The Pendulum Of Fear Vs Confidence In The Music Industry

by Cari Cole

Last week I was talking about childhood (narcissistic) wounding and how it shoots our self-esteem to shreds. But it’s not just our childhoods.
The industry will also give us a beating, if we don’t know our core. Once you’re in the music business, the industry starts to tell you what to do — if you haven’t developed a strong sense of your identity as an artist, your genre, your style, your inner true authentic voice, it can become very confusing when you do start to work in the industry. Now, you may not have it all figured out but if you haven’t really worked toward that, well… you may be in trouble.

I’ve seen a lot of artists go down the wrong road or start listening to advice outside of them that is incorrect — in terms of how they need to fight for what they believe in. As artists, you need to learn to be vulnerable and open, but also to start to build a stronger core or center.

What keeps many artists from doing that is that fear thing again — fear that they’re not going to be good enough, fear that they’re not love-able, fear because they’ve had these narcissistic childhood wounds. Fear that they can’t make it in the BIG unknown. Very scary.

I have students in my studio facing this all the time. Now most people don’t want to admit to any insecurity and they try to cover it. But, if they’re not honest about it they don’t get the help they need. That’s part of what I work with my students. We work on voice, we work on performance, we work on songs. However, without the facing of fears and strengthening your identity and confidence, you are not ready to thrive in the music industry. So, how about you? Need to do some work? Do you recognize yourself here?