The Inner Game of An Artist
5 reminders I keep coming back to when "the path" feels unclear.
There’s never been a better time to make a living from your music.
I know the overwhelm is real. Aside from making music, you're handling socials, running release campaigns, managing your digital presence, booking shows, distributing your music, and managing your royalties. The list goes on.
But we also live in an age of endless tools. Now with AI, there isn't much we can't do. Still, tools alone won’t sustain a career.
The hardest part of being an artist isn’t the logistics.
It’s the inner game.
Not losing your artistic identity in the endless hustle of running your own career. Staying committed when the numbers are quiet. Releasing the song when it doesn’t feel perfect. Being your own hype person while keeping your head clear when everyone around you seems to be moving faster.
I’ve spent my whole life as a musician, years as a recording engineer, and now I run my own creative studio, Sono Hikari, where I work with artists, bridging everything from recording and creative direction to release planning and go-to-market strategy.
I’ve seen the artist’s journey from every seat in the room, both major and indie.
I also grew up in a family of artists. My grandfather was a theater director, my grandmother a ballet dancer, and my father a musician.
The artist’s life is in my DNA.
Watching the extreme ups and downs was my norm. Now, that’s not to say I navigate the uncertainty with grace (I wish!). When my path feels unclear, I spiral into a full existential identity crisis. I've realized that starting my own business is a lot like being my own artist that requires constant retuning.
Because after all, what is the life of an artist?
For me, it’s choosing growth over comfort. It’s moving through life with curiosity, creating with purpose, doubling down on your passion, mapping out a destination that’s never been traveled before, and paving your own path toward a life you’re proud of. It’s channeling the deeper parts of yourself and the world around you, and creating something that could only come from you.
So I wanted to share some of the reminders I keep coming back to for staying grounded through the ebbs and flows of this unpredictable life. I’ve put them into perspective for independent artists, but really, they apply to anyone who is building and creating something of their own.
1. Committing to Yourself
Showing up for yourself every day is the best thing any of us can do.
If you chose to be an artist, you chose it because every time you try to pivot, you keep coming back to the need to create and express yourself. You’re not an artist for the money or fame.
You are an artist because something in you won’t let you be anything else.
The artist path requires a hell of a lot of resilience and consistency, and on top of that, it can be one of the loneliest feelings when you feel lost.
One of the best ways to re-commit to yourself is by coming back to why you became an artist in the first place.
What part of being an artist gives you the most spark?
It’s also important to have healthy expectations and some self-compassion to be ok with the fact that not everything you create will get the reception you hope for. If it doesn’t reach a certain metric you were hoping for, you simply carry on.
Why?
Because the universe gives us access to infinite ideas, we just have to be open enough to receive them and turn them into something.
Not every song will be someone’s favorite, and that’s actually the point. A catalog gives your audience room to discover what resonates with them. Many of the greats talk about how some of their best work is the work that gets overlooked. And overlooked doesn’t mean zero people connected with it. To those people, your song means something.
So if a release doesn’t land the way you hoped, just ask yourself:
“Am I proud of this song?”
Because that’s all that matters. It’s not a sign to stop. It’s one more song in a body of work that’s still growing.
You are committed to yourself because you are in it for the long game.
2. Letting Go of Perfectionism
Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way shuts down perfectionism in a way that wakes me up every time I read it.
“Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move ahead. It is a loop, an obsessive, debilitating, closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.”
It took a long time for me to realize that:
Perfectionism ≠ High Standards.
High standards are rooted in growth. You care about the quality of the work, you care about the process, and you allow yourself to make mistakes because that’s how you learn.
Perfectionism is rooted in fear and the need to avoid mistakes. Fear of criticism, fear of shame, fear of putting something out that someone might judge negatively. It makes you procrastinate, second-guess, and wait for a version of “ready” that never arrives.
High standards create momentum. Perfectionism creates paralysis.
And the hardest part is that from the inside, they can feel exactly the same!
So next time you're feeling stuck, ask yourself:
“Am I still making this better, or am I just afraid to let it go?
3. Self-Doubt Is A Companion
Artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.
Self-doubt is a companion on this path, and the goal was never to eliminate it. The goal is to keep moving through it.
The job of an artist is to do the work. To create.
The judging part is for the listener, and at that point, it’s out of your hands.
You can’t please or win everyone.
There are billions of people in the world, billions of users on platforms like TikTok alone. Not everyone will connect with you or your music. That’s not personal - it’s just math.
When you’re stuck in self-doubt, ask yourself:
“What am I so worried about?”
For me, it’s almost always judgment, insecurity, or failure.
And the answer to combating that always takes me back to #2, the need to let go of perfectionism, *aka* ego.
