Lately, there’s been a meme appearing on Facebook that shows a pie chart illustrating a typical musician’s day. About 20% of the day is spent practicing, and there are tiny slivers of the pie for thinking about practice, fearing child prodigies and sleep, but the rest (about 75%) is spent in “Crippling Doubt”.
This clearly struck a chord (no pun intended) with lots of musicians, including myself, who do know the self doubt that is part and parcel of being a musician. Why is this, I wondered, and what can be done about it?
Learning to play music, as I have said many times, is generally wonderfully rewarding. But progress can be unpredictable and sporadic. You can’t link stages of progress neatly to the effort you’ve made. Also, everybody brings something of themselves into playing music, so it is bewildering to see how others are coming along. Sooner or later, after years of toiling, you’ll encounter someone who is much more adept, after a fraction of the time you’ve put in.
So the doubts creep in. “Have I been just wasting my time?”, you wonder. “Will I ever play or sing as good as this person or that person? Am I making a fool of myself?”
Let’s examine the answers to these burning questions, one by one.
“Have I been just wasting my time?”
This one is easy. The answer is No. Time spent spent creating art is never wasted.
“Will I ever play or sing as good as this person or that person?”
This one’s a little trickier and even asking the question is at the heart of Crippling Doubt. There will always be some people whose musical ability will surpass yours. Despite your hard work, some people will play and/or sing better than you. If you continue to work hard, your playing and singing will continue to improve, though. The mistake here is trying to measure your self-worth against other players.
“Am I making a fool of myself?”
The answer here is, mostly no, but sometimes yes. Whoever you are, and however you play music, you are making a joyous noise unto the world, and it’s making the world a little bit better. Certainly, somebody strolling by might think you’re a knucklehead, but so what.
What really, really hurts is those rare times when some mean-spirited person decides they need to tell you you’re being a fool. How a cruel stranger can acquire the power to crush your spirit, I’ll never know, but it hurts real bad and can take months to get over. Worse, that scoundrel has planted a little seed of self-doubt in your soul, and you never know when it’ll sprout.
The best cure for crippling self doubt is to keep playing. You’ll notice that self-doubt usually crops up during almost any activity except playing music. It rears its ugly head as you think about last night’s jam, and the mistakes you think you made. It emerges as you anticipate an important gig, and you fret that you’ll let your bandmates down.
But once you start playing, and singing, you’re bulletproof. If only there was a way to never stop playing and singing.
