One of the uncomfortable experiences in the world is to discover one’s failure to complete a goal, or be acknowledged for a project we worked so hard on and have zero acknowledgment. Like myself, I ran into hurdles when I thought about playing my violin. Physical, psychological, and tactical issues showed up and blocked my path to music. I literally felt lost when it came to any thought of musical ability. I was stuck both mentally and physically.
The negative emotions we experience leaves scars of negativity.
Once fear, discouragement, and threat shows up, our emotions begin to rise up. When emotions rise up inside of us, we tend to fall into a dark, dismal state of mind.
I am here to shine a light on how failure isn’t the end, it’s a new start.
The negatives are how our failures, once experienced, set up a string of frustrations. We fear failure, so we stop. We stop any forward movement, hang up the dreams, and excuse our exit strategy.
Once we give up, we leave a wake of uncompleted tasks, dreams, and goals in a proverbial brain dump. The scars of fear mount in our minds and we refuse to motivate ourselves back into the story we long to create for ourselves.
The culprit of the fear of failure is often the inner villain. It’s the voice in your head, which labels any activity with doubt, uncertainty, and trepidation. The ‘if’ question comes up, often coupled with ‘what if’, and the nails in the coffin are hammered shut.
My inner villain told me I’d sound funny if I did a podcast, or people would think I was trying too hard, or they would altogether laugh at my efforts. I feared being awkward. My experience includes leading and facilitating educational groups for the past 6 years. I spoke four nights a week, leading out in groups and encouraging others to heal, grow, and move forward. And here I was full of fear. I feared the unknown. “What’s a voice?” I’d think. Now, I have a simple podcast on Anchor (Spotify — Catch The Spark) and a Facebook group for Building Healthy Relationships.
Who knew overcoming doubt would get me to participate in my dreams?
The voice also told me to quit when things got hard. I learned to shush the voice during my graduate years. I made it! Even when the inner villain held up the quit sign, I kept the course. And then, once I was free from college, I rejoiced in my accomplishment. No small feat!
Your inner villain is whatever you hear when you set a goal, or start to feel motivated to begin or continue with a task. For instance, you may want to begin working out and your brain tells you “Watch out, you might hurt yourself,” and then you stop at the first sign of uncomfortableness.
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Pamela and her violin, photo credit P. Nikodem 9/2021
The music’s return
I struggled with the fear of playing my violin after years of repeated injury, surgery, injury, etc. Every time I’d feel like I could play again, another bout of severe pain and struggle would rise up.
I’d put my violin away, cry, and push the thought of playing so far out of my mind that I’d feel numb. I’d refuse to listen to orchestrated music because the pain was great and the sadness engulfed me.
I ended up having a breakthrough June 2020. My last surgery I had was successful for two reasons. The first, Dr. Klicka believed in my healing and said so in an interview with the News Station and Aurora Bay Care’s commercial shared those thoughts on my recovery. Secondly, I believed in myself. I had enough of my delays.
I built up arm strength, wrist strength, and shoulder strength. I stepped out in faith and began teaching violin in 2020. The inner villain tried to get me to feel uncomfortable. I actually believed it, and would succumb to procrastination.
I’d not get my personal music lessons completed, for fear of failure. I could fall back on my wrist hurting. The perfect excuse for me. I even needed to quit lessons for awhile for other medical reasons, which I was easily swayed.
Fear still dominated my mind.
The breakthrough
Once I had my breakthrough, though, I began to tell the voice to sit down and shut up. I am now 2 years into playing the violin again. I take personal fiddle lessons, and teach students both violin and cello. Music is a gift. My breakthrough helped me overcome the fear of failure when I encountered a tough run of notes.
My brain would panic and listen to the voice. I’d stop, or give up. Now, I tell the inner villain to “Step down, bubba!”
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Who’s your inner villain?
Think about it for a moment before you toss the idea away. What is the voice in your head, who tells you how much you will hurt, fail, feel terrible, sound stupid, or so forth? How often have you listened to the same voice, without any kickback?
Note: The voice is a liar.
If you listen to it, you’ll remain where you are. When you face the voice head-on, you can silence the villain and pull out the strength inside to overcome the negative mindset.
The inner voice tries to destroy your dreams, and it will succeed if you feed the negativity and doubt. One of the best ways to overcome the negative voice in your head is to take uncomfortable action.
Our inner voice is there to guide you to help you traverse the world safely and aware. The negative voice helps you, and if you are not prepared, it swallows up your dreams and goals. We have to take action against the negative inner villain, because not everything we encounter is dangerous.
When our dreams or goals are set, we have to do some uncomfortable work to get out of the rut and move toward the action part of goals. I know how intimidating uncomfortable action is and I know I can take it without an unbearable fear.
Today, I am stronger than I was yesterday, and even a year ago. Time moves and heals us if we take action to move ourselves forward.
And he was right, I am almost at the point where I was prior to the surgeries and yet, I feel like I am better than I was years ago as far as intonation, vibrato, and enthusiasm. When I reread the quote by Dr. Klicka, I get choked up, because his words and the faith he had, I am on my A-game. That’s a comeback!
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Take a few minutes and consider what voice stops you and what is it telling you every single day, often many times a day.
What holds you back from accomplishing a dream or a goal you have set for yourself?
Once you figure out who the inner villain is, and what it whispers to you, you’ll be able to silence, challenge, and reframe the words, thoughts, and feelings with uncomfortable, amazing action.
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This post was previously published on Change Your Mind Change Your Life.
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Photo credit: Unsplash
