Overcoming Fears, Doubt and Misgivings: Take the Long View - PHH 055

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan, and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. What have you done lately that was courageous? Well, I hope you shouted your answer and said it loud and proud. Okay, now answer this one. What would you have done recently if you hadn't been so fearful?

Not exactly a loud and proud moment, for sure, but we all do it. We let our fears, our doubts, our nerves get the better of us. Talk to any person who is super successful in their field and they'll confess to having their insecurities, their own sleepless nights, worried about the decisions they've made or not made. Most people aren't fearless, but successful people have learned that many times fear is the only barrier between their present and their future. Success comes only when they're able to go through the fear to discover what lies beyond it.

Now, on today's show, we're talking about overcoming doubts and fears and misgivings. I often talk and write about how to find that courage and the confidence to share your music. You may call it performing, of course, but at heart mastery, we call it sharing your music. Whatever you call it, though, you still might feel your sweating and your stomach churning just thinking about playing for someone. Sharing that part of yourself where the music lives is scary for each of us. Now, I've been sharing my music for a lot of years now, and I know many of my students don't really believe that I ever get nervous. I do, of course, but I've learned to expect the nerves, and I've learned that I can play through them.

On this show, I want to tell you about an act of courage, a small but really scary one that I've never talked about before. It turned out to be an important one, much more important than I knew at the time. You see, 10 years ago, I took a blind leap of courage into the unknown. I started a blog. Now, you may not think that took courage or that it was a big deal, or that I was nervous about it, but I certainly had my doubts and misgivings. I didn't know if what I was about to write was worth sharing. I didn't know if it would actually. If I would actually be able to come up with more things to write about. I didn't know if anybody would like it or would criticize it, or would laugh at it. I didn't even know if anybody at all would read it. But I did it anyway. And if I hadn't, harp mastery wouldn't exist. I didn't start with a website or an email list or even a Facebook account. I didn't even have high speed Internet. I had a dial up connection. Now, that was over 600 blog posts and 55 podcasts ago. So apparently I didn't run out of things to write about. Now, in the intervening years, Heart mastery has reached literally thousands of harpists through my writings, webinars, courses, coaching programs, retreats and challenges. And it feels like we're just getting started. But this podcast isn't about me or harp mastery. It's about you. I want to help you understand what's really in your way. Stopping you from playing the harp the way you want, sharing your music with the people you want. Most importantly, I want to share the lessons I learned about fear and courage over these last 10 years. So you don't have to learn them the hard way. You can take the shortcut path around your fear and find your harp courage. I'm going to give you an assignment too, so be sure to listen closely all the way to the end of the show. Now, as we start our discussion on overcoming fear and doubt, I want to make sure we avoid one big mistake. This isn't just about fear of playing for other people. There are so many ways that we can be stopped by fear in our music making. We might be afraid that someone will hear us practice. I've worked with students who are afraid to practice with a full sound because they think it might disturb their neighbors or their husband watching television in the next room. They just don't want the people to hear them make mistakes. Or you might be afraid that your teacher will think you haven't practiced enough, or that maybe you're just not good enough or talented enough to continue or start harp lessons. Or maybe you're worried. What? What if I can't learn this in time? What if I can't do this fast enough? What if I can't do it at all? Or maybe you're worried, or you might be fearful that you're too old to do this or to do things the way you want. I mean, granted, we've got. We all have limitations. We have limitations on our time, on our abilities, and there are certain things we can't change. But we also all have fears that we can do something about. And when we have fears that. That don't seem to be based in fact or that maybe aren't incontrovertible, then we need to learn to move past them. And that's what we're talking about today. We're going to talk about what makes us able to go beyond those fears, to get unstuck from where we are. First, we'll talk about where fears hide, and then we'll talk about what I've learned about going beyond fear. Then finally, I'll give you a short, pretty easy assignment.

