One little improvement at a time.
That's all you need to get better. Small incremental improvements over time will grow your potential like a snowball.
It's the beauty of having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.
In Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. shows us that the most important thing we need to change in order to become more successful is simply the mental relationship we have with success.
If you think that your potential is fixed and you cannot change your situation, you have a fixed mindset. If that's the case, good luck learning how to mix because you already think you can't. You weren't a child prodigy in the studio and therefore, all your mixes will suck.
Pretty negative way to view the world don't you think?
However, if you have a growth mindset you believe that your abilities have an opportunity to grow. Even if you don't know something today, you believe that you can learn. If your first mixes suck, it's just a part of growing as a mixing engineer. What those early mixes teach you is how you can do better next time. Your mix quality isn't stuck in time.
Take one of my Step By Step Mixing students, Noel. He told me that mixing is his weakness, but he has a growth mindset that allows him to improve.
He picked up Step By Step Mixing because he's hoping to accomplish more. He knows he's not ready to dive into becoming a big-shot engineer. He has to grow into that role, doing "one little thing at a time...just to make my music sound better."
So if you love making music in your studio but feel disappointed when you compare it to other records, don't get dejected. You're just on your own mixing journey. It's not a fixed point on a circle you can't break out of. It's a space laser that goes on forever.
My students all look for the same thing in their mixes: getting rid of mud, making their mixes punchy and achieving total clarity at the right loudness. If any of those things are keeping you from growing your mix quality, then look no further.
If you'd like some guidance to make your journey faster and more effective, get your copy of Step By Step Mixing here below.
www.StepByStepMixing.com