Turning Affirmations into Anthems: Andrew Thoe on Music, Mindset, and AI

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is Andrew Thoe. Andrew is the founder and creator of the Norvik session. And this is a musical project that is designed to help people overcome anxiety, overthinking, self-doubt, relationships, and personal growth. By day, Andrew is a scient technician and he spends long hours traveling on the road between service calls. And he realized how the music, media, and message was affecting his mindset. So he decided to create a project that promoted emotional well-being, hope, and resilience. So we're going to be talking to him about this project and how it's helping people. He uh writes his own music, but but he uses AI for the music production. So we're going to be talking to him about the project and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So, Andrew, welcome to the show. I appreciate you having me on here. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Well, you did a pretty good job there. I am a uh sign technician in Central Texas. Um I'm about 50 years old. In fact, uh this year is my gonna be my 50th birthday here in December. Um, I've been doing this for about 20 years, meaning uh sign work. I do have a little bit of a psychology background. Um back in the day when I went to college. I have a degree in uh criminal psychology actually. Um I spend hours like today, for instance, I drove a total of four and a half hours today. So I spend a lot of hours on the road driving from um work order to work order because I cover a 200-mile radius around Central Texas. Um, I do play guitar, I've been teaching myself guitar for the last couple years. Um, I do love to sing, um not as good at at uh at at either um as AI is. Um, but I do love music and um like you said, I had realized that uh there's a lot of negative, a lot of um a lot of music that seems to be you know written around you know anger or resentment or depression or anxiety or something that just was perpetuating my own problems when I was listening to music. Um I deal with overthinking. Um, and when I have a lot of time with just me and my mind, it tends to catastrophize and create problems where they don't exist and um you know overthink. I don't know if you deal with that yourself, Curtis. Do you deal with overthinking at all? Do you do you understand what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Absolutely, yeah. Sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

So, I mean, you you get where sometimes you're you know sitting around thinking about something, and you might uh think the worst-case scenarios, or maybe even have whole conversations in your head that never even exist. Absolutely, yeah. So that that's the kind of things that I'm talking about, and um, just a lot of negative thinking, and I was sick of the negative thinking, and I was like sick of feeling depressed and anxious, and I was just trying to find a way to help myself or get out of that rut, you know, that daily um feeling sorry for myself kind of rut. And um music would be one way to pass the time and driving around a lot, um, but I just found that certain songs that I listened to would remind me of heartbreak or sad times or um you know loss, whatever. And it would, you know, even sometimes when I was in a good mood, I'd listen to a song and all of a sudden I'd be in a bad mood. Uh because it would remind me of that kind of stuff, and then my brain would go into overdrive about certain things between me and my girlfriend, or whatever. Um, and then I started to listen to podcasts, uh, you know, like uh mindset type of podcasts or mental health type of podcasts, and listening to the gurus that would, you know, talk about personal affirmations and write this down and say this in front of a mirror with uh with emotions and feelings, and and you know, it'll change your life. And I started to try to do that, but I don't know about you. Um it's hard for me to get up in the morning and stand in front of a mirror and repeat a bunch of things that I don't know if I really truly believe anyway, in them in the moment, um, and and make it work. So but what what I do like is I like music. Um, I I can remember songs that I heard 20 years ago. Like what kind of music do you like, Curtis?

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Uh I like all kinds of music. I'm a I'm a uh all-type uh genre.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Okay, well, I'm sure you got some favorite songs out there, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

How often how often have you listened to your favorite songs?

SPEAKER_00 6:46

Uh I listen to them uh pretty often.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Yeah, you say hundreds, thousands of times, you've got to hear the same song. Absolutely, yeah. And you have no problem listening to that because you like it.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

And that's right.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

When the song starts to play, you know, makes you feel a certain way, or you know, you could hear a couple notes, and all of a sudden your brain will start filling in the rest of the melody, and you'll start singing along to the lyrics, and you remember every word and every note. That's right. Because it's it's a natural mnemonic, it's naturally just something that we do as a repetition, and repetition is one of the keys to remembering things. So, and if even if you think about maybe a song you liked when you were a kid, and you hear that song come on, you'll still remember it after 15, 20 years, even if you haven't heard it in years, you'd be like, Oh, I remember that song. And it makes you feel the however it made you feel 20 years ago, you know. Um, so the point, the point with that is that music is a natural way for us to remember things. Um, it's so what I tried to do after a while is I tried to find music that would have personal affirmations in them, you know, because I like listening to music, so why not listen to something that would make me feel positive, that would remind me of to be grateful for the things that I have in my life that would um help me feel like I wanted to be a better person or remind me to be a better person, or you know, whatever it is that the that you need to hear, or I needed to hear at the time, I wanted to hear it in music, and I couldn't find anything. Um, there was some stuff that was like all about gaining monetary wealth or building wealth, you know, becoming a billionaire, and that kind of stuff. There was some of that out there, but it wasn't in any genre that I really liked. I mean, I like a lot of different genres too, but there's certain things I don't. Um it's kind of like ice cream, you know. Some people some of the flavors are good, but some of it's not really all that great, you know. Um, so it was suggested to me that maybe I should develop it myself. So I started to do that.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Well, when did you go ahead? When did you first realize the uh impact that media consumption was having on your mindset and mental health?

SPEAKER_01 10:59

When you know, when I would hear a song and all I could think about for the next, or well that would run through my head, I should say, for the next hours after I listen to that song, you know, like why I'm working or why I'm doing something else, is the the hooks of that song. You know, like think about songs that you just get stuck in your head like an earworm. You know, have you heard that term?

unknown 11:26

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

You get stuck in your head and then you just start repeating, like in your brain, not out loud necessarily, but in that inner monologue, just starts repeating that hook over and over and over again. And like I said, when when I would be in a good mood, or you know, I have say that there was a song that resonated with me when I was going through a breakup. It was a terrible breakup, and this song just resonated with me. Really, oh man, I really felt that. And that that person really knows the way I feel, and they're really singing the song that that that speaks to my emotions at that state, or whatever, you know. And then further along in life, I'm in another relationship, and it's a great relationship, and those songs come on, and I start thinking about that bad relationship. It's it's stuff like that that made me realize how media was really affecting me. And then I I really noticed it when I started to search for actual positive stuff when I was intentionally starting to search for positive stuff and realizing that I couldn't really find it.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

What message do you want people to take away from your music?

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Um, you know, basically whatever they need to hear. I've made uh to date since I started doing this back in May. So May 12th officially is when I started actually writing my own music. And when I say my own music, I mean writing my own lyrics and then using AI to produce the music. Um, I have created and released six full albums onto um all the major streaming platforms, basically, you know, Spotify, YouTube Music, um all the all of them. I can't I don't I don't basically just use Spotify and YouTube Music myself, but I know that I'm out on like Pandora and uh i iTunes and iHeartRadio and all these other ones that I don't really use anyway, but um I use a company that distributes it out to all that's all those platforms. Um but I have accumulated basically messages of anything that you need positive messages, you know, of life of hope, of resilience, of of daily gratitude. Of um, most recently I wrote a song which I haven't released yet, um, called I Was Born for This. And it's basically um I was born for the business that I'm trying to build, or I was born for the education that I'm trying to acquire, you know, or I was born for a life of goodness and and health and opportunity and wealth, and um, and it's just again affirmations just put to a really good you know genre of music. And I've I've also um used all different types of genres from anywhere from like blues gospel type of field to an indie folk rock to a um more alternative harder rock to country to Americana to southern rock to outlaw country, like pretty much again the you know the 31 flavors like Baskin Robbins. I've I'm just putting out music there that could resonate with everybody, and and the long road to answering your question is the the message that I want them to take away is it's basically at the end of the song, I want them to you know feel better. I want them to listen to a song and be like, yeah, I could I I can do that, or oh man, that made me feel better, or um, I really should you know focus on gratitude or whatever messages that they need to hear at the time. And it's it even if you don't need a message at the time, anything positive is good for you. Anything that's repeated that you can listen to that are positive messages that help to because everything that we listen to becomes a part of the way that we think, the way that we make decisions, the way that we talk, the way that we, you know, it's not just music itself, it's you know, social media, it's TV programs, it's movies, it's who we um who we're around, who we become friends with, who we converse with, who we who we uh align our our morals with, you know, that kind of stuff, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Well, you know, some people are skeptical of AI assisted creative music. So what do you say to uh people who are skeptical of the way you're using AI to do your music?

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Um, you know, I I understand people's skepticism of any new technology that comes out. Um if we take a step back and think about what we're using to actually talk to each other right now. Where are you at? Where are you located at physically?

