Confronting Unhelpful Self-Judgement

So, you’re deep into your practice session, and you’ve just sung through your entire song, beginning to end. Before you can even recover your breath, you announce to the empty room, “Ugh, that was terrible. I really suck. Maybe I should give up.” It might feel like a perfectly natural response to making mistakes.

Many singers struggle with being overly self-critical. Self-judgement may come from a good place, a place of wanting to improve, but it can sometimes become our biggest hurdle.

I consider myself something of an aficionado of self-judgment. I have years of experience in the field, *wink*. I’d love to share a practical technique that has been working for me when my conclusions veer into destructive territory.

Step 1: Is the judgment helpful to my goal?

If I notice myself uttering the judgment above, the first thing I’ll do is ask if the judgment is helping me or hurting me. In this case, my goal is to improve at singing. “That was terrible, I suck, I should give up,” doesn’t help me achieve my goal. So we can safely label this as an unhelpful judgment. An example of a helpful judgment might be, “I’m not ready to sing this one song for my boyfriend. I’ll sing this other one instead.” Some judgments help us make decisions in our best interests; other judgments don’t.

Step 2: Replace judgment with how I really feel

So I’ve established that my original judgement is unhelpful. The next thing I’ll do is replace my judgment with a statement of preference. An example might be, “I’ve worked so hard on this song, I wish it were more consistent.” Who hasn’t had that experience? It’s a very reasonable frustration. I will go ahead and feel frustrated or disappointed or sad. Those feelings will pass.

Step 3: Focus on the facts

If the negative judgment still persists in my mind, I’ll try to replace my judgment with a statement of fact. Maybe: “The beginning wasn’t in the right register and I missed the high note at the end.” Usually, by this point, I’m getting a clearer picture, and I’m feeling a shift in my thinking. It was actually just a few notes that didn’t come out how I wanted them to. I was ready to quit singing over a few notes. 

Don’t be too surprised if you find your statement of fact is something seemingly out of left field. “That was terrible, I suck,” might get replaced with, “My brother sang this song last weekend and I was so impressed.” That kind of realization can really break the spell. And then I find myself marveling: “But isn’t it wonderful my brother sings so beautifully?” Sometimes I almost giggle when I see the seed of my original, harsh self-judgment turn into admiration for someone else, especially someone I love.

Patience is key!

Unhelpful self-judgment can be really painful and can make practice something you avoid altogether. Use this tool to establish a non- or less-judgmental stance. Be patient with yourself, and if the judgment persists, try not to judge yourself for judging yourself. It sounds funny, but it certainly happens.

I think you’ll find practice doesn’t have to be painful. It can just be practice.