Battling The Negative Voice In Your Head

Last sunday night, I was lying in my bed, it was 3am. I had, had one of the most intense weeks. It was my first week back at work, I spent the weekend catching up with old friends and I worked on finalizing some recordings I’d worked on. Sound like a familar story to you? I was exhasted. 

I remember lying there thinking about how tired I was and how much I wanted to sleep. But what was also running through my mind was band practice the next morning - and I was getting annoyed at myself becuase I wasn’t prepared. 

I told myself:

“You should cancel band practice, you need to rest and you’re unprepared. Band practice is never good if you’re unprepared.” 

But I knew that if I canceled band practice there was no way that we’ll be able to play the gig that I had coming up.

and I told myself:

“Yeah, its probably best you cancel your gig, you’re unprepared and you don’t want to play a gig that you’ll be really shit at and you don’t want to give an unconvincing performance.”

And I started to get really upset, because I really wanted to perform this gig. The gig was for an event called The Reverb Tour, which is a new event in Brisbane Australia that supports young, and upcoming musicians. My band had been given the opportunity to open the tour and it was for something that I believed in with all my heart!

I sat up in bed and I started writing out ideas for my set - like a blueprint of song order, how I want things to sound, the progression between songs, the mood, the atmosphere, the lighting effects, etc.

And every time I wrote an idea, the voice inside of me would say:

- No, that won’t work,

- No, you won’t be able to pull that off, you only have one week

- No, you don’t have enough time to create this set

- No, that’s a shit idea you’re not good enough

And for a second, I took a step back and I realised what I was doing to myself. I was writing down my creative ideas and with everyone I wrote I was pulling myself down and harshly critiquing myself.

At that moment I said to myself, I’ve had enough. And I’m going to make this work. I’m going to perform this gig no matter what. And I’m going to actively stop listening to the negative voice in my head.

I started writing all my ideas down and saying, yes I can do that! yes that will work! yes that will be amazing! and YES Im going to make this happen.

I got out of bed, when downstairs to my studio and started carving out and creating my set in the process of getting ready for band practise. I just did it. I didn’t think about it and I drowned out the negative voice and pushed it aside.

I wanted to share this process of what goes on when I create something because this voice is always there, and I always have to confront it. I think that many people, creative or not, have this voice in their head which stops us from living the life we always dreamed of living. My dream is to make great music that reaches out and connects with peple and to perform music live as my main income source. And it’s been an intense process my entire life to get to be able to do that. 

I’ve had to confront not only this voice but also some negative people in my life that say things to me like, ‘no you won’t be able to make music for a living, there isn’t any money in music - there’s no career opportunities.’ But, the most hurtful thing that was said to me, recently as well, was by someone that I love very much who said: “There’s no life in music.” 

And It made me want to cry. Because to me music is life. Music is MY life. And to hear that, confronted everything that I believe in and everything I stand for. 

Music is life. Music is love. Music is connection. I believe this with all my heart.

On the 25th of Janurary, alsongside my band we performed at the Reverb Tour which was hosted at the amazing at the Saint John’s Cathedral in Brisbane City, I have never been more proud of myself and of my band. We took my ideas, selected the best ones, worked them through and put them into practise… and it worked! There were things I can learn from last night, things that went wrong, but that’s part of the process. 

I’m taking steps forward to create bigger and better live shows and to push myself and my live show even further. Critiquing and improving is part of the process.

But I learnt a very important lesson this week. If you water a flower you can watch it grow and it will turn into something beautiful. But if you stomp on it and project your negativity onto that flower it might die and you might damage your heart and your creativity in the process.  

Also, if someone in your life is projecting negativity onto your creative spirit then you have to ignore them. Ignore everything that they ever said to you. Because if you hear their voice for too long they might end up becoming the voice inside of your head that says, “you can’t…you’re not good enough.”

Despite everything, we have to listen to the voice inside of us that says ‘you can’ and the more we listen to that voice the more you will be able to achieve what is in your heart…

Anyway, if you had anything you’d like to contribute about your own creative process, about how you battle your negative thoughts, share it in the comment section below. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Here’s some footage from the Reverb Show. 

If you’d like to find out more about the Reverb Tour and if you’re a young musician that wants to be involved, click here to find out more about that. 

Hope you enjoyed the read!

Stephen Carmichael

This post was written by Stephen Carmichael. Carmichael is a 23 year old musician and producer from Brisbane. You can find more about his music on his website or you can connect with him on youtube or facebook. 

REVERB

Reverb is a three week intensive program for young musicians, where they can get training from some of Queensland’s best musicians and industry professionals, record and produce an original song and tour South East Queensland, all in less than one month. This program is founded by Chris Richards.