Karaoke at Hula Hula on Sunday was a lot of fun. It was great to see so many current and former clients! I LOVE getting to see my clients do their thang up on stage, and karaoke is a relatively low-stakes way for folks to try out their chops. To be in front of other humans making some noise. Yesssssss!
Now, I work with a range of skill levels from total beginners to pre-professional/professional and here’s one thing that most of them have in common:
When they come off stage the first things they comment on are which parts of the song they think they bombed.
The exchange goes something like this:
Me: YOU DID IT. YES! Congrats!
Them: I messed up x, y, z.
Me: ok, but, like, you sang the whole thing and most of it was great!
Them: but I messed up x, y, z.
Me: … um, but what about the AMAZING parts?
Them: did you hear x, y, z though?
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is value in noticing areas where we’d like to improve.
And, none of it matters if you don’t appreciate the successes.
You can improve all you want but if the only thing you can notice is where you screwed up then you’ll never be able to appreciate the growth. You won’t even see it.
(And really, who doesn’t screw up?? Just like life, it’s much more about the getting back up and much less about the falling down. The screwing up is literally how we learn.)
Here’s my challenge to you:
After you sing, and it can be anything–doesn’t have to be a public performance, instead of jumping to all of the little things that didn’t end up the way you hoped,
Can you instead ask yourself, what’s one part that I liked?
Or if this is too much, what’s one part that I didn’t hate?
(Baby steps for the win, y’all!)
After you answer that one question then you can allow yourself to ask, what are one or two things that I’d like to do differently next time?
Can you start with the assumption that there was something worth celebrating?
Honestly, for most folks, just doing the thing is reason enough to celebrate!
Look, we sing because we love it. And in order to grow in the ways that we want to grow vocally and as performers, we need to do the things and just fuck them up.
Growth starts with the fuck ups.
If it didn’t, we’d all just be perfect, right?
OR, realistically,
we’d never try in the first place.
You will never get to feeling competent if you don’t allow yourself to suck. You just won’t.
Here’s my invitation to you:
Let’s all suck at something together.
Then let’s laugh, identify things we want to try differently, and then, let’s do it all again.
This is life. It’s how we grow and it’s how we learn.
And, oh lort, it can be fun if we let it!
I’LL SEE Y’ALL AT THE NEXT KARAOKE NIGHT!
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