to that question (while completely unrelated to toilet humor) involves going for a good “P”, or in fact; the three good “P”s that will enable you to the change that you want in your own pocket.

Purpose

Typically, great musicians will have a strong sense of purpose and a commensurate desire to bring about change. When our real lives become congruent with the change that exists ethereally in our minds, we become aligned with our purpose.

Permission

Anyone who has learned the psychological story about ‘Pavlov’s Dogs’ will be aware that it is possible to learn helplessness. The vast majority of people are seeking comfort and conformity as a reward and adjust their method of operation or lifestyle accordingly. We learn to expect failure and therefore never try. We will rise to the level of our expectations.

The beginning of greatness has to be the end of mediocrity. We first have to give ourselves permission to get on the path to greatness and accept the nature of the ‘greatness journey’. Without risking our comfort, we can not have the beautiful experiences that come after we give ourselves permission to grow in knowledge, wisdom and capability.

If success is a set of principles, then we need to adjust our expectations and lifestyle to ‘fit’ the principles. For most of us this involves the principle “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” I understand this to mean that each new day we need to turn up and make at the very least; a single positive step.

Persistence

Once we know what it is that we want to achieve and we have given ourselves the permission to get on the path to achieve it; we then need to understand that the average cycle of industry achievement usually takes about ten years.

If we are not connected with a strong sense of purpose; and I translate this as meaning wanting and needing to communicate something important to us, then we won’t have the motivational fuel to sustain us on the journey. If Purpose is the fuel of dreams then Persistence is the length of the road we must travel to reach our destination.

If we haven’t given ourselves permission to invest in our purpose over a specific period of time and if we don’t have the permission of the people around us, then it can be very difficult to continue along the path to our goals.

The path to persistence often involves building a team around us and motivating them to believe in our purpose. There is a need to inspire our supporters to also give us permission to persist in the pursuance of the vision. These supporters can be anything from our bank managers to our baby sitters and our families. Some of us will pay a high personal price to pursue our purpose. In fact, there have been many historical examples that achieving greatness can involve a great deal of personal sacrifice.

Ultimately, if we believe in our purpose we will persist because we will already have decided on a real motive to continue. The stronger the sense of purpose and the more practical the level of permission, the easier it is to persist.

Exercise your “P”s!

A simple exercise is to find three words which are “verbs” (action words) that define your sense of purpose. Mine are “Inspire, Encourage and Empower”.

A good motivational tool could be to make your own fridge magnets using your motivational words. When you see these each day you will program yourself with your sense of purpose. Once you’ve made the connection yourself, then you can give yourself permission to share that message with others through your creativity.