Image: from personal archive
People often ask me how I got started in singing. I had just finished my Psychology degree and got accepted on to a master's degree course, but I turned it down and never went back. People ask me what was it about music that made me absolutely do it? And how did I get started?
Firstly, I really felt compelled to use my gifts to sing, and I'm pretty stubborn in that when I say I want to do something, even if nobody else has done it, then that's exactly what I'm going to do. Luckily for me, my mother is also a singer, so I had the perfect model to show me that it could and would work for me. Here's the story of how I got started.
I had been doing a lot of work with gospel choirs, doing UK gigs and some gigs in Europe. I had a desire to break into the pop sector of the music industry, but I was the most shy out of all my peers. Whenever I went to open mic nights, I never sang, until one day I said to myself, "You have to sing, you have to showcase your voice". I was so shy that I never wanted to be seen, until I realized that that just wasn't going to get me to my goal.
So, I had been doing these gospel gigs for a while and I really wanted to stretch my wings in other areas. I was invited to a gig at the jazz cafe, where an artist I had worked with was performing.
Prior to this, my relationship with this artist's management and I and I was fired. In fact, the whole band at that time was fired. I was somehow still on friendly-enough terms with the management and was invited to a gig as a patron.
Something about that day made me feel certain that I would be invited to sing and that it would be magic. I didn't know what else would happen after that, but I was so sure that I would be asked to sing as a guest in the crowd that I warmed up my voice and did my makeup extra carefully.
When I got to the show, I listened to the artist perform. Midway through her set, she looked at me in the crowd and said, "I know you can sing," and gave me the microphone. I took the mic and everybody around me stopped to watch what I was going to do next.
Guys, I had no idea what to sing; I just kind of ad libbed over what the band were already playing and I can't vouch for how great it was. But when I was done, I gave the artist back the microphone.
After the show, the drummer (who was just on stage with the artist) approached me and said he would love if I worked with him for Craig David. He just so happened to be Craig David's band leader.
I did one show with Craig and then I went on to do two world tours with Craig before I moved on to set up a business.
From then on, everything snowballed. I worked with Corinne Bailey Rae, rubbed shoulders with Justin Timberlake, sang with Natasha Bedingfield and sang with Adele at the Academy Awards.
I will always credit my 20 year long career to that moment of certainty when I knew I was going to be asked to sing.
I can't lie - there have been times in my career since then that I have tried to recreate that same magic and certainty, but I found myself getting too in my head. However, one thing I know for sure is that faith and certainty are the antidote to anxiety. It is about knowing that you know, and knowing that you know what you know; there is a certainty and a peace within you which creates magical opportunities to make their way to you.
What I understand about magic and creating things out of thin air, is that you are not waiting to see how opportunities unfold for you; you are actually creating them and opportunities come through you. I have tested this time and time again in my career and I can tell you that this is the absolute truth.
If you are brave, if you are willing to get still enough to truly listen to the intuitive voice that is coming through you, it will sometimes feel like a powerful desire, a subconscious thought in the background that you don't pay attention to, or just a sense of knowing that you have information that you haven't been told before.
Your job is to listen to those things and get ready before you need to because what happens next will be magical. This is the primary way to absolutely collapse time and bring opportunities that may have taken years to create but now you have them within minutes, hours, and days. So not only are you the person that the opportunities come through, you get to be the owner of your thoughts.
Here are some ways for you to get ready, still, present and relaxed so that you can feel and know what's coming through you before it happens:
Take a moment each day to have uninterrupted you-time. Even if it's just 10 minutes a day, with no screens and no interruptions, just sit and look at something pretty. Look at the sunset. Listen to the birds in the trees and just get very present.
I know everybody talks about meditation, but I am telling you it is one of the most powerful ways to start the day. It helps to calm and regulate the nervous system, and it helps you to either focus on one thing in your mind, rather than plenty of things, or it helps you to get into the space of no thought whatsoever. It's when the mind is quiet that you can start to hear yourself actually think; your intuitive, divine voice is offering you something at each moment. And when you quiet the noise, you can actually hear it.
Do one thing at a time. The world may try to tell you that you need to do things quickly, that you need to have a fast pace, and that you need to multitask. This is simply not true. Start doing one thing at a time and paying attention to the task at hand. This is brain training, so that you start noticing what comes up for you.
Start journaling by noting down the thoughts that you are having. Even if you are thinking of a certain person, just write it down. Write down the date and time, and then see if it comes true. See if they contact you or send you a text message out of the blue. If they do, note that time and date down as well. Just get into the habit of allowing your mind to tell you what's coming up before it comes up. You may not always get it right; sometimes those thoughts are just chatter. But the journaling will really help you to get really clear about how your mind operates.
If you do these things, you will turn yourself into a faith-certainty-opportunity-creating machine, and that's when life gets really fun!
Go ahead and drop a heart and like this episode of The Freedom Series. Go ahead and share it so that other people can experience the antidote to anxiety and how powerful their minds really are.
If you'd like to explore the power of your internal voice to express the power of your external voice, book a Discovery Call with me here.
コメント