Solving as an Antidote
Spring Moon at Ninomiya Beach, 1931, Hasui Kawasaki
Do you ever experience predictive nervousness when you’re preparing for something big? Maybe it’s a performance, a speech, a big exam, or a difficult conversation. Something that you find yourself imagining in detail, when suddenly you’re caught by the fear of what it will feel like to be observed in the moment…
I experience this when preparing for performances as a flash of clarity. A clarity that’s uncomfortable but undeniable. A sudden sense that you are being observed as the feeling of becoming unmoored in the musical line or technique comes forward. If you allow the brain to ride this wave of uncomfortable lucidity you could easily slide into the abyss that is fear. Fear of being seen, of making a mistake, of being unprepared, of being lost.
When I was younger, I didn’t know how to avoid this unpleasant ride. I didn’t know that there was an option to step up to the drop off and observe the slide without going down it. Over and over again I found myself in the spiral of running something difficult over and over and over to prove that I could do it without messing up. I would loop ad nauseam, proving, inevitably, that I could not in fact do this difficult thing repeatedly. The fear was valid. I should simply give in.
This spiral can happen many different ways: visualizing the worst, imagining what others think of us, imagining everything we won’t achieve, questioning the point of our efforts. At its worst, this corkscrew twists up all of our fears and blinds us to reality, sometimes leading us to give up much too soon.
It was only in recent years that I realized the unpleasantness of this experience of clarity could also be productive and actionable.
It’s not news that the things that make us uncomfortable often point to what we need - there is a plethora of cheesy quotes available on the internet about just that. But the real magic of using our discomfort comes from not shutting down the queasy, uncomfortable feelings of knowing you’re on to something with blind positivity. This is both challenging and important, possible only with intentional effort.
For most of us, the gut reaction to facing or avoiding our fears looks like giving it just enough attention to know we can survive it, even though it feels as if we might die in the process (re-enter the scene of younger me repeating a terrifying passage over and over and over to prove I would live through it even though it certainly never felt like I would).
What if we the answer was to actually lean into the very root of our self-conscious realizations? To find a pivot point in the awkwardness and use it as the sturdy support for moving through whatever it is that triggers our sense of awareness to rest outside of ourselves?
In application, this process of leaning in can be both physical and mental, one or the other, or a balance of both depending on what you are dealing with. If you are finding that your mind is jumping away from the page or the act of playing when you reach something hard, perhaps the solution that allows you to lean on the discomfort is training your eyes not to jump away or ahead by playing slowly and focusing on seeing what is difficult that you normally avoid looking at it. Maybe you get to know it well enough that you can see the image of the notes when you close your eyes. Instead of relying on your vision in the moment, you can store the image mentally and help override what happens to your reading in real time.
If you are struggling with the physicality of a difficult passage, knowing the line well enough to see and hear it without the page may still give you confidence. You might also need to truly lean in to the physical act. That can look like understanding the correct balance of the instrument between your right to left hand to allow your fingers to move freely, correlating where your air is directed in the passage with how your fingers land on the note they want to avoid, removing any unnecessary movements, or becoming comfortable enough with something awkward that you truly know what allows you to successfully execute the combination.
In the process of discovering what mental and physical actions will move us through our discomfort, we still may not remove it entirely. We will, however, overlay what sent us spiraling in the first place with new sensations and touchstones. Instead of discomfort occupying the primary place in our view, our mind and body is now occupied with the specifics of what we are doing in this very distinct and singular moment.
Where our instinct is to be avoidant, the answer is not blind repetition or hope but detail. We find the detail through the process of solving as opposed to doing. Doing feeds the sense that something can still go wrong, that judgements will still be made by the audience we’re imagining. Solving, however, trains us in repeatable thoughts and actions - neural pathways we can strengthen and trust that are independent of how we feel.
Simply repeating things that make us feel uncomfortable, nervous, or unprepared can’t change or eliminate those feelings. Solving as much as we can about what gives us these feelings won’t change or eliminate them either, but it will teach us to co-exist with them. If we do this enough, it can teach us to use our discomfort as a foundation to finding ease in challenging tasks and moments, and in ourselves.
I still experience those flashes of worry, fear, and discomfort, but now I know that they can be helpful - illuminating exactly what needs my attention and solving skills so that those places can become pillars of security. I’ve learned to lean on where I waver and predict failure and trust the process of solving, and I believe you can, too.