Hi,

This week’s newsletter is more mindset related as opposed to being more tactical - it was inspired by a recent experiment I saw on Instagram that felt applicable to artists, creators, and anyone in entertainment.

Let’s dive in ⬇️

While doomscrolling on Instagram recently, I came across a random post about the effects of the “Counterclockwise Study”.

The study was conducted by a Harvard psychologist named Ellen Langer in 1979. She essentially took a group of elderly men (late 70’s and 80’s) and put them in a retreat that was designed to look like an environment from 1959 (20 years earlier).

Everything in that environment reflected the year being 1959 and the participants were instructed to act like they did at that time.

• Magazines were from 1959

• The radio played music from that time

• They watched the Ed Sullivan show on black & white TV

• They even changed their clothes and style of dress

By the end of the week long experiment, the men participating in the study actually showed improvements in their physical health that reflected where there health was at that time.

For example, “they showed substantial improvements in flexibility, dexterity, memory, hearing, posture, cognitive ability, and general wellbeing. They even looked younger to outside observers who were shown photos of them before and after the experiment” (source HERE).

The experiment kind of blew my mind mind and is a testament to creating our own reality - our reality and environment can affect how we see ourselves and thus impact our physical and mental health. New environment, new reality.

Also, what we think our limitations are may not be actually be reality. We create our own reality, partly due to our location, environment, habits, actions, and thought processes.

The experiment was also a testament to neuroplasticity - rewiring our brains and the thoughts we tell ourselves by being in a different environment or telling ourselves a different story about who we are.

Those participants went from living every single day telling themselves they should act their age to living as if they were 20 years younger.

It got me thinking about how that mental rewiring can apply to those in entertainment:

1) Change your environment

Sometimes you need to change your environment to help rewire or reinforce the identity you want. There’s a reason why so many artists travel to different places to record and create music.

For example, lots of artists travel to different countries, set up mobile recording equipment, and create albums in new environments to help capture the energy of that project and reinforce its identity.

It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of this but the fact it happens is powerful - environment is such a big indicator of how we create and see ourselves that sometimes its necessary to physically go to another location to think about things (and ourselves) in a new way.

It’s a big reason why vacations and getaways are so important to reset and see things from a different perspective.

2) Act as if

How you do anything is how you do everything and the actions we take everyday create the people that we want to become.

For example, if an entertainment industry professional wants to take themselves more seriously (as well as have others do the same), they need to start by taking those actions themselves to create that identity.

• Be more accountable

• Send notes for meetings

• Show up on time

• Hold yourself to a higher standard

• Be more organized

Simply doing these things can change how we see ourselves as it creates a new identity.

Same thing with speaking things into existence - sometimes your belief has to be so strong, even when something hasn’t actually happened yet, to create that reality.

For those who follow Russ, self belief is a huge part of his story. He talks a lot about “manifesting” and the incredible self belief he’s always had in himself to get to where he’s at.

About 8 or 9 years ago, I actually met Russ super early on in his career. This was right when he was starting to really make a name for himself and was taking meetings with labels. At that time, despite the success he was having, he was a fairly unknown artist who was building a name for himself on the internet.

I’ll never forget meeting him and when hearing him talk about the vision he had for himself and his career, he talked about how he was going to be one of the biggest artists in the world.

What’s insane is he actually believed it. Without a shadow of a doubt. Yeah he was gaining success but being one of the biggest artists in the world was super far away at that time. He not only believed it but vocalized it out loud to help confirm that identity and manifest that reality.

Sometimes you have to speak things into existence to help reinforce the action required to get there.

Hopefully this was helpful on your journey.

Thanks for reading, until next time.

_{The Vault}

1) The Artist Marketing Playbook - I teamed up with my good friend and fellow music marketing expert Drew De Leon to present The Artist Marketing Playbook. An in-depth look at what an artist can do to set themselves up for success in 2025. More info HERE.