Is Self-Doubt Part of the Process?

compmom
Fri, 03 Aug 2018 15:52:52 +0000

Love glassharmonica’s take on spin-doctoring, which goes on at places like Harvard all the time. It’s not cool to work hard, but of course it’s not cool to fail either, so the common pose is to succeed without the appearance of working.

I think “imposter syndrome” can happen to people with natural talent . It is almost a guilt thing. If you are born with a talent, of course you have to work hard to make things happen, but at the early stages, success may come too easily. After many years of very hard work, it tends to dissipate.

We really do all come from different contexts. This is an interesting thread though with very different kinds of musical pursuits, so it is true there may not be a lot of overlap. Self doubt in the context of a young musician auditioning or attending a high level music program is very different from the self-doubt of a composer sitting alone wondering if an idea has really worked. So sorry for introducing the topic of apples when oranges were under discussion!

Whatever the musical area of study, I do think that self-doubt eases after many years of work, if the talent is there.