Embodying Our Most Authentic Self | Caroline Marie Brooks

08/22/23 • 35 min

Caroline Marie Brooks is a Juno Award-winning singer-songwriter. Her livelihood depends on her ability to navigate an industry that measures artistic success in hard numbers—album streams, social media likes, concert tickets. Those same external indicators can also become a preoccupation and disable the artist's spirit.

It’s a trap Brooks herself used to fall into, before she began to define her own criteria for success.

“I will no longer open Spotify and say, ‘wow that song got a million streams, that’s a good song.’ I don’t live like that anymore,” she says.

Do you get sucked into the external validation trap? Does your mood change based on how many compliments you receive or how many likes you get after posting on social media?

Brooks reveals key lessons she has learned to keep that desire for external validation in check and focus on more authentic benchmarks for success. She also discusses how motherhood has shaped her vision of ambition, and shares tips for those who struggle with journaling—a practice she swears by.

In this episode, Caroline Marie Brooks shares:

• How she learned to truly be herself and why authenticity is so important in her career

• When discomfort can be a good thing, and how to tell the difference between good gut feelings and bad gut feelings

• Why she needs to spend time away

• The importance of being financially responsible as a creative/entrepreneur

• The key practices that helps her stay centred and connected with herself

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CREDITS
The song in this podcast is called Night Drive, by the amazing Singer-Songwriter Caroline Marie Brooks, part of the beloved Canadian music trio Good Lovelies.
Photo for the podcast cover art by Jennifer Squires.
Editing by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry..

It’s a trap Brooks herself used to fall into, before she began to define her own criteria for success.

“I will no longer open Spotify and say, ‘wow that song got a million streams, that’s a good song.’ I don’t live like that anymore,” she says.

Do you get sucked into the external validation trap? Does your mood change based on how many compliments you receive or how many likes you get after posting on social media?

In this episode, Caroline Marie Brooks shares:

• How she learned to truly be herself and why authenticity is so important in her career

• When discomfort can be a good thing, and how to tell the difference between good gut feelings and bad gut feelings

• Why she needs to spend time away

• The importance of being financially responsible as a creative/entrepreneur

• The key practices that helps her stay centred and connected with herself

Previous Episode

Introduction: Success Beyond the Overachieving

How do we get started at creating a success of our own, beyond the "shoulds" fed to us by our current overachieving culture? Join host Natalie Ruskin as she introduces the central question of this podcast and helps you begin to envision your own sustainable version of success—beyond the mainstream metrics of achievement, like status or a high salary. (Hint: We ask the provocative questions we're afraid of, listen, and wait for the answers to come.)

When we shift from striving to surrendering, we can discover our most honest, joyful, and purposeful self. We will then begin to relax into A Success Of Our Own.

Podcast Theme Music
Podcast Theme Music courtesy of singer songwriter Caroline Marie Brooks. The track is called “Night Drive” from Brooks' solo album: Everything at the Same Time. Brooks is part of the Canadian Juno Award- and CFMA-winning folk-pop harmony trio The Good Lovelies.

Next Episode

Holding Aspirational Goals Lightly | Kunal Gupta

Kunal Gupta is a master of non-attachment in a busy world. The serial entrepreneur who founded and led one of Canada's top digital advertising companies manages to maintain a monk-like detachment from his results.

But he wasn’t always this way.

Like many tech innovators, Gupta pushed hard to reach the career milestones he’d set out to achieve. Eventually, he had the job, the apartment, and the social life he’d always wanted, but something was still missing.

“I didn’t feel that sense of satisfaction, that sense of success that I was expecting to feel,” he says.

That’s when he began to reexamine his inner compass. He changed jobs and left downtown Toronto for Portugal, where he now starts his business meetings with a meditation practice. Though he still works in the tech sphere, Gupta has reframed the experiences he sees as successful.

So, what are the metrics Gupta is using now to evaluate his success?

In this episode, we'll speak about:

• Why Gupta felt lost when he reached his own pinnacle of personal and professional achievement and how he discovered a new version of success

• The metrics Gupta now uses to evaluate his own success (these are good!)

• How personal awareness helps him make the right choices in daily life... and how we can each increase our own awareness

• What quality is most important to Gupta today and how he is accessing it for himself

***Gupta also leads us through a brief meditation at the start of the episode