Senior recital.
Family members had come near and far to hear me play. I had 5 pieces, totaling up to about 30 minutes of playing. I was set. I was ready to show the world my skills, after four years of playing and being a late starter, I thought was pretty good. I had selected my favorite, and some of my most difficult pieces to play, and I had practiced for countless hours leading up to this one performance.
My family and friends were encouraging, but if my mind wasn't right, and my thoughts weren't equally as positive, I knew I wouldn't do well.
It's not that I'm a negative person, or that I had negative thoughts, but I had become intimidated by the crowd surrounding me. They were expecting me to be good, I should be shouldn't I? Being a senior pianist, learning and practicing for 4 years?
The fear of playing quickly overcame me, I didn't like performing in front of people anyways. There were girls who were much younger than me, yet they had been playing for many, many more years, and they sounded like the next Beethoven or Mozart.
Show's on. I was playing last because I was the senior player. I wasn't feeling adequate enough. I didn't feel like I deserved a recital focused mainly around me. I wasn't a good enough pianist to entertain this crowd for 30+ minutes. There was a girl that went before me, and it was announced that she had composed the song that her tiny fingers were easily moving across the keys and playing. She played it with such ease, and such grace. It was absolutely beautiful, but those thoughts continued to remind me that I wasn't that good.
I got up to play, and beginning with my first piece...I did fine? Wait, what? How? That got the best of me, and I was feeling a little too confident - combined with the inadequacy that I was feeling earlier, it didn't make for a good outcome. Playing the next few songs went horribly for me, I made one mistake and thought too much about it. "What if they heard it? Noticed it?" I was always taught to keep going if I make a mistake, but one mistake snowballs into another mistake when you overthink it. The mistakes didn't stop, and by the last two pieces, I had butchered them. They didn't even sound like actual songs, nothing had added up the way it should.
I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and it took all of my self-restraint to not get up and walk out with tears. I felt like I had humiliated my teacher although she told me that I had done well, I knew I was better than this.
People have continued to tell me that I did well, although I don't believe them.
I am my worst critic, and still to this day, I'm disappointed in myself and afraid to perform again.
So, what did I do next? How did I overcome these fears?
First, I had to accept the feelings I had towards that performance. People tried to encourage me and tell me I did good, but I didn't believe them. I had worked hard perfecting those pieces and I knew what they were supposed to sound like, and I knew I was capable of playing them to their full potential. For months after that performance, I barely played piano, and when I did I would get frustrated and stop. One bad performance doesn't seem like that big of a deal. It probably wasn't, but for me at the time, it was my world crashing down.
Secondly, I had to understand that one bad performance doesn't define me and doesn't define my abilities. I knew that I was better than that, I simply had a bad day and didn't perform as well as I usually do. I am not defined by the things I do or don't do, I am not defined by my skills or my abilities. God gave me talents, and I am using them. Just because I performed worse than I wanted to does not mean that I am defined by that performance.
Lastly, I had to take time to find myself. Piano was and is a huge influence on my life. When something is going on in my life usually the first place I go is to the piano, so when something "bad" happened concerning piano, I was lost and didn't know where to run. I had to take time to myself to collect myself, and ultimately I ended up learning to fall in love with piano over again. When I didn't feel like playing, I didn't. I didn't force myself because I knew it would come with time, Once I accepted that and told myself I was a fairly good pianist (and believed it), I was able to overcome those fears.
It took nearly a year to overcome this experience, and it's still hard for me to perform in front of people without the fear of messing up. I have continued taking lessons, I have expanded my learning and I have fallen in love with piano again. I play regularly, and even had a performance to end out my first fall semester in college. I feel like I have redeemed myself by overcoming my fears and playing one of the songs that I had played during my senior recital. I was terrified I'd mess it up again, but with the support and encouragement of my teacher I was able to overcome that.
Overcoming fear isn't easy, especially when it's something that means so much to you, but once you accept and understand your situation, you can find yourself, strengthen yourself, and conquer your fears.
