EP. 154 - Taylor Swift's Masterclass in Resilience and Personal Growth | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast

Speaker 1: 0:00

Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the further your lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle, passions and houses. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you Episode 154 today, and this episode's probably going to surprise you just as much as it surprised me in actually creating this episode. So at the time of me recording this, it's late Feb, so by the time you're receiving this, this actual, this episode, it's a bit further down the line. But over the last couple of weeks, couple of even last two months, taylor Swift has been taking the internet and the world by storm. She's been on her Eres tour and she is just literally making noise in terms of actually making a good dint and attracting people. And really, I guess this is what we would call the swift effect. And for me confession to make like I'm really enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it. I'm really enjoying our music and I went and saw the actual Eres tour at Gold Class with Carla before we went away at the end of last year, in 2023. And it's been really, really encouraging to just see her rise, what she's been able to achieve and how she is dominating her area, and when I've been listening to some of the music. There's been some that have been really appealing for me. They've actually been really good for running as well. But when I look and dive a little deeper, I think there's some really interesting things here that we can take away of how we can further our lifestyle with Taylor Swift, and that's what we're talking about today.

Speaker 1: 1:27

All right, so some of the things that we're going to discuss today is we're going to take a look at some of the I guess, the deep takeaways from some of her songs. This is probably from my own perspective, but also just some of the other things that are being noticing and I'm not going to be getting into the love stuff or whatever anything like that but really, just how can we apply this to furthering your lifestyle? And then I want to put the lens in the focus of her story and how she's risen to where she is today, being a billionaire and just really dominating the music industry. But she's gone through a lot of barriers and obstacles to actually get to that point. It's not like being an overnight success. It's literally been over 10, 15, even longer than that years to actually get to where she is now, and I would say this is not even the end of where she's going. I also want to talk about what can we learn from all this, how can we apply it to ourselves, and what are the lessons that we can apply for life, for business and our own self growth. So it is going to be a pretty full on episode.

Speaker 1: 2:22

If you love Taylor Swift, you'll hopefully enjoy this episode. If you don't, maybe I can convince you to go check out some of her music or go read about her story and how she's actually achieved this stuff, and that's what we're talking about today anyway. But I would encourage you to come here with open ears, open eyes and be willing to listen and open mind more. So I want to delve into some of the music and some of the lyrics that she does, and if you, if you don't know who she is, if you don't know where she's come from, we will touch on a bit of her background story and you know her rise to fame and all that.

Speaker 1: 2:52

Shortly, there's a couple of different songs that I think it's very relevant or resonate with the whole idea of how do we further our lifestyle. And look, she's gone from doing country singing to doing pop music, to everything in between, and she has some really rich narrative lyrics, and a lot of this ties back to her own resilience, her self awareness, but also her own authenticity, which I think. I think that's very relevant for us as well, because, you know, when you are trying to create the lifestyle that you want, we do need to be resilient. When we are trying to Build a better version of ourselves, we need to become very self aware and in doing all this, we need to be authentic, not only to ourselves, but to the people around us, for our branding or messaging or that, what you know, whatever we're trying to create. So there is a couple of different songs that I wanted to touch on, but you know what? Actually, just to make sure that we're all in the same page, let me actually just dive into a bit of a summary of who she is, what she's achieved, to ensure that you do have the context. I mean, I don't want to assume that everyone knows the story of Taylor Swift, so we'll touch on that first and then we'll dive into some of the lyrics.

Speaker 1: 4:00

So she's born 1989. She's about 33 years old at the time of this time of this episode. She's from Pennsylvania and she grew up in Nashville, tennessee. Now I'm just reading this from you know a bunch of notes that I've taken and it was she was as early as 14 that she started pursuing music which I think is pretty crazy and she signed on with this record company called big machine records and that was at 15 and she was actually the youngest to sign in. That labels history, which already changing the normal, breaking the norm at a young age. From there, her first album came out in 2006. It was great success and it was a country music sensation. Then she started to transition into pop, which her first pop album came out in 2014, which was 1989, which is probably a lot of the music that we know today of Taylor Swift. From then, she's and look, I'm very, very much paraphrasing all this she's been able to build a strong engagement with her fans, really blowing the thousand true fans out of the water, meaning that she's got really great personal interaction. She has a fan base that will do everything for her, that will move mountains for her and will rally for her.

