“Please please me, oh yeah, like I please you. Last night………I read this piece by Psychologist Ann Mehl who heard an interview with Paul McCartney where he was asked about his voice, and if, at age 71, he could still sing all those old Beatles songs.
His answer was honest and educational.. “Well,” he said, “I can’t hit all the high notes like I used to, but I’ve probably got better technique now, and you learn ways around that.”
Some of those techniques? Changing the melody ever so slightly, letting his back-up singers hit the high notes for him, or simply calling upon his audience to fill in the blanks.
Paul is adapting to his times, his market and his abilities.
Don’t be a slave to your past successes…….or failures.
That’s what we spoke about last week, move on and keep present.
Ann Mehl also told about an investment banker who made $10 million on his first deal and was miserable thereafter trying to recreate that singular success. It can be very frustrating always measuring yourself against some high mark or someone else’s accomplishments. Few of us compare ourselves with other people lesser accomplishments. Martina Navratilova said “The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.”
Be open to all possibilities and attached to none. Don’t yearn for the days you were 20 pounds thinner or had a full head of hair. Carpe Diem, seize the day and embrace yourself as things are, not as how you wish they would be. Create your own new self-portrait based upon the here and now. And if you feel yourself straining……..ask the other voices to sing along.
So, “Please please me, oh yeah, like I please you”!!!
