Noticing Fear: Rejoice!

"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands,
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands,
If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it,
If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands."

We all know the song.  But could we sing the song cheerfully if we substituted the word fearful for happy?

My theory is that we should be celebrating if we know we are scared.  If we don’t know what we are feeling we can’t embrace the positive aspects of the emotions or guard against their detriments!

Take my friend, for example.  She has been keeping a deep secret about herself from her best friends that she finally found the courage to share.  Not only was this secret causing a great deal of inner distress, but eventually caused emotional damage in her relationships because she had actively lied about it for so long.  She told me that she now realizes her fear around the “issue” was bigger than she first thought.  Strangely, her realization made me feel happy to be able to name fear in my own life.  Weird, I know.  It became clear that even when fear feels horrible, I might consider jumping for joy that I can recognize it – lest it fester away at my insides and cause unnecessary problems in life.

As a musician, you can apply this idea to your performing and practicing.  When you feel ________ (name your emotional drug of choice), you can give it space, embrace it or shove it down to your toes.  It will surface one way or the other.  A jazz teacher once taught that when you feel nervous before a performance consider how much energy is available to you at that moment.  Getting up on stage is not like taking a nap; you don’t want to be a limp noodle!  Fear generates energy you can harness to broadcast your talent to an eager audience. 

In your practice, start to notice when you feel uncomfortable feelings.  They are trying to tell you something, and most likely their messages won’t be as bad as you imagined.  Fear of sounding bad will keep you from learning to sound good.  But, you’ll have to face your fear of sounding bad in order to get past it.

So, if you have fearful feelings, angry feelings, sad feelings, take heart that you are noticing them.  And if at all possible . . . “If you’re fearful and you know it, clap your hands!”