TEM Coaching Tip: What is tension and why you should seek it out

Anyone who has listened to even a handful of the 250+ episodes of The Entrepreneurial Musician knows that I am a huge fan of Seth Godin. Every once in a while he hits on something that has a profound impact on my life and career, like his thoughts on tension.

Seth defines tension as any act where you don’t know whether it will ultimately succeed or not. And because all growth comes from tension it must be actively sought out at all costs.

I know a number of people in the music business who, in spite of making a living, are quite unhappy and they all have one thing in common: They don’t regularly encounter tension.

I will never forget my first gig with The Dixie Devils, a dixieland band composed of students at Arizona State University. I was so incredibly nervous!

I had been fearless as a tuba player since I was nine years old. Put something on a stand in front of me and I would dive in head first with no hesitation. But suddenly, at age 22, I was looking at changes instead of notes and there were four different ways to end each song and the ending would sometimes not get decided until the song was almost over! I was completely out of my comfort zone.

For that first gig there were probably 10 people in the entire bar including the people who worked there. And half of them were friends who were there to see and support us! In retrospect, I’ve rarely played a less pressurized gig in my entire 20+ years as a professional musician.

But that night wreaked of tension for me. Would I miss the bridge and get lost in Bourbon Street Parade? Would I be the only one who missed the firehouse ending on Sunny Side of the Street? How the hell was this going to go?

I could use 10 pages to try to describe how much I grew that night and still wouldn’t come close to putting it into words. It was an important night in my career.

The problem is that for most of us, tension does a better job of finding us on its own when we are younger. There are so many things we have yet to encounter early in our careers. But as we get older the list of situations we’ve never encountered before gets smaller. This is why we have to intentionally create tension in our careers to grow and to stay happy and engaged.

I was filled with tension when I launched my first episode of The Entrepreneurial Musician. I had lots of tension when I announced my Kickstarter campaign for the Brass Recording Project. I will have lots of tension when I ship this book and announce to the world that it’s a thing that’s out there just waiting for opinions.

I could have chosen not to share any of those things with the world and simply avoided the tension. But without that tension there would not have been any growth and I know for a fact that I would be much less happy with my path through the music business today.

I am forever indebted to teachers who always encouraged me to get out of my comfort zone early in my life and for people like Seth Godin who inspire me to continue that practice to this day.