Silencing the Self-Doubt

As musicians, it is easy to doubt ourselves both as performers and as teachers but also as artists in general. In the last 2 blogs we’ve been focusing on how our behaviour and thought processes have an impact on us as musicians. While that will always be a strong feature throughout all the topics, with ‘silencing self-doubt’ we will look a bit more into our mindsets and how self-doubt might impact our performances and feed our anxiety.

While this blog is called “silencing the self-doubt,” there will be a focus on negative thinking and intrusive thoughts during and post performance. A lot of the time, all these aspects are intertwined, creating a nasty concoction of debilitating thought processes and we will look into the reasons why as well as possible preventatives as we delve into this topic.

What is self-doubt?

Most of us at some point will be a victim of an inner voice telling ourselves “you’re not good enough” or “you played that wrong", and the majority of the time, these voices will be particularly critical, harsh, extreme and weighted towards the negatives. Many of us struggle to see the positives of our performances and we’re even worse at noticing our strengths or the highlights of a performance. All this negative thinking fuels our self-doubt and intrusive thoughts. But why does this happen and how can we turn this around?

"people evaluate their performances, experiences, and behavior by comparing them to those of others."

Denton & Chaplin, 2015. (Pg.2)

Self-efficacy

Why is self-efficacy so important to focus on? In (very) short, self-efficacy is the belief that we have the ability to complete a task to a high standard. It is “the foundation to our agency” (Bandura, 2009, pg.17). In other words, ones’ self-efficacy can have a huge impact on our performance quality but also our perceived performance quality.

“Perceived self-efficacy refers to beliefs in one’s capabilities to organise and execute the courses of action required to produced given levels of attainment.”

Bandura, (2009). pg.16

The debilitating thoughts that we touched on earlier are therefore often stimulated by low self-efficacy. The main problem is that this low self-efficacy is doing ourselves an injustice. If our perceived ability is lower than our actual ability, a large percentage of that ability is therefore unattainable as performance anxiety sets in. This is because low self-efficacy will affect our ability to learn and grow but without growth, it’s a struggle to learn healthy thought processes, which undoubtedly creates a vicious circle of debilitation.

“difference between perceptions of ability and actual ability. An individual may have the skills necessary to meet a challenge at hand; however, if those skills are underestimated, anxiety may nevertheless result"

Hendricks, 2015. (pg.7)

We’ve looked at the effects of low efficacy, but how can we boost our self efficacy? There’s an abundance of research that we can delve into but for now let’s continue to look at what Hendricks (2015) mentions:

1. Building confidence. There is no surprise that the more experience we have, the more comfortable we’ll feel in our ability to do well. So just knowing that it’s all a process and while it might not feel easy, this is why the phrase ‘enjoying the journey’ is so pertinent.

2. Sit in the success to build success. The positive feelings you have after a perceived ‘good’ performance will fuel your drive to continue focused work after a perceived ‘bad’ performance. This is why it’s so important to focus on what worked and why after a performance.

“a high sense of self-efficacy belief built on past successes can foster the determination necessary to persist in the face of setbacks.”.

Hendricks, 2015. (Pg.5)

3. Challenge yourself. As we mentioned earlier, our perceived ability is often lower than our actual ability. Sometimes, the only way of breaking out of this debilitating mindset is to prove yourself wrong, and the only way of doing this is breaking the barriers of your original beliefs by achieving something you might have originally thought as impossible. In other words, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The difficulty of a task and the amount of effort required also contribute to a person’s sense of self-efficacy. The accomplishment of a minor or less-challenging task will not boost an individual’s sense of competence to the same extent”

Hendricks, 2015. (Pg.5)

Self-Criticism

When you’re being self-critical it means you are being overly harsh on yourself, whether that be on stage, whilst teaching or anything you might do that is meaningful to you. Generally we are overly critical if we feel that we have more to loose. On top of this, it is easy to be negatively critical of yourself in the face of a competitive environment, such as the music industry, which provokes a certain type of self-criticism named ‘comparative self-criticism.’ Performance psychologists have found this type of self-criticism to be particularly harmful (especially in the sporting world).

“Performers, such as athletes, actors, dancers, and musicians, function within high pressure competitive and often hostile or critical environments. These individuals can be prone to a range of self-critical cognitions and behaviours which may make them susceptible to mental ill-health and psychological distress”

Walton, Osborne, Gilbert & Kirby, 2022. (Pg.2)

Turning self-criticism into self-compassion

As musicians, most of us are trained to become our own critique. While this is important for our development there is a distinct difference between being a critique and being self-critical. It is very easy in any situation to focus on the negative aspects of a performance such as things that you’re unhappy with or things that went wrong. It is equally challenging to not let this transfer into our perception of others, especially as our negative thoughts about ourselves are often influenced by a concern for what others might think of us.

“when self-criticism is harsh and combined with feelings of isolation and over-identification, a lack of self-compassion may remain problematic”

Yamaguchi, Kim & Akutsu, 2014. (Pg.66)

But here are a few questions for you to think about, most of which you might recognise from the instagram story quizzes.

• Do you think of a positive thing you did before you thought of a negative thing?

• Do you ever immediately think of an aspect of your performance you enjoyed?

• When you think of something you are unhappy with in a performance, do you evaluate what you can do differently next time, or what aspects to work on to help?

These are important questions to ask ourself, and a lot of you might find that the answer to all 3 or possibly 2 is no, or hardly ever. That is normal. But answering yes to those questions would mean you are successfully practicing self-compassion and working on building upon your knowledge and experiences in a positive and constructive way. Which I’m sure you’ll agree could be a much more beneficial practice in the long run.

Having said this, being a self-compassionate performer has been met with some hostility in the past - again especially amongst athletes - with some remarking that it is a ‘sign of weakness’ in competitive environments. But on the flip side, it is clear that more and more performers are seeing the positives in being self-compassionate over being self-critical for motivational and realistic goal attainment.

"studies have highlighted that some athletes view compassion as a weakness"

Walton, Osborne, Gilbert & Kirby, 2022. (Pg.7)

So how might we be able to turn self-criticism into self-compassion? It can easily feel like an impossible task. But really you can think of it as just a few tweaks to your pre-existing thought processes. As we said, it is important to be critical of what you do but it’s the order in which we think about things and what aspects we choose to focus on. It’s not necessarily about being lenient on yourself. Instead it’s more about showing yourself compassion whilst reflecting upon a performance, it’s about approaching any mistakes without hostility and resentment. It’s about turning that harsh inner voice into a friendly voice. It’s about not allowing that critical voice to speak to you in a way that you would never speak to anyone else. It’s about changing your thought processes when it comes to your mistakes or weaknesses and turning these into attainable goals to accomplish in order to help improve your self-efficacy.

“If the individual is experiencing self-criticism in relation to a disappointment, one way a practitioner can assess for a client’s capacity for compassion is by posing a hypothetical to them. That is, they can ask the performer, “if this was a close friend of yours, another performer who you cared about, what would you say to them? How would you feel about them?” To this question, more often than not, the individual is able to offer compassionate understanding and encouragement.”

Walton, Osborne, Gilbert & Kirby, 2022. (Pg.22)

Thank you for reading!

What happens now?

• Find the reference list on the sources page & additional information on the resources page on www.psychedtoperform.com

• If you have any thoughts leave a comment below

• Take a read of the October, November & December blogs on the blog page

• Get in touch with any topic ideas you’d find interesting

• Keep up to date by following the @psychedtoperform instagram page

• Come back in February for the next blog!