While we don't want to resign ourselves to our current level of skill, nor can we realistically assume that we will ever be our very own, overly harsh, and unrealistic state of "perfect". By definition, perfection is a state of completeness or flawlessness, and there is nothing in the universe that is truly flawless. Sure you may look at a celebrity in a magazine and say to yourself, "oh look at her flawless figure", or "man I wish I looked like that", some of you may even say, "I wish I sounded like [x,y,z]". You must find the beauty in yourself. All these celebrities, might have the appearance of perfection, but that's never really the case. Imagine having your day intruded and photographed every time you decide to go for a coffee, what's worse, if you don't put your makeup on before you go, then you've got some incurable illness, or if you're a little bloated, then Boom, your teeny tiny size8 body is clearly pregnant! I think I'll stick with my problems, those ones would annoy me.
Since there is no one out there that is perfect, has the perfect life, the perfect this, and the perfect that, then why would you put that pressure on yourself? No really? Why are you sooo unbelievably different from the other 7 Billion people on the planet, that you and you alone MUST be perfect? Ok, that sounds harsh, but it's true, none of us has everything we want, and if we did, where would our challenges lie? Challenge is part of the joy of living, so lap every single one up with glee!
Now, in our singing lessons, we try to set reasonable goals every term with students so that they can see a realistic progress. It is not realistic to assume that someone who cannot pitch a single note, is going to be the next Robbie Williams, auto tune is good, but it's not THAT good. If you're struggling with your pitch, your goal will be to combat that, and over time, you will succeed! If you're looking 8 stages down your path, and beating yourself up for not reaching that stage, then of course you're going to feel deflated, or low about it. Stick to what's in front of you and take it in nice small consumable chunks.
Remember, what you put in, will affect what you get out. If you don't practise your exercises, developing your techniques and combatting nerves, then you will not achieve the goals you set for yourself, and a vicious descending cycle will begin. Only with effort will you break through and when you succeed, it feels good.
So, instead of hearing yourself sing and assume that if you don't sound like Beyonce, you're totally "wrong", start thinking about what you've done right, what bits were good? What bits put a smile on your face, I bet it was when you weren't trying so hard to be "perfect"!
