My mom joined the marching band in high school with zero musical ability. She couldn’t read music, had never touched an instrument, and her performance experience was limited to the shower.
But my mom is also a force of nature. She wouldn’t let a little thing like experience stop her from doing something she wanted to do.
Six weeks later she marched in the band, proudly banging away on the glockenspiel, and loving every minute of it. When the “cool” kids at her school tried to give her crap about this, she gave it right back.
She said, “Yeah, I’m in the band, and I play the glock, and it’s cool as shit.” And she walked away with absolute confidence in herself and her choices. Those kids never gave her grief again - according to her this is because they knew they couldn’t touch her, and also because she played field hockey and would have kicked their asses if they tried.
This reminds me of Liz Gilbert’s “Letter to Fear” exercise from her book Big Magic. The exercise goes like this:
Step 1: Set a five-minute timer and write out a letter to yourself from the perspective of fear. Write out every reason, excuse, fact, and potential catastrophe preventing you from doing that thing you wish you could do. Keep writing until you’ve got it all on the page.
Step 2: Observe that the list is not infinite. The big scary thing loses a lot of intimidation power when it can’t just loop the same nasty thoughts in your head.
Step 3: Write a letter back to fear. Thank fear for doing its job (protecting you), and let it know that you will be taking its input under advisement, but that you will be making the decisions around here. It doesn’t get to call the shots.
Fear sounds an awful lot like those kids in my mom’s high school. It has decided what you are capable of and what is acceptable without consulting you. So, when you have a little audacity and clap back, it has to back down.
“If you’re confident in what you’re doing, they can’t touch you.”
- my mom
PS: Ask someone you love to tell you about an experience they are proud of, and then post the story in the comments 😁
