Hi. In this post I’ll be talking about my ego death experience from this past month and how it changed my career trajectory and my outlook on the concept of having a “career” as a whole.
I’ve been pursuing music as a career for years now, but it’s never totally worked out. I’ve spent so many hours researching how to grow a social media following, the best strategies for releasing music, and so much more. I’ve tried “grinding” and “hustling,” and after a couple of weeks (or less), I would just totally give up on it.
My body knows that I cannot survive in hustle culture (hence the giving up), but I thought that I needed to approach a career single-mindedly in this way to be “successful.”
Now I’m at a place where I don’t even think about the concept of a career, and instead just live doing what I want in every moment.
My mindset shift started when I took a step back from making music. I was feeling so resistant to streaming, making music, and editing videos. So I took a break and spent some time in contemplation, sitting in silence and listening. It wasn’t as peaceful as it sounds, though. No, it never is. I was struggling hard.
After a couple of days, there was a moment where I fully let go and surrendered. I was alone in the car on the way to get dinner, and I said, “I don’t know what to do. I give up.” In that moment ,I realized that I needed to give up music.
I broke down crying. I thought to myself, “all these years of practicing production, songwriting, and multiple instruments, all for it to get thrown in the trash? Was this really all for nothing?”
Although it was hard, I knew I had to give up the idea of pursuing music, or even engaging with music at all for the time being, in order for me to approach it differently in the future, if it was meant to come back into my life at all.
I just knew I couldn’t be pursuing music in the same way that I always had. And I didn’t know what a different way looked like at the time. There were a lot of unknowns.
I did know one thing, though. It was that I had a passion for the mystical. I had been studying psychology, philosophy, and digging into the nature of reality for years undercover. I did have a few conversations about these things with people over the years, but I mostly kept it hidden.
So around the same time I was letting go of music, I was also feeling a strong call to finally share this spiritual perspective and journey online. I thought to myself that it was finally time for me to “come out” as an energy worker. I’ve known that I’m a healer and can work with subtle energy fields, so I thought that maybe I was being called to go into a different career, one that felt more aligned, but that I was afraid to follow before.
So here I was. Transitioning from one career to another, still thinking about life in a career-driven way, although still making progress by facing my fears. But still. The career thing had to go, as you’ll read next.
A few more days into pursuing this energy healer identity and career direction, I had a very strong moment that signified the beginning of an ego death. I was talking with my sister about how I felt responsible for people, and she hit me with, “Why does it have to be you?”
This triggered a realization that I felt I was the only one who could be there for others. I? No, my ego. I was seeing that my ego thought it was so important that if I left people, they wouldn’t be ok without me. This is obviously not true, but the ego likes to perpetuate itself by making itself seem important in this kind of way.
This realization was just the trigger to a more complete ego-death situation. I was seeing how my ego had been forming out of my need to feel like a whole and complete person, and I was doing this by trying to attach myself to singular identities. If I could just identify myself as a musician, then maybe I could know my place in the world. If I could just identify myself as an energy worker, then maybe I could fit in with a community of people and feel like I belong. If I could just identify myself as an artist, then maybe I’ll finally think well of myself… and on, and on, and on. I felt that having a solid identity would solve my uncomfortable state of being and heal the parts of me that felt incomplete. Instead, these identities were just bandages.
Because of all of this, my career wasn’t just shifting to another career anymore- the idea of even having a career at all was melting. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing anymore. My ego was holding onto the pride and safety of having these career identities – be it a healer, a musician, a teacher, etc., but I let it all go. I let it all die with the wind. I wasn’t anything anymore. I was only the void of being alive.
This gave me profound freedom to live in the moment and do whatever I wanted to do. Every day, in each quiet moment, I would ask myself: “What do I feel like doing right now?” And I still do that now. Sometimes it means filming a video. Sometimes it means editing a song. Sometimes it means writing a blog post like this one. Instead of thinking about “being something-” an artist, a writer, a musician- and doing whatever I think that kind of person would or should do, I just sit back and laugh and let it go. Because I just am. And I just do what feels good in the moment, no matter where it takes me.
I wish this kind of freedom for anyone who resonates with my story and feels pulled to live life in this way. If you are happy being and doing one thing, then that’s great. This message isn’t for you. But if you are trying to be one thing and pursue one thing and you are feeling frustration and resistance from it… then go against societal conditioning by releasing the need to be any one thing and instead just do what lights your heart up in the moment. Trust in who you are. You’re pulled to do so many different things because that’s who you’re supposed to be. So go live that life already!
If you want me to expand on any concepts that I talk about in this post, or have any other questions, let me know in the comments below. 🙂