Speaker 1: 5:07

Now, in her rise, as she's been growing over this you know career of 20 years or so, she's faced a bunch of challenges and she's had to show resilience, which is what I was talking about before, and she's had some, you know, pretty high profile feuds and, I guess, a lot of media scrutiny over the years and she's had battles over our own music ownership and there's been a lot of public disputes over the rights to her music and she's actually made awareness of the artist rights versus the music industries, power dynamics and what they actually have and can hold over these artists and what they bring you know when they're creating their creative work. She did lose control of her music. I believe the guy's name was scooter brawn and he made the acquisition of the big machine records, which meant that she wasn't actually able to have the licensing rights to her music, which is just blows my mind when you think she's put her blood, sweat and tears into all this and now it's just gone. But she, she did something that's never been done before and she, she made the move to go re-record all her old albums, starting with. I believe it was fearless and she released that in 2021 and this strategy has never been done by anyone and she's gone back and started to re-release all these albums as her own version, giving her the full rights, basically cutting out the middleman and being able to take it all for herself. And it's not about taking it all for herself, but it's more the fact that she owns it and it is hers. So that's been just insane.

Speaker 1: 6:31

When I think about that from a business and entrepreneurial Standpoint, it's, it's blows my mind, and it's very encouraging to see how she rose when there was a lot of doubts or maybe they thought that they could. You know, leverage her will make the most out of her. Well, she's really come back and, you know, giving them a real, I guess, a big surprise. Now she's also done some very I guess how would you call it some creative innovation in terms of how she's changed her styles. You know she's. She's released these different albums called Folklore and evermore. I've been doing a lot of research and all this and they've got like a lot of different vibes in it. There's a lot of indie vibes in there, a lot of folk music vibes, and she's been able to showcase some really interesting stuff but reinvent herself, create creatively as she's gone into these different albums and what's now known as the different eras. Now, from this, she's obviously gone from just a little girl that you know had a guitar and now is one of the most influential artists of today's generation.

Speaker 1: 7:34

And it just goes to show that when we do have perseverance, when we do adapt and that when we are relentless to pursue our goals, we can further our lifestyles. And that's the really the whole point of this. You know, conversation and message today, but also she's also demonstrated that there's this importance that we do need to believe in ourselves, that we do need to embrace change and be willing to embrace that change, but we need to be authentic about it and we need to express it in build when building a successful career. So that's, that's a bit about her. Let's jump back to what I was talking about before. Let's let's dive into some of the music that she's been doing and, as I said, there's a lot of relevancy or parallels around the growth and her resilience and I think there's a lot of insights from these songs that you know come in line with as we pursue our business goals, as we embark on our own, I guess, journey for self-improvement.

Speaker 1: 8:25

And the first one really that has really stuck out to me is a song called Marjorie, actually, and it's actually a song that is in memory of her grandmother, I believe. And look you, I can't obviously play music here and things like that because of it will obviously okay, copyright strike. But for me the song is just. It's very sentimental, very emotional, and there's some lyrics in here that actually stuck out to me, which it's actually the start of the song, which is never be so kind, you forget to be clever. Never be so clever, you forget to be kind. And that in itself just reminds me that it speaks volumes to me, because I like to think I'm a very kind person and I try to be very kind to everyone. I tried to include everyone, but sometimes that has also gotten the better of me, because sometimes it means that I've been taken advantage of. But at the same time, she needs to make sure that you are being kind, but not so much that you don't, you're not being clever anymore, and but you can never go into a room and expect to think that you're the best and forget to be kind to others. And I think it's really just so important that message right there. We need to go through and do life with kindness, but we need to have kind and kinder and we also need to be self aware and understand enough to know when we need to shut up as well.

Speaker 1: 9:43

The whole song itself and look, I'm not going to play them here, you can go dive into them for themselves, but this is the one that spoke to me the most. It really does reflect on a legacy and lessons from loved ones who can. What can we learn from others? Now, in this case it was her grandmother, I believe, and it might mean that maybe it's not your grandmother, maybe it's a mental, maybe it's someone else who can you learn from? How can you incorporate the wisdom that they did, that they've achieved, and bring it into our own lives? And how do we then create something of our own legacy that we can persevere, that we can preserve and then pass on to other people, to inspire them and to encourage them and to motivate them to go out and be the best versions of themselves? So that's really what I've taken from that song, and then there's a few other ones.

Speaker 1: 10:29

There's three other songs that I want to quickly touch on Now. These ones have all been songs that, have you know, resonated to me one way or another. Not necessarily going to get into the lyrics, but I'm just going to quickly go through them and then we'll talk a bit more about her journey. So that one song is Champagne Problems and it's an interesting song, and a lot of these songs do come from, you know love stories or just breakups and things like that, but there's a lot of lessons in them and the narrative in this one is about empathy and understanding the complexities of relationships, but more so it's talking about urging us to develop empathy and practice active listening. I can resonate with this one because back when I was working in consulting, we do. You need to have empathy when you're working with so many dynamic, different people, but you need to be willing to also practice this active listening skill, because if you don't, it's going to be very hard to communicate openly and honestly, which is a really key part of this song as well. How do we communicate openly and honestly but at the same time, we need to do all this with the mindset around. We have to do it supporting our mental health and making sure that we're not stepping outside of our boundaries. Very deep song, very deep song, I mean. Without getting into the detail of it, you might not really think about it, and Champagne Problems sounds are like it must be tough if your problem is drinking champagne, but that's not what it's about, so that was a really encouraging one as well.

