Meet Elsten Torres

 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elsten Torres a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elsten, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

Being a life long artist I learned early on how to develop that often mentioned “thick skin”. When I started out, as most artists, I was very optimistic, energetic and a bit naive. That attitude worked in my favor in the beginning stages of my career in the arts. Having that attitude propelled me to keep going. But it’s just like Mike Tyson once said and I quote “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face” that reality woke me up. I had to get knocked down a few times to realize how resilient I really was. So once I started seeing my life as a musician in the real world, I adapted a new way of looking at things within what I wanted to accomplish. I realized that if I wanted to live off of my music, I would have to develop other skills besides my musical ones. Resilience comes from being confident that you can sustain yourself and forge ahead even when things look like they are against you. I learned the skills that would help get me through tough emotional, financial and artistic moments. So I believe that my resilience was born from my inner calling of wanting to be a professional musician more than anything else in the world and I was never going to let anything or anyone stop me from achieving my goals.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am a singer-songwriter/musician/producer/performer. I was born in Havana, Cuba, raised in New York City and live in Miami, Florida. I am very proud and humbled to say that I have accomplished many lovely moments in my career as an artist. Including being a 2x GRAMMY nominated and BMI award winning artist and having reached Billboard’s top ten charts over six times including a #1 hit for 5 weeks. I have had the good fortune to perform on many stages all over the country and all over the world. I also really enjoy sharing my time within the rich South Florida artistic community and helping mentoring up and coming artists who dream of following a similar path in the music industry. I am currently promoting my latest full length album release “Real Artificial”. This project is under the InnerCat music group umbrella which is a music company based out of Miami Florida. Looking ahead to the next months and 2025, I will continue to travel to promote my new album and I have a couple of new musical projects that I am really excited about for the coming year.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

There are many qualities and skills that are ultra important in any career or in life for that matter. For me, I think I always understood that if I wanted to follow the life of being an artist that I would have to be very disciplined. I took everything I did very seriously and I worked my ass off to get to the place I wanted to as an artist. I studied the greats and practiced endlessly. I never thought it was impossible as long as I remained focused. Another quality that I’ve always had in any situation not just music is respect. Respect those that were there before you and learn from them and respect those that are coming up next to you because you never know in life where that person will wind up. Then I believe being willing to change and having flexibility is so vital. The world is in constant motion and every aspect of life is in constant transformation. If you want to survive in any career or relationship you must accept and adapt to those changes, if not you’ll get stuck in a place that you won’t be able to find the way out. You’ll fall victim to blaming others for your situation, not realizing that it was always in your hands to do something about it when the opportunity arose.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

This question hits home for me because I recently lost my mother in 2023. I could speak endlessly about all the sacrifices that she made in order to give my brother and I a better shot at having a better life. My mother Elsa Torres was a very poor farm girl in Cuba. She had only a 4th grade education but she always had the dream of getting to America. When communism took over our island and my father landed in prison for political reasons my mom found a way of getting us out of that grim situation. She was able to leave the island by herself with me in her arms at 18 months old and my brother at 5 years old and made it to arguably the biggest city in the world NYC. There she struggled all her life to raise us by herself, always working to give us the life that she had wanted to give us. She studied cosmetology and eventually owned her own business for a while. She bought her home in Miami and lived a long beautiful and yes sometimes hard life. She was a tough tough little lady but she was also very loving. Her legacy to me and my family is that you never give up. You forge ahead even when it feels like the whole damn world is against you. If anyone taught me about resilience it was that sweet yet strong little lady.

Contact Info:

Image Credits

InnerCat Music

Suggest a Story: BoldJourney is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems,
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
Productivity
What do you do for self-care and what impact has it had on your effectiveness?

We asked some of the most productive entrepreneurs and creatives out there to open up

Resilience
Where do you get your resilience from?

Resilience is often the x-factor that differentiates between mild and wild success. The stories of

Productivity
How do you keep your creativity alive?

Keeping your creativity alive has always been a challenge, but in the era of work