To be great at anything, one must take the risk of sucking.

Those are words to live by and I’ve not been living by those words.  I did that thing I promised myself I wasn’t going to do if I started writing.  I stopped writing.  Sure, I’ve had a million ideas to share with whomever is reading, but I made excuses and talked myself out of putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard. I haven’t written in a while because I’m afraid I might suck.  Afraid I might not have anything worth saying.  Afraid I might be wasting your time with my thoughts.

This is a feeling I personally know very well.  The feeling of self-doubt. The feeling of being completely unqualified to share any wisdom or advice or pontifications with anyone, because I’m just little ol’ me and what do I know?  This is the feeling that has stopped me in my tracks every time I’ve started a path to anything creative or anything residing outside of my comfort zone. I have all these thoughts and emotions pulsing through me, but I can’t seem to let them out.  It’s like I’m stepping on the gas at the same time as applying the emergency break. 

A few years ago I decided I was going to act on my long-held secret desire to sing.  Sure, I sang in the car or in the shower, but I wanted to sing on a stage in front of people!  In fact, I wrote a story back in first grade about wanting to be a singer.  But, I managed to push that crazy thought out of my head until I was 31 years old.  Until the burning desire just couldn’t be squelched out anymore and all the stars aligned (a story for another day) and I found myself sitting across from a very well respected vocal coach just outside of Boston.

The coaching session was about an hour long and I have a recording of the whole thing that I listen to from time to time. It was a simple set up; just me and the coach with a piano between us.  I went in not knowing what to expect, but hoping very much he didn’t decide I was a waste of his time and not fit to be a singer.  I went in basically asking his permission to sing, which seems such a silly notion to me now. For 45 excruciating minutes the coach had to deal with my over-explaining why I was there, my apologizing for not knowing exactly what I wanted to do with singing, and my absolute inability to go through all the voice warmups without getting the nervous giggles.  Then he stopped playing the piano and dropped this bomb on me:

“What you have is a do not suck clause and it rains down on all your behavior.  Your brain suspects that things are going to go badly if you make a change.  Your brain is right.  I’m trying to lead you through the little tiny awkward patches because those awkward patches RUN YOU.  Great singers risk sucking. Go for it!”

To this day, his lesson is still the best $150 I ever spent.  He’s absolutely right. Imagine if no one ever did a damn thing because we were all eaten alive with the fear of sucking.  Imagine all the beautiful art, music, new inventions, and thought provoking works of creativity we’d all miss if we had to get permission from someone else to create!  So, I encourage you to go and do and be and don’t worry if whatever you’re doing isn’t perfect.  We are all learning.  Experiences make us all better.  Experiences make us all human.