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Metal For Life Blog

~ The official blog of Metal Mike. I'm a heavy metal musician most commonly known as a long standing guitarist to Judas Priest frontman, Rob Halford. I'm a highly sought after heavy metal guitar and music coach. I am also a solo artist, an entrepreneur, a business owner, an avid car nut and a closet extrovert. I believe Heavy Metal should be lived loud & proud and it has been a highly motivating source in my life. I'm here to share my thoughts, pass on lessons learned and sometimes chew on big subjects. If you enjoy the content of Metal For Life, I only ask you to share my blog with one more person. Thank you & welcome.

Metal For Life Blog

Tag Archives: Mindset

Plant A Stake, First

06 Friday Jan 2023

Posted by Metal Mike in Uncategorized

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Ability, Guitar Tips, Inspiration, Mindset, Success

When I have to prepare a new lesson for one of my numerous guitar students, sometimes I sit down at my desk and I am not quiet sure what I want to do. As my mind goes blank, I know it’s not a bid deal as I understand that this is just a step in a process.

What I do then is write the student’s name and the date at top of the page and go do something else. I do this for 2 reasons. First – writing the name and date allows me to actually start the process, even if it is with a very simple task. Second – it signals my brain that it needs to come up with an answer as to what to do next. This is why I do something else in the meantime. I let my brain spin the wheels and see what it comes up with; sometimes it’s just a clue and sometimes it’s a complete lesson. I always find a solution for what I want the lesson to be about using this process.

Sometimes planting a stake in any of your projects is indeed the first simple, but necessary step to making it a reality.

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Right Tools For The Job

06 Friday Jan 2023

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Inspiration, Mindset, Success

I believe many of us procrastinate on doing something because we know that doing a task at hand will not be a pleasurable experience. There are many layers to this, but sometime it comes down to not having the correct tool for the job.

If you need to shovel snow and your shovel is holding onto its dear life with one screw holding the handle in place, you know that you’ll have a terrible time coming up soon. When you are charging your phone with a cable that has a short in it, you live with constant annoyance … well, it’s not fun. There are many small things that you can improve that can make your day go smoother and, you guessed it, more fun. We still have (and, should) do things that are hard, but having the right tools allow you to conquer the task versus being sidetracked by annoyance.

Now, many people out there are accessorizers. That’s my own term. By that I mean that they can’t seem to do anything unless they have the best and every gadget for everything. They can’t practice guitar unless they have the best pedals, or they can’t throw a basketball around unless they have the right shoes and a new ball. Don’t do that. You just need things that work properly and that make your life more enjoyable. If your days are more fun, then your weeks are better and before you know it, you had a great month. Eventually, you will catch yourself having a better time at life.

You Won’t Know How Anything Will Be Until You Try It

21 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by Metal Mike in Uncategorized

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Inspiration, Mindset

Well, that is it in a nutshell. We just do not know how anything will go, or be, unless we try it, first. You see, our mind has a wonderful and very colorful mechanism of protecting us from new experiences because it wants us to stay safe and survive. Anything new is often filed under a big no. This is why we talk ourselves out of trying things that happen to be new experiences.

One amazing thing I have learned is that we have no idea whatsoever how the new experience will really make us feel. Sometimes you think hiking for an hour will suck, but you end up loving it. Sometimes going out to jam with new musicians feels very akward when you are home thinking about it, yet it proves to be one of your favorite experiences, ever.

This also goes towards people. Some of the people I did not really like from afar turned out to very cool people after all. And, the opposite proved true many times as well.

In the end, I just want you to consider that experiencing something is so much different than listening to your own voice of how things will be.

When You Start Something, Early Motivation Is Easy

30 Monday Aug 2021

Posted by Metal Mike in Uncategorized

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Inspiration, Mindset, motivation, Success

When you pick up a new hobby, start an exercise program or begin anything that is new, the early stage of motivation is built in. After all, there was “something” that made you want to start something new. It’s the honeymoon and you are excited. This period works for a few days, a week, couple of weeks, perhaps even longer and then it cools off. And, then it gets harder to progress.

This is where most people quit.

This is where most people start another project, another idea, or buy another guitar instructional program.

You have to realize that where most fail is the exact moment that you have to continue the daily progress to get better.

So what is the right thing to do when you start to lose interest in whatever you started to do? Foremost, you have to understand that unless you find a way to continue chieseling away day after day consistenly, you will never achieve great results in anything. Secondly, go back to why you wanted to start the new project in the first place. There had to be a reason for it. Did you buy a new guitar book because you wanted to be better, polish up your technique and be happier? As a side note, most of the things we do in life is beacuse at the end of it all we want happiness. And if that was your starting reason, don’t you still want that today? If so, then you simply have to tell the quitting voice to sit down. You continue to work. By doing this, you will see that your confidence in yourself will rise and it becomes easier and easier to stay on task in whatever you are doing.

