Looking out the window from our new home I feel grateful and I wonder what exactly I did right to deserve (or simply attain) this. I find the answer ‘luck’ unsatisfying and would rather feel I have some influence over it all. I think I’ve spotted a kind of pattern…
I measure my self esteem by my ability as a musician – not by my looks, bank balance or even (worryingly perhaps) by how I treat others. The biggest determinant in how I feel about myself is how skilled and truthful a creator I judge myself to be. And every time I challenge myself to achieve something closer to my ideal, my self esteem rises.
But something else happens too. Without fail, every time I record something new, or perform a new live set, other ‘gifts’ pop up in my life. The very first time I recorded a demo in a studio, a couple of weeks later I found myself on a date with my partner Alison . Up ’till then she’d shown no interest in pursuing anything more than a passing friendship. When I finished recording my first album, a job opportunity appeared from nowhere, allowing me to stay here in Italy permanently. And so I’m hardly surprised, a week after recording an EP where I pushed my playing and singing to another level – live on camera, I find myself siting in a deckchair on a patio in the sun writing this. Occasionally I glance up at the view pictured…
But I’m not writing this just to show off all the great stuff going on in my life right now. What if my pattern that I identified actually held true for us all? What if you can:
- identify the benchmark by which you judge your own self worth
- work to improve yourself by that criteria
- reap the benefits brought by greater self esteem
After all, we all know what happens in a job interview or a date if you are simply, calmly confident as opposed to timid and nervous. I wonder how that effects the feedback we get from our lives as a whole in every moment?
The thing that would make the biggest difference to improving my self esteem right now is to improve my trumpet playing so I’m confident enough to do it in public. I wonder what knock-on-effects will come from doing that…
