How to Succeed Like Aretha Franklin Enjoying Emotional Pleasure

If you did something that generates deep emotional pleasure for you and others, and made a living from it, you would succeed like Aretha Franklin. That is exactly what she did. She took soul from Gospel music and brought that emotional energy to popular music. As a result, she did more than make a living. She achieved success and became the Queen of Soul. If you want to succeed like Aretha Franklin, find work that is a pleasure to do.

Life provides us with the gift of pleasure and the curse of pain. Naturally we prefer moving away from pain and towards pleasure. There are many pleasures to choose from. We could regard them as a buffet of pleasures. Nobody eats the entire buffet. We each have our individual preferences and tastes. So, between pain and pleasure we choose pleasure. Between the different pleasures we choose the ones we prefer. They become our route to success.

To Succeed Like Aretha Franklin, Avoid Misconceptions

In previous articles, I identified 12 categories of pleasure. They comprise pleasures experienced through the sensory, emotional, mental, social, morals, freedom, justice, progress, wealth, technology, spiritual pleasures of our lives and the pleasures that are to die for. The secret of success is to avoid running after every pleasure with the same zeal. Somewhere within the dozen pleasures, one or two will stand out as home to your passion. That is where your focus should be. You do not even have to choose it. It chooses you.

You do not need to chase every passing pleasure. Reserve your energy for the one that underlies your passion. Let the others come if they must. It is a rare individual who gets to enjoy all of them thoroughly. Most people enjoy only a few of these thoroughly anyway. That is as it should be. Success comes to those who focus on their passions.

Aretha Franklin understood this instinctually. She was passionate about music from a young age and had a natural talent for singing. Today we will get closer to her and walk beside her to see what she picked up from the buffet table of pleasures.

She grew up singing gospel music in her father's church and later transitioned to secular music. Throughout her career, she remained dedicated to her craft and constantly pushed herself to improve and evolve as an artist.

Avoided Work She Had No Passion In

There were other pleasures that appealed to her like acting. She received scripts but could not find one that was appealing to her. She took classes in ballet, with the aim of becoming a ballerina. She also considered nursing, and even a secretarial job. In the end, she said no to all these careers and continued to say yes to singing and stayed faithful to it.

Not Distracted by Other Things She Cared About

Three Pleasures

She enjoyed many pleasures from the buffet table, she favored three, emotional, moral and spiritual pleasure. One stands out and towered above all the rest. That is emotional pleasure.

Sensory Pleasure

Aretha Franklin's talent reached her fans through the senses. Music is shared through the sound waves. Beautiful sounds coming from her trained and gifted vocal cords to the ear drums and into the brains of her fans. her visual stage presense was strong but it played second fidle to her voice.

Emotional Pleasure

Doing One Thing Well

What matters is being sharp and invested in one talent. Music was her passion. It gifted her in a specific way, the sharp edge of excellence, rather than being well rounded and mediocre. Therefore, hers was the emotional pleasure. That is what held the deepest attraction for her from the buffet table of pleasures. Music turned out to be her passion. What is passion but a pleasure that runs deep. A pleasure that sets you up for success.

Writing, singing and playing the piano constituted her first love. She said music was meant for her. If she had to do it again, music was it. She would choose it over again. She was a self-taught musical genius who spent four decades feeding that pleasure and it fed her back. Aretha made a living doing what she loved. It was the pleasure that ran deep in her veins – an emotionally filled pleasure.

Soul Music

Her cries between the sentences leaves no doubt of the emotion behind the words. She carried the listener with her, yet it was never a weak cry, but like that of a mother hen ready to strike back. A bring-it-on kind of cry. It was definitely an emotional battle cry, the kind that touches your soul.

Of course, she enjoyed the other pleasures on the buffet of pleasures. She enjoyed emotional pleasures. The song, “Natural Woman” is about that special love of a man that makes a woman feel so natural. A love that makes nature take its course. This is the core pleasure and we will return to it throughout the article.

Mental Pleasure

She enjoyed mental pleasures. You can hear it in her song, “Think,” and “Respect.” She is not begging but making a statement and arguing her case. She wrote some of her songs, and others she chose because they suited her style and brand. Listening to Aretha singing these songs is like hearing someone arguing a case with confidence. There is a strong emotional appeal.

Moral Pleasure

She enjoyed moral pleasures, that is why she sang gospel music and worked with the civil rights movement and Dr Martin Luther King. She even offered to pay bail for a woman accused of being a communist, for moral reasons so that the woman would receive fair treatment. But she remained at heart a musician and not a civil rights leader. You can hear it in the songs “Change is gonna come” Especially in the song “Think” which was written by Aretha herself. Aretha’s voice questions you, as if to say what do you think you are doing? It is like she is saying, defend your actions. Look me in the eye and tell me you are going to treat me with less respect. In her emotional voice, you can feel what she feels. She dares you to try to be mean. You ask yourself, how anyone can hurt such a beautiful soul. It is the way she makes us feel.

