E8 | Do Sh*t You Don't Like!

Mike Schwartz: I went for a run this morning. so you know, I ever run. Ask anybody that knows ⁓ I much ⁓ to cycle. Yo, if you like this episode, please subscribe or follow us wherever you're watching or listening and leaving a five-star review. Share this episode out with another human that you think would benefit from hearing me yap all about a more sustainable future ⁓ in I'm an artist too, and we're on a mission to make the music industry healthier. And in order to do that, we need reach the artists just like you. Yeah. Running is just not my thing. today I was up ⁓ stupid o'clock the was pretty quiet and my mind racing, so I thought I'd might as well go catch it. Something in me just yeah, let's go. So I went. Who want to live a sustainable creative life, both on stage and off, without compromising their health, relationships, or of course their dignity. If you're an artist who fits that description, consider joining the league over on Skool I'll make sure the link is in the show notes. It's free to join and you'll make the connections that you need to start owning your music career for real. If you're a coach or a wellness practitioner of some sort, I also want to hear from you. Somewhere in the middle of the run, hating every step, I started thinking about a part of your brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex or the AMCC. I heard Goggins talking about it on Huberman a while ago ⁓ I was in the gym and immediately got thinking. this is the whole conversation we need to be having in the music industry right now. We're looking to build three more coaches into the system here and also looking to bring on a community manager for our Skool. So if you'd like to be a part of this movement and enjoy breaking the rules, this might just be a perfect fit for you. Check the show notes and apply today. That's it. That's all. Thanks for listening. Peace. Let me tell you why. Welcome to Radio. I'm Michael Schwartz, Commissioner of the MFL, ⁓ artist coach, and the guy who just ran at 6 AM for the time in a really, really long time. Today, is about resilience, ⁓ specifically it actually is, where it lives in your brain, why most artists are unknowingly destroying it, and how we it ⁓ on your card. This one matters today, folks. Let's get it. The music industry has a burnout problem. we talk about it like it's a fucking mystery. Artists flame out two, ⁓ maybe four years into real momentum. ⁓ everyone acts surprised. Labels lose their investment. Fans lose their favourite artist. Headlines. Somebody else bails on tour because they're sick or burnt out. The The artists themselves lose everything that they built. Here's what's actually happening: burnout has an equation, and it's really not complicated. equals load greater than capacity minus recovery. I'll say that again. Burnout equals load greater than capacity minus recovery. When the demands on your system exceed what your system can handle, there's no recovery built in, the whole thing collapses every single time. The industry is really good at increasing load. Touring schedules, release cycles, content demands, social media, ⁓ rehearsals, travel, ⁓ load, load, load, load, load, load. Right? The industry Is also terrible at building capacity actively hostile to recovery. Rest gets called laziness. Taking time off gets called losing momentum. Saying no gets called being difficult. So artists burn out ⁓ everyone calls it a personality problem instead of a systems problem. Go figure... Well, news for ya. It's not a personality problem. It's a biology problem. And the biology has a name. Deep inside your frontal lobe, tucked in the medial portion of your brain, sits a structure called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex, the AMCC. a neural center for willpower and perseverance. Researchers believe it acts as control center that influences how we respond to discomfort ⁓ and resilience over time. Here's the part that changes everything. When people consistently do things that they don't want to do, the AMCC gets bigger. It physically grows. This one comes straight from Huberman. Read that again. The brain structure responsible for your resilience, your willpower, your ability to get back up after the label passes, after the show bombs, after the collab falls apart. That structure grows when you do hard things that you don't want to do. And here is the flip side. Tackling difficult tasks, especially when you least feel like it, strengthens the AMCC. of it as a workout for your willpower. So earlier today, when I went for that run, hating every step, negotiating with myself to stop, I was actually training my AMCC. I was building the biological foundation of resilience. Not metaphorically, literally. physical exercise can increase the AMCC volume as well as improve memory ⁓ other cognitive abilities. You can physically train up your resilience score in your brain through movement. This is why the Artist Athlete Framework isn't a wellness trend. It's not about looking good or being fit. It's about building neurological infrastructure that keeps your career alive when everything else is trying to end it. So, why does this matter for artists specifically? Artists face a specific kind of load that most people don't talk about. It's not just physical, it's the hand of stress. simultaneous stressors hitting the system all at once: physical, emotional, nutritional, chemical, electromagnetic, and thermal. ⁓ nights, poor on the road. Alcohol and other substances as coping tools, usually. Constant screen exposure, emotional volatility of the creative process. You know, sitting in a van with a bunch of other people, after a few weeks, can add up. Irregular no structure, no recovery. Every single one of those. Degrades your AMCC function. Every single one chips away at the biological foundation of your resilience. ⁓ then when hard comes, ⁓ the rejection, the the betrayal, the creative drought, ⁓ there's nothing left the tank. The system that was supposed to help you get back up has been running on empty for years. burnout equation catches up. Load exceeded capacity. Recovery was ⁓ The whole thing just falls apart, collapses. This is not a character flaw. This is predictable biology. And good news. Predictable problems have predictable solutions. Now, how does this all tie in to the MFL and your player card? Well, on your MFL player card, resilience is one of the six character marks. It's the first one listed. That's not an accident. We rate it one to ten. But here's what we're actually measuring: not how tough you think you are, not how many hard things you've been through. We're measuring the evidence. Do you have a physical practice? Do you show up for it when you don't want to? you recover with intention? Do you do the uncomfortable thing ⁓ every excuse is available? Because the AMCC grows in response to exercising self-control, resisting temptation, and pursuing long-term goals despite immediate opposition. Your resilience score on the player card is the closest thing we have to a biological readout of how long your career is going to last. An artist with a 97 resilience score a 70 chops score will outlast an artist with a chops score and a 40 resilience score. Every single time. History proves it. The artists who last are the ones who built the infrastructure. Jimi Hendrix didn't just have chops. John Bonham didn't just have power. The ones who became legends built systems, consciously or not. That's what kept them in the game long enough to become who they became and who we know them as. You can build that system intentionally. That's the whole point of the MFL. So I finished the run this morning. Still hated it. Got back, had a coffee. Now I'm making breakfast number two because I'm a little hobbit. And all in the middle of that, I sat with the quiet for a minute. And I thought, every artist who's watching their momentum stall, And every artist who's struggling right now, ⁓ every label watching their roster burn out years in, the answer is less about making a better strategy. It's not even about a better booking agent, and it's not even better music. It's the AMCC, it's the infrastructure. It's building the human before the hype. And Happy to announce that's what we do in the MFL. That's what the MFL player card And what the Artist Athlete Framework ⁓ builds. want know your resilience score, get your player card. We'll have the link down in the show notes. And if you hate running, Go anyway. I'm Michael Schwartz, and this is MusicFit Radio. Until next time, you stay sweet. Peace.