Imposter Syndrome and Feelings of Inadequacy

What is up gigging pros. It's Jared and today I wanted to chat about imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy. And before we begin, I want to remind you that the Gigging Secrets book is out. It teaches you the ABCs of running your own live music business, and making a living doing what you love, get your copy at GiggingSecrets.com. Alright, so I want to address a topic that I don't think is talked about enough, which is imposter syndrome and feelings of inadequacy, specifically about music and performing music. And this is something that if you're anything like me, creeps up into your life, pretty much every day. And anytime you sit down with your instrument, and even after you perform as a musician, I think it's just in our culture, to always be self conscious. And perfectionists. And I say that because in my two years of music school, you take lessons on your instrument. And the whole purpose of a lesson is for somebody who is more accomplished than you to listen to what you're able to do right now, and then critique it. And of course, we know that their job is to critique us and help us get better. But we get a lot of criticism for our art, even from a very young age when you first start out. And I think that that is it's a two edged sword, it's a good thing because it helps us improve and honest feedback, honest and kind feedback is, that's the gold standard, you know, we want to know what we could be doing to be better. But the on the other hand, is, by receiving so much criticism for what we do, it essentially sets the standard or sets the mindset that we are never good enough, we will never achieve perfection, there is always something to improve. And for some people that could lead to further negative thoughts, and you can beat yourself up over things that might have actually been perfectly adequate. This definitely creeps up in my life, you know, after I play a ton of weddings, when I play weddings, oftentimes I will have people come up to me afterwards and compliment the group or compliment me on a song I played. And it's kind of like I thank them, of course. But there's always a thought in the back of my mind, like, Oh, yeah, that was good. But I could have done that high note more in tune, or I could have played that run cleaner. And then it's kind of a destructive thought pattern. So the thing to realize is that what you're doing is good enough, by putting yourself out there, you are already taking a step that is far beyond what most people in their lives have done. And most people don't, they don't have the guts to do what we do as musicians. And you know, a lot of people give up on their dreams before they get started. But by doing it, you are good enough. Even if you flubbed a note or I don't know played with bad tone, something like that. The fact that you played it all you You gave it your effort, that is great. And then another thing to realize, especially for gigging pros, this kind of goes back to the episode that I did last, which was there are two audiences for your music. One is musicians. But the other which is, the bigger audience is non musicians, musicians, we our own harshest critics, we have higher standards, we dissect our music because we know the language of music. And so that, to me, is like a scary audience to play for, although I've gotten better at it. But the majority of the audience's that I play for, and probably that you listening to this play for are non musicians, they don't have the vocabulary of music. They don't know the difference between a $5,000 violin and $100,000 violin. What they do notice is the feelings that you create for them as you're performing. And so, how this affects imposter syndrome is realize that you the standard that you have for yourself is much higher than what most people actually have for you in the first place. And so you are more than good enough for what your audience's listening to. And so I hope that helps just reassure you that things don't need to be technical. Things don't need to be perfect. They just need to be done in the first place. And once you start to approach it that way, that is going to unlock amazing opportunities for you. You're going to feel more confident in playing. You're going to put yourself out there more you know maybe you'll do a Facebook Live of you playing where you haven't done that before because you realize It's not just musicians listening, it's non musicians listening. And they just want entertainment, they want you to create a feeling for them. They don't care if you have a scratchy sound today. Or if your voice is hoarse, they just want to hear something entertaining and to improve their lives. So I just want to reassure you that I believe in you, I believe that your music is good enough. Even if you know that, hey, I'm struggling with this one passage in this Bach partita or something, doesn't matter. The fact that you're playing it is amazing. And I want to encourage you to keep doing that. And keep putting yourself out there because the more you do it, the more comfortable you're going to be putting yourself in uncomfortable situations. And when you're able to do that, and just get over any mental hurdles you have, that's when you're going to start to see a ton of success and traction and demand for what you do, which at the end of the day will translate into money in your bank account. So that's kind of how you make a living doing what you love. put yourself out there you are good enough. And thanks for listening. So if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure to like and subscribe to it. So I want to let you know the Gigging Secrets book is out. It's the step by step process of how to build and run a live music business and make a living doing what you love. Get your copy at GiggingSecrets.com and remember, you're just one gig away.