Reminder that you’re awesome, in case you forgot.

I did a thing over the weekend. I sang a set of songs in recital as part of a trio—me, a clarinetist friend, and our pianist friend. It was lovely and exciting, terrifying and satisfying. I’m glad it’s done, and I think we performed well.

And it definitely got me thinking about the nature of excellence, surrounding yourself with it, yet failing to see it in oneself. 

I’ve been trying to talk it out for a couple of days, and I still don’t think I have it right in words, but I’m going to give you my best attempt! 

The brass tacks: You’re better than you think you are at what you’re doing. 

The trouble is, when you’re surrounding yourself with excellent people doing excellent things (writing, for instance) your idea of what’s good is skewed. You feel only average, or maybe less than average, because you and your friends are awesome. Because your bar is high. And the better/more skilled you become, the higher the bar moves.

This is a good thing generally speaking—for improvement’s sake, you want to keep the bar high and moving upward. 

…except when you come to the conclusion that what you’re doing is meh, or okay, or even blerg, when in fact, you’re actually quite excellent, yourself. My friend Paula calls this Creative Person Syndrome (CPS), others call it Imposter Syndrome. Whatever you call it, it’s no fun!

Back to me for a second. The weeks before the recital, I had a couple of flat-out “I don’t know if I can do this” moments. Until a friend (or two) reminded me that A: Yes, I can. and B: even a “good effort” at my skill level is actually pretty impressive to non-musicians. And that I’d forgotten (because I’m surrounded by amazing musicians) that my expectations are… high. But my capability is also higher than average.  

And back to you: I know you’ve been in a similar boat, whether with writing, or music-making, or mathing, or fill-in-the-blank. That thing you’re good at? I bet you’re really good at it! You might’ve just forgotten. So I’m reminding you! Keep working, keep setting the bar to “achieve mode,” but remember this too—there are thousands of people who will think your achievement is nothing short of amazing. 

Because they’ve never done it and you have. You ROCK. Keep rockin’.

Thank you for coming to my pep talk! (I don’t think I can legally call it a TED talk. 😉)