Social Pleasure

There was not enough social pleasure in her life. Her parents divorced and her mother went away. Soon to die of cancer. Aretha was married twice and one of her marriage partners was abusive. She raised her children as a single mother.

At the same time, from her musical career side she was surrounded by leading figures in the music business. People like Marvin Gaye dated her sister, she mingled with Harry Belafonte, and Smokey Robinson. Her music is warm and assertive. She did show movement on the stage but what drew people to her performances was how she made them feel.

Pleasure of Power

She enjoyed the pleasure of being an authority in her space. She was called the queen of soul as early as 1963. She won 20 Grammys, received honorary doctorates, the Presidential Medal of Honor from President George W. Bush. This pleasure draws from her emotional pleasure – her music. She brought a remarkable self-confidence to her performances. But the emotional expression is stronger.

Pleasure of Wealth

Aretha Franklin is reported to have had a net worth of $80 million when she died. Her peculiar quirks cost her dearly and even lost her business. Her insistence on bringing a huge entourage with her raised the costs of shows. She was a tough negotiator on this and did not compromise. To ensure that she does not get taken for a ride she insisted on being paid upfront in cash before each performance.

Pleasure of Technology

Franklin did not find pleasure from technology, and it set her back. For instance, her fear of flying limited the places she could go to perform. That ruled out many venues on the international scene. She also demanded the air-conditioning be turned off in the room where she performed. Singers would understand that air-conditioning affects the signing voice. She also wanted to be paid in cash, she did not trust checks and electronic payments. When singing soul, she was completely trusting, and you feel she gives you all of herself in each song.

Pleasure of Progress

When she started singing soul in secular music, it did not take on for a few years in the early 1960s. She persevered like all pioneers. When it took on, she was in the forefront of popularizing soul music. It waned but endured through the challenge of disco in the 1980s. Crowning her the Queen of Soul was a recognition of what she had done for the genre of music. ???

Pleasure of Freedom

You can spot her development from someone who ended up in relationships that were constricting, to one who in later years learnt how to set boundaries. Her freedom grew in noticeable ways. For instance, in later years she respected herself enough not to answer questions that she was not comfortable with in interviews. Yet by contrast, in her songs she was not guarded or restrained. She was a free-flowing spirit.

Spiritual Pleasure

She did enjoy spiritual pleasure. The roots of her musical career are in Gospel music in the church, where her father was a preacher. He took her with him on his tours. Even after she changed from Gospel to soul, she had always wanted to release Christmas music but her record company at the time brushed that aside. She finally did it when she left the company, expressing the spiritual aspect of her pleasure.

To-die-for Pleasure

Did she have a pleasure that was to-die-for? Yes, and that would probably be her music and her children. Music and the emotional pleasure it brought to her as a songwriter, singer, performer, remained the towering pleasure among the others on the buffet table of pleasure. It set her up for success.

The Emotional Pleasure: Doing One Thing Well

Being sharp and invested in one talent

Music was her passion. It gifted her in a specific way, the sharp edge of excellence, rather than being well rounded and mediocre. Therefore, hers was the emotional pleasure. That is what held the deepest attraction for her from the buffet table of pleasures. Music turned out to be her passion. What is passion but a pleasure that runs deep. A pleasure that sets you up for success.

Writing, singing and playing the piano constituted her first love. She said music was meant for her. If she had to do it again, music was it. She would choose it over again. She was a self-taught musical genius who spent four decades feeding that pleasure and it fed her back. Aretha made a living doing what she loved. It was the pleasure that ran deep in her veins – an emotionally filled pleasure.

Soul Music

Her cries between the sentences leaves no doubt of the emotion behind the words. She carried the listener with her, yet it was never a weak cry, but like that of a mother hen ready to strike back. A bring-it-on kind of cry. It was definitely an emotional battle cry, the kind that touches your soul.

Her achievements are Impressive

• She won twenty-one Grammy awards
• 1st Woman induced into Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame 1987
• Kennedy Center Honor in 1994
• National Medal of Arts in 1999
• Made the cover of Time magazine.
• Named the Queen of Soul.
• Sold more than 40 albums
• Received honorary doctorates
• Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom

Success Despite Challenges

Despite these challenges, she succeeded because she accepted the pleasure that ran deep and honored it.

·????????She succeeded despite the challenges in her life

·????????Her love life, two failed marriages

·????????The death of her mother, brother and father.

·????????Her mother died when Aretha was young

·????????Had a child as teenager

·????????Married to an abusive husband

·????????Divorced and became a single mother

Conclusion

The success and life of Aretha Franklin proves that you do not need to have well rounded skills, and to be problem free to be successful. You just need to focus and invest in your passion. Especially, the pleasure underlying your passion. In her case, the emotional pleasure that constitutes soul as a musical genre. She did that so well, she earned the title, Queen of Soul. Likewise, you and I need to discover the pleasure beneath our passion, that we can do so well as to deserve a title. That is how to succeed like Aretha Franklin.