It Took Me 11 Years To Edge Lawn Perfectly

08 Thursday Jul 2021

Posted by Metal Mike in Uncategorized

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Mindset, motivation

I do most of the landscaping on my property myself due a few reasons. One – I enjoy the exercise, two – I get a sense of satisfaction when the lawn, shurbs and plants look great and three, I got tired very fast of fixing someone else’s poor landcaping jobs.

But, one item that gave me a lot of trouble was using a line edger to cut perfectly straight lines in the mulch and flower beds. My work never quiete looked great. It looked amateurish for a long time. Through error and just simply doing it week after week for 11 years, I can edge the lawn in perfect lines. Not a week, a month or a year. 11 years!

You get a sense of flow and know how when you repeat a task for over a decade while trying to improve the task each time. At this time I can out-edge most “pro” landcapers I see driving around.

I decided to share that because it can provide a good lesson to music students. You won’t learn to play the instrument or learn a challenging riff, or a song in a day. To perfect something it took me 11 years of once every two week action. Remember that.

What Has Always Been – Does Not Always Have To Be

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by Metal Mike in Inspiration & Motivation

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Mindset, Success

Very recently I was detailing my car. Detailing cars in a hobby of mine and it aligns nicely with the fact that I dislike dirty, unkept cars, guitars or anything else for that matter.

When I bought my car, the bumper had a small white smidge on it and I tried to clean it couple times in the last few years with no success. I accepted it as something that just is, was always there and it’s just a part of what my car looks like. I did not like it, but after a while it longer seemed out of place.

Until recently …

During my pre-Winter car detail, I decided to use a different product all together to get rid of the smidge and behold – it worked! My bumper is super clean now making the entire car just that much better.

This made me think of what other things can be eliminated that we believe/have accepted are there to stay because they have “always” been there. This is an interesting lesson in changing things that no longer have to take part of your reality just because they have been in it since the beginning or at least for a very long time.

Remember, you can change many situations by finding the ingredient that was missing in order for you to facilitate the chance.

Horns Up.

Envisioning For Success

07 Tuesday Mar 2017

Posted by Metal Mike in Guitar & Music, Inspiration & Motivation

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Mindset, Success

I was in the storage area and decided to shift some guitars around, take inventory, etc.

I started to dig up cases that were from some of the first guitars that I ever owned. I had a laugh as all the cases already had my name stenciled on them w. spray paint and had numbers from #1 on. If you did not know anything else, you would think I was preparing for a world tour. The truth was however, that by that time, I have maybe played one or two shows ever in my life.

About a year prior to that, while searching through my office, I found lyric sheets from about 1990. On several sheets, I have written my name over and over and over again. I guess I was preparing that one day someone was going to ask me to actually sign something for them.

This became a game.

When I went to concerts, I would close my eyes between songs when people cheered for the band, I imagined myself that I was on that stage, and the loud noise was for me. I took in how metal concerts smelled, how the energy felt, how excited the people were to see the bands.

I would sometimes peek into tour buses and I imagined myself sitting in some of them.

I would make backstage passes for me and my buddies no matter where I played, even if it was a High School cafeteria.

Would my dreams or aspirations come true? It was hard to tell then, but I did not give up. A friend of mine wrote me a check for a million dollars as a joke and later he asked to get it back. Hmm … I took that as a good sign 😉

Now, the honest truth is that this had very little to do with ego, and it really had to do with me visualizing what it would feel if I had a chance to do what I wanted. What I wanted was to play metal guitar for a living, make records and go on tour. I really got into this and while maintaining those mind journeys – I worked hard. Make that very hard. Harder than anyone I knew.

Many people might refer to such visualizing experiments today as the Law Of Attraction. Some popular books and movies such as the “Secret” have shed spotlight to much of this.

Now, while this is all great to think about whatever term you put on it, I must stress that nothing happens without hard work. You can imagine anything you want, but unless the image (let’s call it a dream, or your desire) is put to paper next to a plan of how you are going to achieve it, nothing usually will come of it.

This is where many people get confused as they wait for something great to just appear out of the air just because they really wanted it. While a strong desire or want is essential, the universe, let just call it that, won’t caught it up unless you pay the fee. The fee is planning and diligent work to make it happen.

But, the desires of where you want to be and how it would feel once you get there are great destination markers. They are great beacons of where you could concentrate your energies and efforts to.

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