The Self-Doubt Cloud.

Some mornings you just wake up and not like yourself much. Some nights you cry yourself to sleep agonizing over everything about you that isn’t awesomesauce. Its human nature. We constantly play the comparison game, the what-if, the wish-I-wasn’t-a-weirdo, the what-the-heck-am-I-doing-and-why-is-there-no-freaking-instruction-manual…you know, that old chestnut. Fortunately for most, these self-doubt clouds are temporary and as quickly shifting as Melbourne weather (if you’re not from Melbourne we joke that we sometimes get all four seasons in one day!) but there are times when the weighty oppression of these vapour-pillows of not-so-yay are just exhausting.

It can be impossible at times not to compare yourself to your peers (off being fab, travelling away, making babies, trundling along with their life partner, living in the house they bought with their own money {uh, like, seriously, how!?}) and notice all the little flags of blah marking your way. I can’t speak for all the musicians out there but I definitely feel like we’re pretty hard on ourselves in this respect. Women, too, in general. {Though of course I’m not trying to generalise about one particular race, gender, age or vocation -- we all feel pain the same} I love being a musician, a performer, a teacher. It fills me with such joy and purpose but even so, it also cloaks me in suffocating doubt. I am fortunate enough to be surrounded by some seriously amazingly talented musical folks and that’s great, just sometimes, super bewildering and terrifying. I could live for one hundred years and never know everything there is to know about music (and that’s okay) but it’s still enough to occasionally rob me of enthusiasm, ambition and positivity. Particularly when there are so many impressionable kidlets looking to you as their instructor for guidance and knowledge. It’s what probs scares me most about potentially being a Mumsie one day; how do you show someone else how to human when you can’t even manage yourself half the time?

I realise these visiting doubt bouts (see what I did there?) are not unique to me but I certainly feel that I’ve spent my entire life battling them, and will continue to do so for a long time to come, I’m sure. Doubting my worth, my cleverness, my abilities, my attractiveness… but I’m not alone in that. Everyone doubts. Everyone. What’s tragic too is that despite this feeling being universal, it is often the cause of so much drama between people. Instead of this united plight facilitating empathy and compassion, it often does the opposite; doubts, insecurities and fears saddle our day-to-day interactions. We become defensive or seek to make the other person feel inferior, we behave selfishly or act without gratitude and grace. I know when I feel a cloud coming on I tend to try too hard, over-compensate and just become pathetically desperate to prove myself. I’m not saying everyone should be spouting sunshine and daisies all the time, but a little perspective and understanding can go a long way to making the world around you way more spesh.