Joy of Process

Several years ago, I went to a concert

Im not someone who goes to concerts

In fact, the only concerts I had been to before this one, I went because I wanted to try be cool

They didn’t go down well

(Seriously, I wore footy shorts to Nas, yeah homie)

Anyway, this one was a bit different

I was accompanying my mate who had been in an accident

Plus it was in the nosebleeds

So I knew I’de be able to sit down if I wasn’t interested

Which was likely 

The crowd was a staggering eighty thousand people

I walked in with my baseball cap covering as much of the chaos as possible

It was going to be a long night 

And then, some redhead walked onto the stage

And proceeded to blow my mind

Just him, his little ukulele, and some foot pedals

After the second song

And after coming out of my mesmerised state 

I asked my mate 

“Who the hell is this guy!?”

My friend had lost his ability to speak in the accident so he looked at me with as much confusion

Luckily, the person sitting on the opposite side overheard and informed me

“It’s Ed Sheeran you idiot”

I don’t have a TV or listen to the radio, so I forgave myself for happily living under a rock

But I spent the next ninety minutes as enthralled as the rest of the stadium

I was still standing by the encore 

Not because I was singing along (I didn’t know a single word)

But because I had never seen such a pure transition of process

I mean, the guy could have been doing the exact same thing by himself in his bedroom

Just singing with a ukulele

But it happened to be in front of thousands

I caught the train home and listened to the whole album I had just heard again 

I got home 

Couldn’t sleep

Google

Ed Sheeran

There is a documentary!?

Turns out his cousin and him had made a documentary about…

The process

Screw sleep

Click

The documentary opens with Ed walking off stage after performing to thousands

He gets a towel for his sweat

A water bottle to begin rehydrating 

And he follows an assistant to a room about a 45 second walk away from the stage

He walks through a door

Inside is his producer at a computer 

He is mixing some stuff Ed gave him before he left to do his concert 

Ed literally just finished a concert and his first priority is to go make more music

An hour later

They are on the bus together

Off to the next city to do it all again

And instead of sleeping

Ed is writing a new song (this time its one which Bieber ends up buying and making a hit) 

The entire doco is like this

It’s simply watching Ed’s process

But when I look at the process

There isn’t a single moment where I could honestly say

His process is reliant on fame or millions of dollars

He is literally doing exactly what he did for years

What I’m trying to get across here is…

I have never had a result which was more enjoyable than the process

And that if I’m not enjoying the process

Then that becomes my focus

To jiggle, update, reinvigorate things so the process becomes addictive again

A simple question which always seems to inspire me…

What if I did this the way I really wanted to?

Curious 

The documentary is called Songwriter 

I highly recommend it

Especially the first 9 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cc2RlLK0YY&t=1285s

Something For Pressure 

For those of you who want to be better under pressure

Here’s a free seminar I did

Performing Under Pressure: How to Find Comfort in the Chaos

https://vimeo.com/562364926 

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