Let me tell you now about the very first time I got nervous. Now, I don't know if this is a landmark for a lot of people. Maybe a lot of people don't have a specific time when they remember they first got nervous. Maybe everybody does. I can guarantee you that in my own experience, it's not something that people talk about a lot. But the first time I got nervous, I was 12 years old. Now, I had a good reason to get nervous. If you look at it from a. An adult perspective. I was. I had won a competition, and I was going to play a concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra. And okay, you know, it's a big deal. But I was 12. And at 12, you really don't know what. What a big deal things are. And I'd been playing in music recitals since the time I was four. I mean, I, you know, this was just part of stuff. And I was doing all of that with that really wonderful, childlike, you know, just, oh, I just go in and do it. I didn't have a sense of impending doom. I didn't get butterflies in my stomach. I didn't have the worries and fears that come with really understanding the import of what you're doing. Whether that import is in, you know, is in a great way or a small way. Right? I mean, I was just playing on recitals until then. But there was something about that performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra that even at 12, I knew was extra important. Maybe I was absorbing some of the nervous energy of the people around me, particularly my mother. I remember she Was very nervous. She told me later. She, when she saw me walk out on stage, she saw all the microphone cables that were on the stage, because microphones had cables back then.

And she saw them all, all on the stage. And she was just so worried that I was. That I would trip and that, in fact, she was so nervous for me that she had to resist every impulse in her being to stand up from her seat in the auditorium and say, you don't have to do it, it's okay.

Of course she resisted that impulse. But that was the very first morning that I felt nervous. It was a matinee kind of performance. And I remember just feeling funny that morning. I couldn't quite eat and.

I didn't understand.

What I was feeling. And nobody thankfully told me that I was nervous. Everyone was very careful around me. Something that I only understood much later about the language that they used telling me that, you know, that, oh, well, okay, you don't feel like eating? No problem. How about if I get you a milkshake? I mean, whoever heard of a milkshake for breakfast? I certainly hadn't, but I was grateful for, for just being able to put a little bit in my stomach.

I vaguely remember feeling better once I got to rehearsal. You know, the, the run through before the performance and, and the performance, I remember being exciting. I don't remember being particularly nervous. But in retrospect, and not that many years after that happened, I. I realized that that was the first time I felt nervous.

And I have felt more nervous since then. And I think that in part those nerves came when things began to be more important for me. All of a sudden there were higher stakes. There were things that, that meant more to me. And my own ability to do well in those performance situations was more important to me. And the higher the stakes were, at least the higher they felt to me, the more nervous I got.

Now, since then, there have been times when nerves absolutely got in my way. But over the years, I've learned to expect them, I've learned to deal with them, and I've learned that I can focus and play through them.

But that's not where I want to start with our discussion today. I want to start with those places where fears hide. Now, this is not an in depth, you know, pop psychology kind of discussion, but I have discovered that there are really three telltale words that as soon as I feel myself saying them, hear myself saying them to my, you know, in my head, or when I hear a student say them, I realize that they're hiding a fear, a Doubt, hiding something that we need to get in there and correct an idea that is self sabotaging. It is definitely not helpful. So here's the first of those three telltale words. And I want you to think, think about these as we talk about them and see if one of these sounds familiar to you, if this is a word that you often use, and that that's what's sort of masking a fear for you. One of the first of those telltale words is ready. As in I'm not ready. It's not ready. The music isn't ready. It's not ready.

It needs more time. I just, you know, I need to wait a little bit. I'm not ready for this. Ready is an endless delaying tactic, whether we intend it that way or not. I mean, certainly there is a level of readiness that we want if we're going to share our music, right, or if we're going to have a lesson. We want to feel prepared.

