Affirmations to heal and fortify your confidence as a musician

When my student logged on to her weekly lesson a few weeks ago, she was in tears. 

To protect her identity, I’ll call her “Anne." Anne is an exceptionally talented composer and flutist studying at a top conservatory in the United States as a freshman composition major. She takes supplemental flute lessons online with me. A dedicated composer since age 9, she worked obsessively on her composition portfolio and college applications during her high school years and her hard work paid off; she won admission to both of her dream schools, with scholarships. Within the conservatory she ultimately chose, she was the only undergraduate applicant accepted into the program for her year. In other words, she’s already seen a great deal of success in her young life. A fiercely creative and passionate girl, I had never seen her so distraught as I did in this lesson, halfway through her second semester at the school of her dreams.

I immediately told Anne to put her flute back in the case and I asked her to tell me what was the matter. Through her tears, she gave me reasons such as:

“I’m not good enough to be at my conservatory” 

“everyone is better than me”  

“my work isn’t good enough.” 

Perhaps you’ve said these same things to yourself. Perhaps you’re even saying these things to yourself right now. I understand–I’ve been there too. It's just that we care so much, right? As musicians, we are so innately connected–inseparable–from our careers, that our very sense of self begins to merge with our art and our accomplishments. So when these accomplishments or accolades fall short (or even if we merely perceive them to), we become our own personal punching bag of self-doubt–which unfortunately perpetuates further negative outcomes. This is a dangerous and painful cycle that no one deserves to be in. Our fear of failure and the resulting pain it would cause our person is the biggest barrier to our joy of making music and chasing our dreams.

What do flutists and ski jumpers have in common?

My father was a gifted and successful ski jumper before a bad fall ended his career in the 80s. If you don’t know much about ski jumping, it’s one of the most ridiculous and dangerous sports out there. You literally ski down a steep metal slide covered in ice, soar through the air going around 45 miles per hour, and then have to land on the incline of a mountain. If you do not land, you hit the mountain going 45 miles per hour–that’s like being in a car accident. It means you will almost certainly be knocked unconscious, perhaps broken bones and other serious injuries. People die. 

My father always said the best ski jumpers were the young ones, because they didn’t know what it was like to fall yet…they don’t know what actually happens when one falls, what it looks and feels like to hit that mountain. When my father experienced his fall, it ended his career–but not because he physically couldn’t jump anymore. After a stint in the hospital, he healed from the injuries just fine. No, it was the mental injury, an injury of fear, an invisible disabler of knowing what it feels like to fall. “After a fall like that, there’s always a bit of doubt in the back of your mind, and so I could never jump the same again,” he told me. 

So why am I talking about ski jumping? Because music is a tough field with a lot of emotional mountains–Anne had just had her first crash, can you remember yours? Perhaps you put your heart and soul into preparing for your first solo recital and you completely froze in front of all your friends and family. Perhaps you practiced 6 hours a day for the last five months for your dream orchestra audition, forked out $800 that you did not have for the flight, only to be sent home after the first round. Maybe you even won the orchestra audition but after a few months, the orchestra let you go, no reasons given, and the audition for your replacement is being advertised all over social media, to your humiliation. We have to smack into a lot of mountains, us musicians. Each time it leaves a painful emotional scar of doubt on our very sense of self, and it can change us forever, or worse, even hold us back from ever jumping again. But it doesn’t have to. 

“Well, someone had to win it. Why couldn’t it be me?” 

-Lorna McGee on winning the principal flute position with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra.

Now onto the practical part of this blog post. It is absolutely imperative for you, whether you are a young artist who hasn’t hit a mountain yet or one who is in recovery from previously sustained injuries to develop an iron-clad, resolute, unshakable sense of self-worth. Once you lose the ability to believe in yourself, all is lost, dear. Find it, and you will be unstoppable. 

A confident mindset is your destination. Of course many paths lead to Rome, but in my experience, affirmations are some of the simplest and most accessible techniques to heal and fortify your confidence as a musician–and you can start using them right now. We’ll go through two highly effective types of affirmations.

“Affirmations are like prescriptions for certain aspects of yourself you want to change.” - Jerry Frankhauser

Standard Affirmations (a.k.a. optimistic autosuggestions)

Affirmations are a very old concept. In the ancient days, they were called mantras. In the 70s, optimistic autosuggestions. Now, the “New Age” movement calls them positive affirmations. They are succinct, positive phrases intended to be repeatedly consumed, either by verbally reciting it, through writing it frequently, or visually by posting it in a prominent place (or better yet, all three). The idea is that, just like how you learn a difficult technical passage of music through repetition and by committing it to muscle memory, you can learn a belief through repetition and commit it to your subconscious. 

Well, does it work, you ask? Clearly it works very well with negative thoughts, that’s what tears down our confidence in the first place! Why not with positive thoughts then? But first-hand experience aside, the research also seems to support that affirmations do in fact help--there is a physical reaction in the brain that can be seen and measured through electroencephalography (EEG) when an individual performs an affirming task. 

This fascinating study from the University of Michigan tested affirmations' impact on three things: experiment 1 studied if affirmations can counteract stress caused by “threats” in the individual’s environment, experiment 2 tested if affirmations changed the participants’ perspectives regarding their reaction to disappointment, and experiment 3 studied if affirmations could reduce defensiveness. Here are the findings:

Experiment 1

“[T]hreats without affirmations have a large impact on people’s sense of self-worth. Self-affirmations broadened perspective, pushing people’s sense of self-worth to instead align with their broader self-views (i.e., dispositional self-esteem). This suggests that self-affirmations restore self-worth by “undoing” an otherwise constricted perspective under threat.”

Translation: Affirmations displayed the ability to open one’s mind and thus broaden one’s sense of self worth.

