Acceptance: Be the Bee

Have you ever listened to a song you’ve heard a thousand times and then really “heard” it? Or heard something you’ve never heard before in that song? The other day I was listening to Steve Miller’s “Jungle Love“Â which I’ve heard literally a million times, but this time I HEARD the bass line for the first time. How inspiring and badass!

We are going to do a fun little artistic exercise today

This got me thinking. We are going to do a fun little artistic exercise today. Some of you are aware of the 90’s Seattle band named Blind Melon. Some of you have heard their big hit “No Rain“Â and some of you haven’t.

Here’s the deal. I want you ALL to take a 4:06 artist date with yourself and watch this Blind Melon video right now.

I don’t care if you have heard this song a million times, or seen this video a million times.

Listen to it AGAIN, right now.

Watch it AGAIN, right now

Focus on it. Do whatever you have to do to get your head right so you can really experience it for 4 short minutes of your life.

Then I want you to read the rest of this post.

and GO!

We need to belong, we HAVE to belong to something

Part of the human experience on this planet is the hard-wired instinctual need we have for acceptance. We need to belong, we HAVE to belong to something.

To live, we HAVE to feel loved.

Think about it, this need is so instinctual that we often belong to groups or organizations that are bad for us or beneath us simply because they let us belong and make us feel welcomed.

Many of us never reach our full life potential because we are deathly afraid to leave our comfort zone of acceptance even though we have emotionally surpassed everyone in the group. Everyone has experienced this, is experiencing this, or knows someone right now that is experiencing this.

Some of us don’t leave the hood, some of us don’t leave our small town, some of us don’t move forward for fear of not being accepted somewhere else.

Some of us don’t think we are good enough.

Some of us don’t think we are worthy.

Some of us don’t think we deserve better.

We all secretly want to drink the Kool-Aid and are wired up to mortally fear a lack of Kool-Aid

I believe the video y’all just watched to be a microcosm of the music industry.Â I see this video as a clever metaphor for our amazing artistic community (and all of life for that matter).

Did you notice that the community did not find our little bee?

Did you notice that our little bee had to find the community?

Did you feel for our little bee as she suffered the rejections?

The cool thing about this new music business is that, as artists, we have the ability to find and cultivate our own little, very specific field of bees.

With the access we all have to the internet, we can find the communities that fit our needs as they pertain to our current location on our respective journey.

The old music business created a homogenized, very sterile field of bees that are willing to follow any artist that shows up on their radar screen because that artist can be “force fed” to the bees.

The old music business was about chasing a “formula” that they felt was “guaranteed” to work in the pipeline they created.

The old music industry had the power to control what the field of bees were exposed to.

The old music industry had the power to control who was allowed in the field.

Our core artist in us hates this fact. We don’t want to be forced to compromise our art to gain acceptance amongst the pre-chosen bees. We want to be like the bee in video and find our OWN field of bees who like us just the way we are.

Now you can.

It’s all out there for you and most of it is free; at least the start of it is free.

I got news for y’all, the “powers that be” on radio, television, running record labels, booking agencies, management companies, bloggers and mass media, you know, the ones whose help you need to achieve success they’re bees too.

They want to belong too.

They need to be a part of something.

YOU have to create and distribute your own Kool-Aid just the way you like it.

You have the power to connect with people who are looking for your kind of Kool-Aid; even if they didn’t know it!

If enough people are drinking your Kool-Aid the “powers that be” will too; because they’re just bees like you and I.