Speaker 1: 11:55

The next one is the song called All Too Well. This one talks about the, the, the highlights, or the rollercoaster of pain and loss and the healing process, and how do we show strength and how do we, I guess, rebuild? And I think this is important to all our lives, because the message I try to bring is how do we further our lifestyles, that there is going to be times where we do need to spend the time to heal and we need to acknowledge that things aren't right internally or going well with us personally. So how do we do that? And she talks about in the song, about cherishing memories while focusing on creating you and positive experiences, which is so relevant to when creating the life that you want. But we also need to learn from our past relationships or you know, past situations to guide us as we move forward into the future. Like this stuff. It's like you can't make this up, like this is she's talking through her music, of what she's experienced and how it's now working for her. So you know, when we talk about her story which we'll do, furthermore, shortly you'll you'll start to see how this is all connected, and it actually blows my mind of just she's actually quite smart when it comes to all this.

Speaker 1: 13:03

The next song is You're on your Own Kid, and this one, if you break it down, it really comes down to around self-reliance. You know you're on your own kid, it speaks for itself and how we have our own personal growth journey and it really just goes into talk about how do we cultivate that self-reliance, you know, whether it's learning new skills or making independent decisions and being out on our own, but also being willing and enabling ourselves to embrace our journey and take on the challenges, take on the tribe, triumphs and the things that will be up and down. But at the same time it also talks about we need to seek and offer support and understanding that there is a value of community and having others that we can lean on and others that we can help. And I think it's just so relevant to again, how do we further our lifestyle. So that's that's the main songs I wanted to touch on. There is another song called Out of the Woods, which is really good and that in itself speaks. You know, are we out of the woods? But that's a really good one for running.

Speaker 1: 13:59

Actually, I've actually been quite blown away by her music. I'll be very interested to see what my Spotify results will be for the end of this year. So let's talk a bit more around Taylor Swift in itself and her rise. And look, I'll keep this short and sweet in the sense that I want you to, guys, go, don't just take it from me, you know, go read about her, go watch her stuff, go. Once you dive into that space, you'll realize that it really is a whole world, and I'm just continuously blown away by the fan currency. What I mean by that is how rich it is, how deep it is and what she's been able to create, like an empire of sorts.

Speaker 1: 14:34

So I think you know her whole journey, her whole life's journey at this point in time she's only 33, really underscores the whole significance of self awareness, personal growth and the relentless pursuit of happiness, which is what we all want. We all want to be happy, we all want to grow, we all want to be a better person, but we do lack the self awareness when it comes to this. And I think, when you know, after talking about her story and I'll dive into a bit more of some of the points that we've taken away from it we know that when we embrace self reflection, we can understand the desires and areas of growth. When you do take the time to understand what it is that you want and I did an episode, I think it was episode 150. Why do you do something and who are you doing it for? You can really start to narrow down. Is this what we want? Is it not what we want? And that's really important.

Speaker 1: 15:23

And then, when we've achieved that, we can then start to acknowledge which is what she talks about as well in all her messaging to acknowledge and celebrate your personal evolution and her whole eras. To her, which you know, she's basically done the world tour of her different eras and albums and how she's continued to evolve as an individual, her style of music, who she is and the people around her. We need to do the same. What are your eras? What are you going through? It might be seasons, it might be phases, it might be times, but it's also like the metaphor of like you can't compare yourself to someone who's you know, at their finish line. If you're at the start line, you can't compare right. So where are you in that evolution, the whole messaging from her as well, and what we've seen her rise to and what she's achieving. I mean, she's a billionaire from her music industry. What she's doing is just probably not characterizing it enough the right way.

Speaker 1: 16:13

But again, for me, I don't want me to sell her to you you go to go check it out but she follows her passions right, authentically, and she's living her life aligned to that. And I think that's what we need to do. When you know what your passion is, you follow it authentically and live your life aligned to your true self. When you do that, things will work out. It might take time, but they will work out. When we're not doing that, when we're not aligned to our true self, that's when things won't go smooth.

