The U.N. leader and festival-season rabble- rouser has an important message for the social media age.

Have you ever woken up one day and the things you used to enjoy simply didn’t really sparkle the way they used to? As if those hobbies you’ve chosen, to get away from the mundane, have lost their charm? But what does it all mean? Are you going crazy? Are you bored or having a quarter/midlife crisis? Or are you just getting older? See, we’re so worried about what other people think of us that we forget to think about what we think of ourselves—whether it’s refreshing, minute by minute, the recent post you made just to see how many Likes it has gotten, or scrolling through social media so you can compare someone else’s life and happiness to your own. Well, that’s our first problem. We need to stop relying on someone else’s approval or rejections to shape our own self-worth; everybody’s different and that’s the beautiful thing about being human.

That’s why the theme and title of my new record is Change of Pace. You’re not alone in this. I go through this all the time too, and probably millions of others do as well. Our society has pitted us against each other. I had to get out of the online bubble for a second and try to wake up from this rat race just to remember that no happiness or Instagram photo can surpass peace of mind. Sometimes we are just scared to be vulnerable with ourselves—afraid to ask those hard questions we ask everybody else on a daily basis, like “How are you feeling?” With this new record, I wanted to do just that by constructing the lyrics and listening inward.

We tend to forget to listen to the needs of our souls. It’s important to listen—they crave just as much of our attention as our social media feeds do. Listening is the only way we can achieve this peace of mind. It’s what’s going to keep us happy, keep us present and, most of all, keep us authentic to ourselves.

See, authenticity to the soul is all your mind really wants. It keeps our anxiety levels down and gets us out of our heads and deeper into the present. Think about it: Whenever we do get to that point of anxiousness, it’s because we were afraid to be honest with ourselves. That’s the consciousness doing its job; a deeper cut on the record, “Let Your Mind Be Free,” digs into that reality. It is going to be quite difficult to become the person you were born to be if you aren’t genuinely in the present. Your mind is weird and manipulative—it can convince you that you’re going to die when it’s scared, confused and walking into the unknown. But, when it comes down to it, your soul knows you better than your mind does, so why listen to the mind more? Stop worrying just to worry—take the things out of your life that make you stressed out, stop biting off more than you can chew and try to give yourself a little peace of mind. That’s why this change of pace theme keeps running through the whole record.

If there’s anything I want this record to do for people, then it’s to have them always remember: Anxiety is not going to kill you. It’s just testing you to see how strong you really are. The real magic happens in between the lines because it’s not the destination; it’s the journey. So let’s start living to live again and not just living to show. If you need to change the pace from the norm you are stuck in, then do it. This is your life, not theirs. Enjoy the moments we get today with the people and things we enjoy, not tomorrow because we never know when it’s our turn to exit the present and enter the history books. What do you want to be remembered for?

Stay strong, stay weird and never stop learning about yourself—you’re not alone in this fight. I’m here for you too. I hope you enjoy my new record.

Andy Frasco & The U.N. released their latest studio album, Change of Pace, this February on Fun Machine. The band’s frontman also hosts Andy Frasco’s World Saving Podcast, where he “travels around the world, interviewing all sorts of folk about their divergent paths.”

This article originally appears in the June 2019 issue of Relix. For more features, interviews, album reviews and more, subscribe here.