Looking for approval or blaming others or feeling like a victim. Whenever I feel myself doing that I try to stop and see myself as someone who's a creator in more ways than just what the word typically means.
I believe we've been given free will, and we can take responsibility for our own lives and for creating our own environments - which I think at times can be a little much for people to deal with.
I'm clearly most well known for my music. Eventually, ultimately, I'll be writing books. I'm still writing articles now. I just consider myself a writer.
I was motivated by just thinking that if you had all this external success that everyone would love you and everything would be peaceful and wonderful.
There's a continuity between what I care about in any form: I care about it in my music, in article-writing, in how I dress, in how I live, in my relationships, in how I navigate paparazzi, how I decorate my home. There's such a continuity between everything that I don't really care what form it shows up in.
I've been doing a lot of different cross-training and kickboxing and Capoeira and kite surfing, and I've just really been back to what I consider my original athletic self.
The whole idea of emotions being something we can't escape as humans, but that deep suffering that comes from resisting them, we can move out of that just by not resisting anymore. But it takes a really brave warrior soul to sit there in these emotions that admittedly don't feel good in the body.
It's not just the 'Grammys' that I've pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.
Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.
If I have taken part in anything perceived as the fame machine, it's been my choice. My motivations certainly have been different from some people's that I've worked with. But it's okay to work equally passionately for two different reasons.
If someone hates or loves something, then right on. I can't rob them of that. I'm not going to try and change their mind. Something's been triggered in them to react so emotionally.