And feeling prepared is one thing. Being prepared is also important. And they, they go hand in hand, but they're not the same thing. You can be totally prepared and still feel unprepared, and you can feel prepared and actually be unprepared. Both of those things work. What you learn over time with your teacher's help, is you learn what preparation is really necessary. And when piece is prepared enough is ready enough to play, whether you feel ready or not. I mean, let's face it, music isn't finished, right? It's never going to be set in stone. Ready, it's always changing, it's always new, and it's always somewhat unpredictable, which isn't comforting if you're, if you're performing someplace. But that unpredictability is what makes it music. It's what makes this a living art, an art of the moment.

And even more frustrating, although it's interesting if you can approach it with a sense of humor, is that you don't really know how ready you are or aren't until you try it and see ready. Being prepared is a trial and error, error sort of process. I know you've had this experience. You think you're, you've practiced properly for your lesson, you're sure you're prepared, and you get into your lesson and things don't go the way you thought.

Well, truth one about performing is that it never goes the way you think. And very rarely, although occasionally very rarely, does it go better than you expect. It usually just doesn't go quite as well as you expect. And that is par for the Course, that's normal. So now you can begin to expect that it's not going to be your, you know, your all time ultimate performance.

When you're doing it for someone else. That can be comfort right there. But learning how to deeply, you need to know a piece or where those potholes, as I like to call them, where they are. Where are those things that you thought you knew but you really don't. The only way you know is to try it out. This is why before a big debut recital, performers will preview that program any number of times. There are some performers that will, before they're going to do a high stakes concert or.

A recording, they'll Preview that music 50 times so that by the time they get to the one that really super duper counts to them, they know, they know this cold. So that the gap between the way they expect to play and the way they actually play, even if there's a gap there, that gap is pretty small.

But not being ready is not a good excuse. That is a telltale word, right? One that's hiding some fear. Okay, telltale word number two, only.

This, as in, oh, well, this is only for other people. This is, this is not for me. This is only performing here in this place or this way, or this piece. This is only for advanced harpists. It's not for me having this, this particular wonderful harp that I've always wanted. That's a dream harp. That's only for people who are really good. This piece, that's a piece that, that, no, I could never do that. That's only for people who are already really good. This is only for lever harpist. This is only for petal harpist. This is only only for somebody else. But it's not for the mere likes of me. Only is a fence that we build to keep us from our dreams. We're shutting ourselves out. So when you hear yourself saying that something that you want to do is only for someone else, you really need to take a moment to ask yourself, why not for you too? What is? What are you afraid of? What is only for someone else and not for you? Hmm. And my third telltale word is Enough. I'm not good enough. It's not good enough. The piece isn't polished enough. I'm not playing fast enough. I haven't been playing long enough. I'm not young enough. I'm not old enough. I'm not professional enough. Enough is a comparison word, right? It's a judgment word. It's a measurement word. And almost always that measurement, the enough standard Isn't a factual standard. It's not laid out in a rule book someplace nobody would stamp it on a piece of paper and say, I'm sorry, this is enough. Or this is not enough.

That enough is in our heads. It becomes a weight that we tie to ourselves to hold us back. It's not. It's not enough. It's not fast enough yet. Really? How fast does it need to be? Well, let's set a goal and let's get there. It's. And, you know, so. All right, so maybe it's not quite enough yet.

But enough isn't an invisible, impossible barrier unless we put it there. It becomes a barrier. It becomes an endless. Not yet.

I can't do this yet. This is not for now. This is not for me. There is no magical quantity of enough that any one of us has to attain. Each of us is enough. We are all we have, and we are all we need. We are enough.

What we're talking about with all these words, these words are all surmountable. They're signals that we are holding ourselves back in some way.

It doesn't mean that we're telling ourselves lies. It doesn't mean that these things that we're talking about aren't true to some extent. But when we set them up as insurmountable objects, as mountains that we can't move.

