Proving it to yourself is the first step to becoming great. Second, applying your knowledge to your work.

In this segment Paul talks through how he he's proven his skills to himself, and how that's propelled him in the music business.

You know I think you spent a lot of time, at least for me, when I like, let's say, when I found the guitar, it's like well, can I play the solo to ‘comfortably numb,' and then you work at it until you can. And then it's like well, if I played this in front of other people, do they believe that I can do this? And then you do that, and then it gets to a certain point where you don't have to prove anything to anybody, just doing it. 

Like with record making, it’s like, well, can I see a project from beginning to end... can I engineer this record, can I produce this record or whatever.  It takes a long time to convince yourself, or at least for me, that like okay I'm I feel like I'm good at this, you know. Now I want other people to think that I'm good at this and pay me to do it. 

And then you get to that point, and that's a really exciting point to hit because it opens up the door of like, okay, now there's nothing to prove. It's about how can I push this thing further and make great art. You know, and it's probably close to that 10,000 hour rule where you cross the line. I just woke up one day and was like man I'm doing this I'm doing stuff that I love and I'm starting to work on things that I'm really passionate about and I feel like that's the place where I think, for me, that thing about never stop learning and and not being complacent and set in your ways or attached to any certain genre or any of that keeps me pushing forward. 

But I don't know that there's ever been a time where it was, like, I thought that I was great. It goes back to that self-doubt thing. You know, every morning, like “oh God, today is gonna be the day that they figure out I have no idea.”