4. Compare Yourself to Who You Were Yesterday, Not With Who Someone Else Is Today
It’s easy to compare ourselves with the people we see online, simply because we can’t escape it. Social media is dominated by influencers who only highlight the best moments of their lives. “Content creator” is an actual job now. So naturally, if that’s not your full-time job, watching content creators can make you feel like you’re not producing enough.
Going back to my earlier point about staying committed to yourself: do whatever it takes to keep yourself in the healthiest mindset possible. You're in it for the long game, so it has to be sustainable.
If there are accounts you follow that started as aspirational but now give you a toxic or negative feeling about yourself or your trajectory, mute or unfollow them.
As an artist, keeping your creative space sacred and your mind clutter-free is crucial.
It takes discipline, so it’s never a one-and-done task. It takes constant awareness to keep your algorithm from learning your weaknesses.
We live in a noisy world, and every bit of noise cancellation helps these days.
Instead of looking at artists who’ve achieved more visible success, look at yourself and ask,
“What’s one thing I can do today that will make me 1% better than yesterday?”
If you’re overwhelmed or have no idea where to start, grab a blank piece of paper and write down your goals. Then break them down into tasks. The more granular the better, because each task feels doable on its own, and you’re not chasing one giant, fluffy milestone.
Being able to cross off even one task today makes you better than you were yesterday.
5. Enthusiasm Over Discipline
Don’t get me wrong, discipline is necessary. In fact, in my experience, what separates a successful artist from the rest is discipline. Not in some boring, Type A kind of way. Discipline is having specific goals, a relentless drive, and staying committed to them. Knowing that it's not always going to feel good, and doing the work anyway.
But you know those days when you’re just “not in the mood” to create?
Some might call that a lack of discipline, but I think it’s a lack of enthusiasm.
Art is not created on autopilot.
At least not the meaningful kind. No amount of willpower can help you create something great if you don’t really feel it.
Enthusiasm is an ongoing energy supply tapped into the flow of life. It’s grounded in play, not obligation. It’s reconnecting with our inner child, getting back in touch with that spark you experienced as a kid. The first time you ever felt excited by something.
As we grow older, that spark dims under the weight of having real-life responsibilities. On top of that, maybe you’re surrounded by people who don’t bring it out in you, or even suppress it. Whatever the case, you never lose it. You just need to find a way to access it again.
When you catch yourself “not in the mood”, ask yourself,
“What will make me excited to ______ right now?”
The 'I should be doing this, I should be doing that' spiral is just self-punishment. It's unproductive because deep down, you already know what needs to be done, and after all that guilt, you're probably not going to do it anyway.
Another way to reignite enthusiasm is by practicing gratitude.
We naturally feel grateful when an opportunity comes our way. So what if we reframe what feels like an obligation into an opportunity?
The most common struggle I've seen with many artists I've worked with is making TikTok content for their music. It can be genuinely soul-draining. But it's become non-negotiable. I've had artists tell me they face being dropped by their label if they don't post. The anxiety around it is completely legitimate.
The bad news for artists who struggle with content is that you really can’t control the fact that it’s no longer optional.
The good news is, you CAN control your mindset and make it work in your favor.
What if instead of saying,
“I HAVE to post a TikTok video today to promote my new music,”
you say,
“I GET to promote my new music today to a brand new audience.”
Because if you really think about it, before platforms like TikTok, reaching new listeners was way harder. Now you can put your music in front of strangers on a bigger scale for free.
The problem with TikTok, however, is that it desensitizes us to engagement numbers. If we don’t have thousands or millions of views, we think it’s a failed post.
If you've ever played a show where your only audience was the bartender who couldn't give a flying f*** about your set, then you know how significant it feels when you have an actual audience. We lose that perspective online. But the point is, those view counts are not nothing. And you didn't start making music for the numbers in the first place.
Today, our perspective gets messed up so quickly and so often that we have to constantly retune back to ourselves.
Social media has a toxic effect on me. Sometimes I swear I can feel and see dark energy radiating off my phone screen! So when I get consumed by feeling lost or behind, I remind myself that I’m grateful that:
I get to wake up every morning with a fresh start.
It is a privilege to be creating art and pursuing my passion.
I am so lucky to have a partner who supports my dream and wants to see me thrive.
I have family and friends who believe in me.
I have all the tools and support I could ask for.
The unknown is an opportunity for growth.
These reminders never fail to bring me back up from the rut. They remind me that I'm the only one getting in the way of my own path, and that showing up for myself every day is the only way to move forward and find clarity. And if the right path doesn't exist yet, I have to pave my own.
What’s a reminder that resonated with you most? What are some reminders you like to keep going back to? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!