Then we've created a way to stop ourselves from doing the things that are frightening for us. Playing that piece, starting that piece, playing, you know, taking new lessons, taking lessons with a new teacher, trying something new. Going to that harp circle, going to. Going to a harp event and playing with other people, playing in church. Creating a repertoire to start playing at weddings, making a video of yourself to share with a friend. All of those things that you might be afraid of. Well, you're not ready. Or this is only for people who are better than you, or you're going to do it, but the piece isn't polished enough yet, or you want really a better piece. This piece isn't hard enough to play for other people. You need a piece that's harder than that. There are ways to hold ourselves back and stop ourselves.

But that doesn't mean we have to stay stuck there. The things we're afraid of not being ready enough or, you know, enough, or they may not be real, but the feeling of fear is very real.

But each of us has just two choices when we're facing that feeling of fear. We can run away from the fear and live in the not ready, not enough kind of land or we can run toward the fear. There's a story that I heard.

That spoke to me the moment I heard it and has been just a beautiful image that has stuck with me. And I hope that it sticks with you, too. Here it is.

Buffalo. Heard of buffalo on the, on the plains in the Midwest somewhere. Right? When a storm is coming.

The buffalo want to get out of the way, right? I mean, these aren't, you know, these aren't dumb animals. They're, you know, they, their instinct is to flee from the storm.

Sounds like us, right? Okay, we want to flee from the storm, too. But. But the buffalo's programming, their internal programming tells them that the quickest way, the safest way to flee the storm is to run into it. Picture the way a storm would move across the plain.

And then picture this herd of buffalo running to meet the storm, not running the other way. The storm is fast moving, and as fast as a herd of buffalo can be, and as powerful as they are, they're not going to outrun the storm. So the buffalo run into the storm, and by doing so, they experience the brunt of the storm for a shorter period of time. They run right to it. And as they're running to it, the storm is passing over them. So they are in the storm for the very shortest possible period of time. They run toward it in order to survive it. It's a very cool image, isn't it? So when I first heard that story, a switch flipped. For me, facing my fears wasn't about becoming fearless. It wasn't about saying, okay, storm. You just, you know, that's okay. I'm tough enough. It wasn't about that. It was acknowledging that fear and then taking the shortest way, the easiest way out of that fear, not stepping aside and saying, okay, well, you know, that's okay, storm. You just, you just come and I'll just, I'll just wait here until it's all over. And, you know, don't, don't pay any attention to me. It's saying, okay, there's a storm coming and we're just going to go into it. It's going to be short. It's. It's the easiest way out.

The easy way out, you see, isn't giving into that fear. Right? If you're afraid of playing in your teacher's recital, not playing may seem like the easy way out, but it's not. It's going to prolong the fear. It's going to lengthen that storm and give it more power because you're going to not play this Time. Well, I'll play next time. Well, that means you've got a whole, maybe a whole year in between recitals to worry about the next one because you haven't played in this one. The easy way out is to take that one small but scary step in the direction of the fear. Face it and do it now. For me, when I started this whole blog thing, this whole blog thing 10 years ago, there were lots of ways I could have delayed it, right? I have to learn more about the technology. I'm not comfortable enough with the technology yet. I don't have enough blog posts in the can. You know, I'm going to have to have a list of topics to write. I need to have someone else check my work. I need to take a course on it. Now, all of these things are really good. They're excellent ways to prepare. But all of them are symptoms of that ready word. I'm not ready yet. I haven't studied long enough. I haven't prepared long enough. All of those things could be true. But the fact is, at some point, I have to declare myself ready to do it. I'm ready to do it. And the fact is that when I started, I didn't have anybody else check my work. I hadn't taken a course. I had read a book. And that was what talked me through the steps I needed to do it. I didn't have a list of blog posts, ideas. I didn't have blog posts already written. I was writing them as I go, which is perhaps not the recommended way to do it, but that's what I was doing because I knew that if I was going to do it, I was never going to feel ready. I just had to start now. There were also lots of only issues, right? This is only for people. Blogging is only for people who really want to write or want to become writers. I had never wanted to do that. You know, the people who wanted to write the great American novel, that was never me. I was not interested in writing. Ha. I've been doing a lot of it. Or blogging was only for people who actually studied writing, not me. They were only for people who have a lot of time. That was not me. They were only for people who loved social media. That was definitely not me. I had not done any social media before I started blogging.

