Pursuit of Happiness: The Perseverance of Powers Pleasant

As the co-founder of Pro Era, it’s clear Powers has never let a whole lot stop him. He’s a respected producer with an ear for cinematics and the instinct to supercharge the artists he works with. He’s been around for a long time, and he’s shown no signs of slowing up. But that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.

Fresh off dropping his sophomore LP, Powers discusses just how he deals with mental travails and more.

Powers Pleasant: The internet doesn't really affect me. Things in real life are affecting me more than random people saying things behind a mask like online. I just make sure I give myself time to think and recuperate. Having a strong sense of self-worth knowing that I don't need external validation. I feel confident about who I am regardless of what the world is saying.

That didn’t happen overnight. It was therapy and trial and error. It’s hard because I work in a field where we constantly rely on validation from people to help us in our careers. So it's just finding a balance of balancing the exterior validation with your internal validation and not be too relying on the exterior; use it more as a signal of like, well maybe I should change this and maybe I should do this differently. But don’t take it personally.

I've always been a realist. I try to have a realistic view of things happening in life. But I feel like I’ve experienced so much in my life that I'm always focused on the positive that the negative doesn't affect me. There's this photo. There's two people in prison and they both painted a photo. One of them painted a photo of trees and this garden with prison bars in front of it. The other one just painted this beautiful photo of trees and garden with no prison bars in front of it. So it's all about just how you view things. You can view certain things as an obstacle or they can be invisible to you. They don't exist because they're not going to stop you from getting to where you have to go

As an artist, you don't really have time to let your mood affect your work... You have to be able to do this shit when you're happy, when you're sad, when you're mad. You’ve just got to go. So I feel like I just go into autopilot. I just gotta get through it and I know whatever hard times I'm having are not going to last forever. I use negativity and positivity to empower my creativity, to inspire me. I feel like great art comes with passion. Sometimes it's passion from positive, sometimes it's passion from negative. If something is a roadblock, I'll just take a break and I'll come back to it. I think I have good knowledge of self, of — knowing when I'm burned out. At that point, I go outside, go for a walk, go skate, go ride my bike and then come back so I can attack this with efficiency.

I feel great right now. I definitely came out of a low and I feel like I've just experienced low so much throughout my life that I’m just not going with that stop me. I used to ignore how i was really feeling and immerse myself in work. I just distracted myself. But I learned that you have to just face your shit straight up and deal with it. It might suck at first, but once you get past that, it’s way better for the future. I'm definitely not perfect and I definitely have lows, but I just focus on my goals and my outcome. I know the lows are temporary. It too shall pass.