Building Resilience and Confidence in Singing: For the Overthinkers

One of the biggest challenges that singers face in their singing journey is overthinking. Whether you are a beginner who just took your first couple of voice lessons or a seasoned professional honing a new breathing technique for belting, learning a new skill can stir up many emotions: discomfort, judgment, and self-consciousness. 

The cycle usually starts when you learn about a new technique from your voice teacher at a voice lesson. You then get obsessed with perfecting the new technique you learned in your lesson, watching every video and reading every article about that technique, and trying very hard to implement all the knowledge you’ve acquired into your voice. However, the more you try, the more you fail. You then show up to the next voice lesson, defeated and scared, unable to execute any vocal command. You somehow ended up with less vocal confidence than when you first started.

I’ve been there many times. Trust me. It does not feel good to overthink, especially when you have an important audition or performance coming up. However, through the years I have come to the realization as a singer and voice teacher that the number one antidote to overthinking is… Resilience. Here are a few concepts that have helped me and my students get out of our own heads:

Abandon the Idea of a “Perfect” Technique

This is a hard one. While there are foundational principles about singing that I believe to be universal across genres and “correct”, the best technique for you is a technique that works. Sometimes we get bogged down by the notion that if we don’t do a technique perfectly or 100% correctly, then we are failing the technique. That is simply not true. The tiny incremental improvements you experience after practicing a tough vocal exercise poorly count just as much as the miraculous breakthroughs you experience during a voice lesson. In fact, it is because you have put in the hours doing tough vocal exercises poorly that you earn your breakthrough eventually. When you abandon the idea that you will only be a good singer if you acquire the “perfect” technique, you start striving for “better” technique instead, and your confidence will only grow.

Don’t Stop at the Slightest Obstacle!

When was the last time you stopped singing in practice mid-song because you felt that you were doing a bad job? Or gave up on a tough vocal exercise just because you cracked on the high note? Every time these scenarios happen, you are essentially training your body to give up. 

The truth is, many aspects of vocal technique require full commitment to work properly. When you train your body to give up halfway through a song or a vocal exercise, it makes it very hard to learn any new vocal technique. Yes, you will sometimes fail at a vocal exercise even when you fully commit, but you won’t know whether you are capable of doing it successfully without fully committing.

Repetition is a powerful tool… when used correctly!

Most overthinkers think that if they have the right information as singers, they can save time wasted on practicing the wrong way. While erroneous information can certainly cause anguish in one’s singing journey, we can sometimes underestimate the power of repetition.

Our bodies are extremely intelligent and adaptive. Sometimes when we are practicing a new technique and we encounter a failure, we immediately stop and make an adjustment. However, our bodies haven’t even had a chance to get a feel for the exercise yet. We haven’t given our bodies a fair chance to adapt and fix themselves, and we are already trying to change things. Sometimes, when we give our bodies enough repetition to an exercise, they learn by themselves how to improve without deliberate thought or adjustment. If you still encounter trouble with the vocal exercise after many repetitions, then you can think about making adjustments.

The Antidote to Overthinking: Mental Resilience

To be a confident singer and stop overthinking is to be a resilient singer. I encourage you to push through the fear, discomfort, and judgment and practice your mental resilience regularly.