There were also lots of enough issues. I haven't done enough writing in my life to be prepared. I don't have enough of a stockpile of ideas to write from. My posts aren't long enough. They're not Interesting enough, they aren't short enough, they're not general enough, they're not specific enough, I don't have enough to say. There were plenty of enough issues.

But those weren't the issues I wanted to have stop me.

In fact, I could have stopped at any moment I wanted to. All I was doing when I started blogging was trying it. I hadn't made a promise to myself about the next one.

I had sort of given myself a little commitment. When I started blogging. The, the, the standard that I was reading about the way people were doing it was, oh, you have to write three blog posts a week and they have to be about 500 wor. So for the first year I did three blog posts a week.

And then the same person who had said, okay, yes, the standard is three blog posts a week said, you know what? Now the standard's really just one post a week. I went phew. And, and took that as permission to go back to one post a week, which was a lot easier to do, trust me.

But the thing was, I hadn't promised myself that I would stick with it forever. I certainly didn't have a 10 year old plus time frame in mind. I was just doing it for now.

So I tried to take those barriers out of my way. The fears were still there. But I took that one small, scary step. I just posted the first blog post. My first blog post was not good. It wasn't even interesting. But it was done, it was published, and then the second one was posted. Now, I will tell you that I wasn't even sure at the time exactly why I wanted to do this. I'd been reading blogs, listening to podcasts. It just seemed like something I could do. It had dawned on me too, that I did have something worthwhile to share. Now I can't say I had exactly thought of a mission at that point. It was still really too vague. I certainly had zero idea about websites or miss Membership communities or webinars or courses or coaching programs, anything like that. I was just posting little articles because I knew that I had had.

Harp instruction and harp experiences that so many harpists didn't have an opportunity to have. The things that I had learned were certainly things other harpists knew. But the majority of harpists hadn't had that kind of education. They hadn't had the opportunity to study with really world class teachers. And until the advent of the Internet, the kind of teaching that those teachers, those world class teachers could do was limited to the handful of students that they could see.

So the ability to share the knowledge that was so generously passed along to me.

On a level that my teachers and their teachers would not have dreamed of was something that was really interesting to me. To be able to share what I had learned and what I had learned from the teaching that I had done. My 19 years of teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music taught me a lot. And to be able to share that information as well was really what I was looking to do.

Now. The the smallest, easiest step then posting that first article. That was what made the blog possible for me. I wasn't trying to create a blog with a certain number of posts, a certain number of readers, or trying to earn money with it. I wrote and posted article and then I did the next one because taking the easiest step is the best way to start. Publishing that first article helped me see the fear for what it was me getting in my own way. No one was telling me that I couldn't or shouldn't do this except for me. Fears don't have the power to stop you. They can't stop the buffalo, right? The buffalo's, you know, senses the storm, but they don't react from the fear. Only you have the power to stop you, but you also have the power to set yourself free. And by doing something, by taking action, by taking that first small step, by running toward the other side of the fear. So here are a few things I've discovered about what it takes to run toward the fear, what that really means. When you run toward the fear, you can never be certain of the outcome, but you can be certain of the status quo. Don't wait for a guarantee here. Act on the possibility.

Go for the change.

You don't need a mission or a lofty goal. You only need enough motivation to try. You don't have to decide to post on Facebook every week, for instance. Try posting on Facebook today the way I did with the blog. Just one post, right? That's all. See what happens. Trying something costs way less in terms of time, energy and emotion than not trying. This is why I say that running toward the fear is the easy way out. It's the shortest, simplest way around that fear. To just go through it. Because when you try it, you've tried it. But worrying about it is far more costly. Worrying about what a new teacher will tell you, way scarier than what any teacher would actually say to their new student, right?

