Avoid Artist Burnout: Self Care Tips For Your Road To Success

As you consider all the things you need to grow you career as a musician, it can be extremely overwhelming.. not only are you playing and developing the music you love, but you’re writing, re-writing and writing some more music, organising recording, photography, cover art, social media, marketing, distribution.. just to name a few!

In this article, we will explore how you can keep your sanity in this crazy, busy world of music and how you can work to avoid burnout.. take care of yourself and live the dream that you’re striving for. We have spoken to a couple of experts within the wellness industry to gain some valuable advice to truly look after yourself and move forward with your career, remaining healthy and clear.

If you would like to read a personal account of overcoming stress within the music industry, have a read of our interview with Kahlia and Lawson from SUNFLOWER.

The Stats

Of course.. the risk of burnout and high level stress is absolutely not limited to the music world.. there are so many professions and lifestyles that lead a high stress life and career.

If, however, you have a look at the stats, relating to the music industry.. there is a significant representation of musicians and music industry workers, living within the red zone.

Billboard published in July 2019, that a study had found that 73% of independent musicians suffer from symptoms of mental illness.. A Help Musicians UK report based on a commissioned University of Westminster study, titled ‘Can Music Make You Sick?’ broke this down further. The results, based on 2,211 volunteer UK music industry respondents, showed that those working within the music industry ‘may be up to three times more likely to experience depression, compared with the general public.’

Some of the findings from this UK report are listed below:

• 71.1% of all the respondents believed that they had experienced panic attacks and/or high levels of anxiety.
• 68.5% reported they were experiencing or previously had experienced depression
• 55% believed that there were gaps in the provision of services for musicians

Now, it’s easy to look at these reports and note that these reports are generated out of the United Kingdom or the United States of America.. Many of our readers are based in Australia.. These reports, however are consistent in Australia.. Support Act Australia, the Australian music industry support helpline, wrote an article in August 2019 that says “it has been well documented that people in the music and creative industries experience symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety and depression at rates that can be 5-10 times higher than the general population.”

Support Act also provided a breakdown, per their received calls, of the division of affected individuals, with 74% being artists. They also provided a breakdown of the leading reasons for the calls. Both have been provided below:

• 

• 

The effect of Covid-19

It’s important to note that all the above research was completed prior to the outbreak of Covid-19. This pandemic will significantly increase the numbers.

Jen Cloher, Melbourne Musician and co-owner of Milk Records told triple J in 2018 that “the most important thing about being a musician is working with other musicians and having community and not being in isolation,”… “If you are going through a rough time, like an album tanks or a tour doesn’t come off or you go into debt… you can turn to another musician, you can call someone up, you can call a friend and talk about it. I think if you don’t create that community around you it’s a much harder journey.”

During this time, many of us are physically in isolation, however, we can make the decision to make the effort to continue to reach out to other musicians, members of our community, via phone calls, virtually via video chats or electronically.. It is so important to keep this communication up.

If you are currently struggling and you are in Australia, you can call Support Act on 1800 959 500.

What can you do?

There are so many varying reasons that musicians struggle but according to research performed by the American Institute of Stress, the largest contributor at 46% of all causes is workload. As musicians we are not only trying to achieve the things that we went into music for.. the passion for playing and writing music.. we are marketing.. we are managing social media.. we are trying to get live gigs.. we are trying to release music.. we ultimately are trying to do it all.

If you currently feel like you are in crisis, please do seek some help via Support Act, Lifeline or Beyond Blue.

If however, you are not currently in crisis, but you are looking to improve your wellbeing, below are some things to consider.

We spoke to a couple of experts within the wellness space.. they are experts who have busy schedules of running their own high achieving businesses and the stresses that go with that, but being in the wellness space, they have committed to lives of self care.. there is so much that we can learn from these inspiring people.

The MerryMaker Sisters

• 

Emma and Carla are The MerryMaker Sisters.. they quit their fulltime jobs in 2014, with the endeavour of building a sisterly wellness brand that has taken the world by storm. The sisters have 67.7K instagram followers and share the love of health and wellness of yoga, pilates, mediation and healthy recipes via programs, their podcast and their blog.

The sisters have kindly offered some valuable advice to us, in taking care of yourself, while you have a busy schedule.

They say “So you have a busy business schedule? Within that schedule, there NEEDS to be rest. Not because you deserve it for achieving something but because you need it to function at your best. Sometimes we can feel guilty for resting but really, the body and brain need this time to recover and reignite our energy! We have no doubt you’ll have your best ideas within this ‘rest’ anyway!”

“Your rest should be something that fills you up. And this will be different for everyone…for us, it’s a walk on the beach, sitting on the couch with a cup of tea and cookie… or a Yin Yoga class!”

Sheree Inglis, Grampians Wellbeing

• 

Another incredible expert in the wellness space, is Sheree Inglis, creator of Grampians Wellbeing. Like The MerryMaker Sisters, Sheree also changed her career from an extremely high pressure corporate job, to start a life of wellness. She started a business as a yoga teacher in the hills of Victoria.. but it hasn’t come without challenges.. Starting a business is not easy and she has had to navigate and adapt to the pressures of Covid-19 lockdown.. she understands struggles of trying to do it all. As such, she has shared her advice below.

“It’s very easy to burnout when your hobby becomes your business/the way that you earn income as you can easily become consumed with all things business related. It’s really important to remember your passion and to carve out time to just simply enjoy your craft – if for no other reason than to make your heart happy.“

“Connecting back to your heart, and your purpose, helps everything else to flow.  Creativity, feelings of fulfilment, happiness, contentment and helps you keep that passion alive to do what it is that you love most.”

“Don’t forget your breath either!  We breath in and out all day long perhaps without taking much notice of our breath but we can use our breath at any time to help calm us.  Whenever you are feeling overwhelmed, busy, stressed, take a couple of minutes to close down your eyes and take some deep breaths.  Long, slow, full breaths in and out.  This helps you slow down and reset so you can get on with all the things you need to do with a clearer, more focused mind.”

Take a moment, when you’re stressed to check your breathing.. there is a good chance that you are holding your breath or breathing shallow and fast.. This in turn reduces the oxygen moving around your body and affects your focus and mood.

Key Takeaways

In summary, below are some things you can do to really take care of yourself.

• Take time out to rest – schedule it in and treat it as a priority
• Think about what it is that energises you and relaxes you and spend time doing that each day
• Remember why you started music in the first place.. that passion that made you decide to create music.. take time just to really enjoy music for music’s sake
• Connect to your heart and purpose.. what you love.. allow your creativity to flow from there.. It will also help you determine which tasks are important in moving forward in the direction you want to go (and which ones are simply fluff or fillers!)
• Remember to breathe

Contributors

A huge thank you to our amazing contributors: