🥁 The OffBeat #91: Curating Your Internal Soundtrack
The power of personal mantras (and 50 to get you started)
This is The OffBeat, where music meets leadership. I’m Allison Stadd—jazz drummer, marketing leader, and very tired/highly caffeinated mom of two—and each week I deliver a fresh take on work, creativity, and connection, like how to hire like Duke Ellington. It’s like HBR, but with better taste in music.
Every other edition of The OffBeat is a think piece structured like a jam session in jazz (naming the tune—a punchy idea; soloing—exploring different takes on a central theme; outro—a thought-provoking closer).
Opening Note | A track that captures the vibe of this edition of The OffBeat:
It’s got a steady groove and intentional build but there’s a hum of tension underneath, like she’s holding a lot together.
The full OffBeat playlist
I’ve become an elite, high-leverage calendar user.
If there was a family-pack-sized set of skills and capabilities for getting the most out of your calendar to manage a full-time job, two kids, and 700 other things, I would have it.
Don’t get excited, I just use Google Calendar (I do love our Skylight calendar, too).
But I’ve leaned hard into using my calendar for way more than scheduling events. Oh no, events are amateur hour. She’s got recurring seasonal reminders (dry-clean our coats, give our dog Franklin his monthly medications), habit tracking (twice a week LinkedIn posts), and MANTRAS!
Mantras—quotes, sayings, phrases—have evolved into a powerful tool for me as part of my life UX. I use a solid handful of mantras to do everything from ground myself in high-stress parenting and professional moments to help disrupt unhelpful thought spirals.
Mantras are wildly versatile, and most people underestimate them. They’re not just for yoga class or meditation. For people like us—navigating leadership, creativity, parenthood, and burnout—they can become secret weapons.
Mantras also have lovely musical roots.
A mantra is, at its essence, a loop. It’s a repeated phrase, or a grounding rhythm, much like in music.
And like the best music, the words can be meaningful but the power is more so in how it makes you feel.
You can use mantras to do different things, kind of like a series of tracks on your internal soundtrack:
A mantra to hype you up
A mantra to calm you down
A mantra to re-anchor in your values
Etc.
We all walk around with certain phrases stuck in our heads. Sometimes it’s a song lyric that snagged on your mental gears, sometimes it’s something cruel you’re telling yourself, sometimes it’s a borrowed belief that doesn’t quite fit anymore.
It’s your soundtrack, so your call, but I want mine to be empowering, validating, and just the right amount of quirky.
To assemble your mantra “track list,” reflect on 4-5 key emotional or mental challenges you’re facing regularly these days.
What’s irritating you or blocking you or giving you anxiety, consistently?
For example:
Getting motivated on Monday mornings
Staying patient when kid bedtime is dragging on
Fitting all the things in each week without losing your marbles
Experiencing decision fatigue from making countless choices daily
Struggling with imposter syndrome despite years of experience
Feeling guilty about delegating or saying no
Then scroll, either literally (if you keep tabs on quotes and song lyrics and sayings you like) or metaphorically through well-known combos of words in your mind (like idioms, or phrases your dad always said when you were growing up, or a line from Friends) that address each challenge.
🎬 ACTION: If you want to compose your own mantras from scratch, here’s a way to think about it using musical structure:
Keep it short (like, 3-10 words)
Let it have rhythm (use alliteration, or repetition; when you say the words they should feel effortless and balanced)
Make it feel true to your voice (is it something you would actually say or write?)
Below, for paid subscribers, 50 mantras I personally adore a) for grounding in the chaos, b) for a creative spark, c) for leading with soul, and d) for burnout-proofing.
Plus places and spaces to put the mantras you choose (including a piece of jewelry I adore for said purpose).