Fear only lasts a moment, but an act of courage sustains your momentum for years, right? Playing for someone may be scary from the time you agree to do it until you actually do it. But then the fear stops and the accomplishment starts.

The sooner you act in spite of your fear, and the sooner you run toward it, the shorter the duration of the discomfort.

Then don't get caught in the trap of perfect versus good enough. Right? If you wait until something's perfect, it's never going to happen. And whatever you try right now, even if it isn't good enough or doesn't feel ready, will get better over time. Read my first blog post and you'll see what I mean. You'll get better by doing it, not by worrying about it. Now, incidentally, you can still read that first blog post. You can just search the blog archives and find it. But it was a welcome post. My first post, I didn't even have anything really of substance of substance to say. But you know what? I'll put a link to it in the show Notes below so you can see it. You'll be able to read between the lines and you can sense my own uncertainty about what it was I was doing. There's certainly no question I'm a better writer now than I was then, but I'll. I'll be happy to share that with you because it certainly wasn't ready and it certainly I wouldn't consider it good enough to post today.

But it was what I could do right then, and it was a start. It was my first step. Now, I did tell you up front that I was going to give you a short assignment, and so here it is.

I would. I would like you to think of something in your heart playing that you want to do but will require courage. Is it setting up a lesson with a new teacher? Is it starting a challenge piece? Is it playing at your church? Putting a little video of you playing your harp on Facebook?

Getting together and playing with other musicians? Sharing your music with a friend?

Whatever it is, think of something you want to do.

But you're just a little fearful about. Then identify your into the storm step, that one small action that you're going to take toward the fear instead of away from it. And then take that step today. Or if you can't put it on your calendar for a day this week, then I want you to email me at podcastartmastery.com Easy enough, right? Podcasteartmastery.com Email me, tell me what your act of courage is and you're into the storm step. Like.

I want to start posting my music on YouTube and so I did my I'm going to do my first video and.

Or I've set up my YouTube channel. Whatever your first step is.

Email me, tell me what it is. And over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to read all the submissions that come into the podcast email, and I'm going to acknowledge them on the podcast, but with no names. We're going to keep this totally anonymous, but I want to honor your commitment to running into the fear, and I want to give us all the chance to see the kind of into the fear action steps that are possible.

So my hope is that you'll hear me mention your particular act of courage without your name, of course, and that you'll have the extra energy and accountability from that to make it happen. Sometimes a little bit of accountability is the only push we'll need, and I'll be more than happy to give you a little nudge in the direction you want to go.

Remember too, this doesn't have to be some giant act of courage. Whatever it is, whatever fear is holding you back from doing, let's conquer that. And let's conquer that with that one small into the storm step. So just email me, tell me your act, what you know, your act of courage, and your into the storm action step, and we're going to honor that anonymously here on the podcast over the next couple of weeks. Remember that your act of courage in emailing me that will also help other harpists who might be struggling with those same issues, because trust me, we all do. So there's your little assignment. I hope that my own little journey here has given you some inspiration and some feeling that you can run into the storm and take action, despite whatever you might be afraid of. Next week on the podcast will be the recording of our live podcast taping, which is happening this coming Friday. I'm going to be taping with all my Harp Mastery members in attendance, and we're going to be talking about the same topic that I talked about on my second blog post, which is the contrast between Big Picture Practice and Little Picture Practice. I've talked about this many times over the years, but my first blog post of any substance, which was the second blog post I did, talked about an experience that I had teaching an Italian student and observing the way that she learned. And so we're going to be looking at the big picture Little Picture Practice scenario from that viewpoint of 10 years ago and from what I've learned about those viewpoints, from teaching it repeatedly to my working on it with my own students over the last 10 years. So big picture a Little picture practice on a live podcast taping that you will hear the recording of next Monday right here on the show. So remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. See you next time. Thanks for tuning into another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day. See you next time.