When you’re a musician and you put yourself in a situation where you’re playing with other people, you put yourself out there, you go to play gigs. It’s very common for musicians to fill what is called imposter syndrome. This is where you feel like you’re not good enough you feel like you pretending, you feel like you’re just getting away with it. And I can really knock someone’s confidence especially if someone gives be less than good comment. Or it can knock your confidence in a way where you don’t want to form again for a long time. The different reasons why someone might suffer from imposter syndrome. It might be because you are a Perfectionist.

Being a Perfectionist

When you’re a perfectionist you’re expecting a level of execution which is near impossible. And you always feel like you’re not going to be good enough. This often comes from childhood where you might have been overly criticised by parents, or compare to peers. And it can create a perfectionist mindset in you. This kind of mindset it makes it very difficult to get rid of impostor syndrome. One advice I house if you do you have this it’s just to go out there and accept 80% of your level perfection. If you think 80% is good enough than that will make you feel a lot Proud of you accomplishments rather than  feeling like you’re not good enough. 

Understanding music

Another reason why people get imposter syndrome is because they don’t actually understand what they’re playing. This is very common in musicianship especially when people are classically trained or learnt from YouTube. You feel like a copycat because what you know how to play this copied rather than understanding the composition and the musical meaning mind the songs. For example if you learn from YouTube you often learn chords like the E shape or the A shape on the guitar rather than learning their actual chord names. So when you go to play with other people and they asked you to play son chords you might get lost and therefore you might get confuse and that’s what’s going To make you feel like a fraud. 

To combat this basic things you can do is learn music theory for your instrument and also learn how to communicate with other musicians.

Once you’ve worked on these things it will help you to feel a lot more confident on your instrument and hope you get rid of what is called imposter syndrome. And don’t worry a lot of people go through this and it might happen at different times for you in different occasions. But once you identify what it is then you can come past it and feel more confident with your musicianship. …

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