SPEAKER_00 16:58

I'm located in Wichita, Kansas.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, and I'm in Texas, and here we are sitting there talking to each other. I mean, that's a technology that was, you know, obviously there was the phone from Alexander Graham Bell from many, many years ago. But even that, I mean, when when that kind of stuff started, people were skeptical of that. People were skeptical of the automobile when the automobile came out, and they thought, you know, oh, this is gonna you know ruin horse farmers or whatever. Um, or when the internet came out and they thought the you know it was gonna cause all kinds of issues, you know. People basically every generation has a new technology that comes out, and everybody is skeptical of it. But what I would say to them, and what I do say to them, is that AI is a tool. I have a business, another business that I'm starting, and it I use the same name, Norvik, but it's Norvik property services, and I'm a handyman. Um, so when I'm not doing the science technique uh technician full-time career that I've been doing for 20 years, I am on the weekends and evenings, you know, fixing fixing stuff as a handyman. And I use a lot of tools. I use hammers, I use um power tools, I use uh saws and whatever to to do my work. I can't do it without it. And AI in more than just song creation, AI is a tool that is advancing and becoming a daily part of our lives in many ways that we don't even understand, uh, probably right now, and social media and you know, uh business and um presentations and and and all kinds of different AI programs that you know there's chat and there's Claude and there's um Suno and there's Sondo and there's whatever it is that's you know you want to create now. Uh the computer that I'm on right now is a yoga, uh Lenova yoga, and it has an AI program in it that helps me out with doing other tasks on the computer. Um, but again, it's it's just a tool. Uh all the creativity comes from me. I write all the lyrics, and AI is not really as smart as people think it is. I mean, it makes mistakes all the time. Um, most of the time when I'm creating music, to get it to sound good and to something that you'd want to rep, you know, repetitiously listen to and and sound good, you know, and and something that you want to listen to again, I impress that point. But um I have to go through sometimes 12, 15, 20 different revisions to get it right. Um, because I gotta direct it basically. I gotta give it musical direction, and you have to be pretty precise about your words, or you're just gonna come out with a bunch of garbage. It's like uh writing code or program, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

Well, tell us about any other upcoming projects besides your property service that you're working on that listeners need to know about.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

Um, well, there are other things that I'm working on with um uh the music end of it. So along with um positive affirming or what I'm calling modern empowerment music, um I also have been, I have a um a Facebook and Instagram and a TikTok um accounts that are now producing what I call um the mindset minute, which is basically um the same type of philosophies put into the music that are just um quick um mindset uh empowerment messages. Um I'm also developing my own uh podcast, which is not the interview style that you're doing here, but um one that's called your um your drive within, which is more of a quick 10-minute um podcast, again about the same basic old basic philosophical ideals that are put to the music. Um, and that basically would be me talking about the um empowerment messages, going more in depth into them, the affirmations that are um in a specific song for about three to five minutes, and then playing the song itself. Um that's a YouTube channel that I'm I'm developing. Um so it'll have uh three to five minutes of me describing uh the flo again the philosophies or the empowerment messages in the song, um, and then playing the song with uh lyrics, scrolling as the song is playing. Um and then the handyman business is you know what I do from my nine to five basically. Um, and I'm just trying to work for myself, you know, financial independence and work for myself and stop working for other people without like I have been for the last 35 years.

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Absolutely. Well, so listeners can keep up with everything that you're up to, check out your projects, throw out your contact info.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Um, basically, it's Norvik's uh Norvik Sessions, N-O-R-V-I-K sessions. Um, just search under that on any of your streaming music streaming platforms. You know, take a listen and reach out and let me know, hey, this song really helped me out, or um, I really like this song. Uh eventually in the future, I was thinking about maybe doing something that's more like a custom type of anthem, like say, you know, you Curtis wanted your own personal anthem, you know, basically written around uh the personal affirmations that would help you out and your own story, your own struggles, your own um basically your own story. Um, I could write it and develop it with the app, and you could have your own personal ant. It's something I'm looking at in the future. Oh, and uh I am about to open a Shopify store um selling t-shirts that have a quick sentence um again, uh personal information, and then my logo on the back, which is Norvik Mindset.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

All right, ladies and gentlemen. So, yeah, check out the Norvik uh sessions and like Andrew said, drop him a message and let him know how it makes you feel and how it helps you in your personal life, and follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. And also, you know, send me some messages at www.curveball337.com. Let me know some feedback on the show, any guest suggestions or any suggestions that you have and how the show helps you and what uh topics you would like me to cover on the show. And if you haven't done so, sign up for the newsletter and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Andrew, thank you for all that you do through music and creativity, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

I appreciate you having me on, Curse. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.