Speaker 1: 16:42

The other one that I take, the other thing that I've taken away from her story and her music and everything, is setting healthy boundaries and prioritizing your self care and your balance. It's so easier said than done, like it's easier now that I work for myself because I can literally control things but I don't have to, whereas when you work for someone else, you feel like there's a lot more control coming from someone else and it's very hard to say no. But we need to have those boundaries and this. I'm not just talking about work, I'm talking about life, everything, people who we interact with, how we do things, take the pressure off yourself.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And the last one is cultivating meaningful relationships and communicating openly. I think this is super important For me, being obviously someone that has a community around them. You guys, the podcast, the YouTube, everything that I do. There is a following of people and trying to continue to let that flourish, support people, provide the empathy, make sure I'm trying to have full inclusion. It's a lot of work, but we need to do it and we need to do it with meaning and we need to do it openly. If you're going to have a face of you know me, putting myself out on YouTube or putting myself out on Instagram or building a following, but, like anything, as you go through life, whether you have 500 people around you or five people or one person, it doesn't matter you still need to have that meaningful conversation sorry, that meaningful relationship and being able to communicate openly.

Speaker 1: 18:07

So I guess, if I roll it up in some sorts right, her career is it's full of authenticity her rise and fall, or her fall from trying to rise because someone else took advantage of her, but then she's been able to come back and really take back control and you know she talks about a lot of her relationships. She talks about a lot of her love life and things like that, which you know that's not really for me. But at the same time there's a lot of enhancing lessons that we can learn from that for our lifestyles, and I guess really the big learnings that we can take from her, in short, from what I've just been talking about is we also should be willing to share our unique experiences and perspectives to help foster those deeper connections, because that's what she's doing and that's why I think she has that connection with her fan base and she's able to bring other people over and realize, hey, she actually has this figured out. Also, being able to make decisions based on your values and your intuition If you know what you want, if you're true to yourself, if you have belief in yourself, you're able to make decisions a lot more clearer, with clarity. It makes so much sense. And then the other one is building that supportive community and show appreciation to those around you. So there's this thing I've referred to before 1000 True Fans. If you have 1000 True Fans and you don't need anyone else, you've got 1000 people and you sell something and they buy it, you'll be set for life. That's really what we're talking about. She's done that. She's absolutely blown that out of the water.

Speaker 1: 19:29

So if I was to them, summarize her lessons, everything and how do we apply it to life? How do we apply it to business and how do we apply it to self growth? The first one is we can apply her lessons in life. To find joy in the small things. We should embrace emotional resilience and we should grow through change. Change is constant, but if we embrace it, we can grow with it. While you're trying to grow with it, enjoy the small things and embrace the challenges and that emotional rollercoaster and be strong with it. When we apply the lessons in business, we can look at that. She has this. She has an amazing strategic approach of how she manages her brand and she has a level of innovation which serves as a model for how we should probably be managing our modern businesses today.

Speaker 1: 20:21

I remember watching the Eres tour in Gold Class with Carla and yeah, she's doing all this stuff. I was just blown away with the detail, the level of just boom Like when I say boom, like it blows you out of the water of what she's been able to achieve the marketing team, how she's doing this, how she releases things in a timely manner or she holds back information, but just her growth. I feel like she's just gone whoo and she's really just jumped up and slingshot, and that's what we should be doing in business. The next lesson for self growth is perseverance and purposeful living. We should leverage this and be inspired by this from her to help us cultivate our own self belief, to help us embrace our own challenges as opportunities, but also to live with intention. I love that. I've actually been blown away by all this. So I think, look, there's a lot here.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Whether you are a Taylor Swift fan or not, I think, when we integrate the lessons from her life and her career and she's really just getting started, whether it's her personal philosophies or even just her music and her life challenges and all those different things it really does give us a map of how we can navigate life, how we can potentially make changes in business and how we can have self growth and have this level of purpose. And look her narrative in all her music. It's not just about her success, right. It's about the universal themes or what everyone goes through, right, it's just relevant. Or it's just her sharing her experience or her lens on that. But we all go through these crap. We all go through adversity, we all go through embracing change, we all go through wanting to pursue our own goals, and she's really giving us a bit of a roadmap or a bit of a creative way of how we can probably interact in that same way.

Speaker 1: 22:13

So my encouragement to you is take what you can from this. Go listen to some of their music, go watch some documentaries, go listen to some interviews and really understand who she is and what she's doing and who she's doing it for. And I would encourage you see what you can take from this and apply it to your own life on how you can further your lifestyle inspired by Taylor Swift's journey and music. That's really the message here. I'm going to leave it there. If you've got any comments, questions about this one, track it down below. Let me know. Are you a Swiftie or are you totally against her? But I've been actually inspired and encouraged by what she's been able to achieve, her music and how she takes the world by storm. It's incredible. I appreciate you all being here. You have a wonderful day, cheers.