Our choir director advises us to sing confidently even when we are not hitting the right notes. Otherwise she cannot hear us. She will not know when we are off-key so she is unable to provide feedback to help us learn to sing.

It is a choir for people who believed we could not sing often based on the toxic criticism of music teachers and other influential adults in our past history. It is ironic that we are asked to highlight the very mistakes that led to our limiting belief.

The difference is that our choir director views mistakes simply as opportunities for learning and not as evidence for handing down a life sentence of limited ability. She believes we can sing better and we are invited to believe that too.

She also wants us to learn confidence while we learn to sing. Without confidence it does not matter how well we sing. When we sing timidity no one can hear us anyway.

It is interesting to see that confidence and ability do not develop in exact proportion to one another. I sing a little better but I am a lot more confident about singing. I believe that with practice, I will continue to improve as with just about anything.

Confidence and improved ability do interact. As we learn, we become more confident. As we become more confident, we dare to learn more in whatever the challenge may be.

We are out-of-balance when we lack confidence to “sing out” even when we are on key and when we are over-confident. We create preventable mistakes rather than simply learning from the inevitable mistakes that happen naturally when learning anything new.

Interestingly, the latter can happen when we sing too loud. Good singing is not loud singing. It is confident singing. Volume alone does not make a singer or a success story in any endeavor.

Making your presence known in a choir, or in life generally, requires no more than the necessary volume. Otherwise, it is over-confidence or perhaps a case of compensation for limitations. As they say in Texas, “all hat and no cattle.”

While confidence is fostered by increasing ability, there is also a measure required to step into new experiences. It may emerge from a conscious attitude that mistakes make learning anything more interesting. Or simply that the experience is attractive and any thoughts about limited abilities are of little concern. Both are probably at the core of an “adventuresome” person.

In our work we have often suggested new and different experiences that people might consider pursuing to enrich their lives. Not uncommonly, the immediate response has been, “I don’t know how to do that.” The comment reflects of an apparent lack of confidence based on a limiting belief about ability and concern about making blunders.

“You learn by doing” we advised, “how could you know how to do something you have never done before? As you learn to do it, your picture of the experience and of yourself will very likely change in a good way.” That advice is also useful self-talk.

Our granddaughter Sullivan is game to try most new experiences. I consider her to be adventuresome. She does not have or need a well-articulated philosophy about life and learning. She simply agrees to most invitations unencumbered by limiting beliefs. I think that being adventuresome will provide her with a measure of immunity to the inevitable insensitivities she will encounter.

I see my own confidence as a complex mix. It includes an understanding of the inevitability and value of mistakes, seeing myself making progress, and having faith that I will continue to improve as a normal and expected aspect of the human condition providing that I persist.

This is the “tipping point” of any creative process. I know when I have reached that point in any experience because I become committed to it. This is our third consecutive year in the choir. It is quite an adventure.

© C O P Y R I G H T   2 0 0 9.  Gary Holdgrafer ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.