Neil Peart: Lessons Learned About How to Live Life On Your Terms

Neil Peart: Lessons Learned About How to Live Life On Your Terms

Below is a transcription of this audio:

As a coach, I work with people to help them create the business or relationships or life they truly want. This means that we spend a lot of time dealing with obstacles.

So what does hold us back?

Most think it’s a lack of time or money or energy. Many of us blame a lack of skill or resources or opportunities. And while those things certainly make a difference, they’re not the main thing that keeps us playing small.

That’s because when we dig down deep, we most often find that the big, bad obstacle is our own self-image. It’s the fear that we’ll do something that will get us criticized or make us look stupid. It’s the irrational fear that we’ll end up a loser or an outcast.

In other words, we’re afraid to challenge our self-image — the story we tell ourselves about ourselves — because a threat to our precious self-image can feel like death.

It’s our self-image that will tell us to give up on our dreams because we might fail. It’s our self-image that has us silence our voice because it’s not perfect. And it’s our self-image that convinces us to play it safe because it believes so much is at stake. No matter how much it seems like the world is working against us, most often it’s this primitive, internal desire to fit in, look good, and avoid criticism that has us betray ourselves.

Which is why I believe we need people in our lives that challenge this bullshit. We need those misfits and “uncool” outcasts who do things on their own terms. And I want to be very careful here because going against the grain just for the sake of being a rebel is missing the point. Flipping the bird at convention doesn’t take a lot of balls.

But forging and walking your own unique path does.

Neil Peart was one of these influences for me. He was best known as the drummer for the band Rush. I didn’t know him personally, but nonetheless his way of living spoke much louder to me than his pounding drums.

Neil passed away last week, and while many are recognizing him as a superhuman drummer and introspective lyricist, he was far more than that to me. He wasn’t my favorite drummer or lyricist, but he was one of those rare, few individuals who forged and walked his own path regardless of what others had to say.

Let’s go through some of the ways Neil Peart chose to deviate from the norm in service of simply being Neil.

First off — He was a drummer who wrote lyrics. The stereotype is that drummers can’t even write down a pizza order correctly, but Neil broke from convention. Instead of writing about sex and drugs and partying, he wrote lyrics about everything from black holes to snow dogs to honeydew to priests in the solar federation to classical mythology to his own personal struggles. His lyrics have been vilified and laughed at by both critics and my ex-girlfriends alike. But that never stopped him from writing about what interested him.

Second — He was his own unique drummer. When he showed up on the scene, nobody played like him. Critics said he overplayed and trampled on the songs, but it’s difficult to imagine any Rush song without his fills and patterns. The songs just don’t work without his style. He obviously knew that he sounded different. He obviously heard the critics, but he continued to play the way he wanted to play. And as a result, millions of air drummers flail their arms along to his fills today.

Third — He didn’t sell out. Early in their career, Rush was in a do-or-die situation. After their third album tanked, the label pressured them to release a hit single or else they were going to find themselves working day jobs.

Neil and his bandmates decided that, if they were going to fail,