Experiment 2

“Pairwise comparisons showed that affirmed participants had greater perspective on the threat (M = 6.74) than did those in the control condition (M = 5.94), t(93) = 2.28, p = .03, d = .47, 95% CI = [0.10, 1.51]. Affirmed participants were not more likely to trivialize the threat (M = 3.91) compared with those in the control condition (M = 4.33), t(94) = −1.45, p > .15, d = −.30, 95% CI = [−0.99, 0.16].” 

Translation: Because the participants who had done the affirmation exercises had a more open mind, they were able to absorb failure without simply detaching (trivializing) from the problem. 

Experiment 3

“We predicted that the self-affirmation…would reduce defensiveness …This key contrast emerged…Specific comparisons found that those who received [no affirmations] showed greater defensiveness than those who self-affirmed only, t(168) = 1.99, p = .05, d = .31, 95% CI = [0.00, 1.23]; those who completed the perspective circle only, t(168) = 2.28, p = .02, d = .35 95% CI = [0.10, 1.36]; and those who completed both exercises, t(168) = 2.57, p = .01, d = .40, 95% CI = [0.19, 1.44]. Completing either exercise, or the two in combination, all reduced defensiveness to the same extent, ts < 1.”

Translation: Affirmations reduce defensiveness (which we all know is key to improving our craft!)

Putting it into practice: 20 affirmations for self-worth as a musician:

1. My music is a force for good. 

2. I am capable of achieving my dreams.

3. I am talented and creative. 

4. Whatever I can’t do now, I can learn. 

5. I am grateful I get to make music every day. 

6. I am making progress towards my dreams. 

7. I am confident in myself and my capabilities. 

8. I am improving every day.

9. Music is my birthright. 

10. I am where I need to be right now. 

11. My music heals myself and others.

12. I am building artistic opportunities for myself. 

13. I do my best to prepare so I can do my best. 

14. I am an artist. 

15. I am developing my craft. 

16. I have the ability to succeed. 

17. My music has the power to change someone’s world. 

18. The work I put in is an investment in myself.

19. Nothing I do is ever wasted and I am constantly learning. 

20. I believe in myself and my dreams. 

Read over this list, observe your gut feeling to each individual phrase, and take note of any particularly strong or negative reactions. Dark-side You might have some objections when you start brushing up against these festering inner wounds, but you’re going to have to touch them to clean and heal them. These objections could manifest in many forms. Perhaps you read, “I am an artist,” and a little voice inside you screams, “you phony!” Maybe you feel like you were punched in the gut when you read “music is my birthright.” Use these emotions like an internal compass, it will show you where your wounds are and which affirmations you need to spend the most time with. 

If you are new to affirmations, I suggest beginning by simply reciting them to yourself, preferably in front of a mirror. Repeat these as frequently as you can, but at least once a day. You may find you feel much better after just a week, but do not stop affirming yourself lest you lose your progress. I find affirmations are a little bit like emotional vitamins in this sense.

“If we can become one-tenth as good at positive self-talk as we are at negative self-talk, we will notice an enormous change.” -Julia Cameron

How to write your own Self-Affirmations

Self-affirmations like the standard affirmations above, but they can be even more effective because they cut right to the chase of what’s bothering you. To write self-affirmations, you must first hang out a bit with your Dark-side You. Listen to him or her. You don’t need to agree, you don’t need to argue, you only need to observe what he or she is saying. 

This is what Anne’s dark side was telling her:

“I’m not good enough to be at my conservatory” 

“everyone is better than me”  

“my work isn’t good enough.” 

I made Anne get out a piece of loose leaf and write these down. Then I made her cross out each statement and replace it with a positive (but true and believable) statement. Together, we came up with these:

I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶s̶e̶r̶v̶a̶t̶o̶r̶y̶

I got into my conservatory on my own merit. 

E̶v̶e̶r̶y̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶n̶ ̶m̶e̶

I am learning and growing every day. 

M̶y̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶g̶o̶o̶d̶ ̶e̶n̶o̶u̶g̶h̶

My skills are improving with every piece I write. 

It is important when you write your self-affirmations that you don’t write something that is positive but not true. If Anne wrote, say, “I am the greatest composer in all the universe, Bach could never,” well, that isn’t going to help because your brain knows it is an exaggerated statement and it will not feel authentic. When it doesn’t feel authentic, your brain won’t believe it no matter how many times you say it (imagine looking in the mirror chanting, “I am a potato chip. I am a potato chip.” You’d achieve similar results). There must be an authenticity and truth to what you are telling yourself or affirmations will never come to anything–your brain is not easily fooled, it’s best not to try. Therefore, it is much better to write something like, “I am learning and growing every day.” This is positive, believable, measurable, and above all, true. 

So listen to your negative self-talk. What phrases keep darkening your mental doorstep? Especially take listen before you go into a stressful lesson, audition, or performance. Get a designated piece of paper and put it in your gig or school bag, or somewhere where you can access it easily. Take the next three days to just observe. Write down every negative thought that accosts your peace as it comes to you. You will likely hear many of the same or similar phrases over and over again. Then, consolidate these sabotaging themes, cross each one out (the ceremony of this is important!), and write a positive, true, replacement in its stead. Use the Standard Affirmations for inspiration if you get stuck. The results are your new affirmations - write them often, post these somewhere prominent, say them out loud whenever you can. 

“These really worked for me,” Anne told me after using her self-affirmations for two weeks. At first a skeptic, she now keeps her sheet posted on her mirror and has added many new affirmations to her list.  Her mood was a night and day difference from two lessons ago–she was even willing to “jump” again by submitting one of her latest compositions to a competition call. 

These techniques worked really well for many of my other students and for me too. I’m confident it will help you. 

Sending joy 🧡