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Musician's Guide to Coping With Failure

It's scary to know that as a musician, you are destined to fail over, and over, and over again. (No wonder so many aspiring musicians suffer from stage fright!) The question is, how do you know when to quit? How do you know which failure is the failure?

Consider this:

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Most people would have lost all hope for a professional basketball career at this point. Michael instead went on to become one of the greatest players of all time.
Katy Perry was dropped by three record labels before the age of 24. Most people would call it quits around this point...but upon her debut from Capitol, she released a song that spent 7 weeks atop the billboard 100 chart, and achieved international success.
When Thomas Edison was trying to create what we call the light bulb, he "failed" over 10,000 times. In response to this, he just said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." And I think we all know how that story ended.

So back to my main question: When do you know to just call it quits?

Never.

Chances are, you will find yourself down-and-out many times, as every musician does, but the only way you can actually fail is if you say "I quit."

My advice:

Stop thinking of failure as a bad thing! Failure is a gift, it's a learning experience. Honestly, no one ever learns anything from success; everything you have ever learned in your life, you have learned from your mistakes.

People have this misconception that they need to learn exactly what to do, and by some crazy form of chance if they get it right they will succeed-- totally the wrong mindset. To succeed, you have to learn all the things you shouldn't do, and the only way to learn that is by making mistakes. You will need to take risks, stretch the limits, and even embarrass yourself if you want to grow as a musician.

Failure makes you wise, success makes you arrogant.

So don't ever let failure you get you down for too long. Form a support system to build yourself up every time you fail-- find friends to talk to, or just anything to inspire yourself again. Visualize where you know you will end up, and the failures don't seem so bad.

What every successful musician has in common:

Each and every successful woman or man has failed, several times-- more times than you can imagine. The thing is, we just never hear about their failures, because regardless of how many times someone fails, they only need to succeed once (not a bad deal if you ask me). Do a little bit of research on your idols, I assure you that if you look hard enough, you will start to see the failure stories pop up. This is a common trait among successful people, this perseverance to keep going on despite the obvious, and often embarrassing failures.

Some people would call this characteristic stupidity ("you're really going to keep trying after all of this?!"), but I question you this: how many of those people, who tell you to stop trying, can call themselves a success? I assure you the number is absolutely zero, because every successful person knows that never giving up is the only way to become successful.

And vice versa- giving up is the only way you can fail. It's all in your hands, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on how much responsibility you want to have over your life. For me, it's a sense of comfort: I have control over my success as a musician, I have control over everything. For some people, this is daunting, but that's okay too, because those who truly desire success will rise to the challenge.

One more thing: there is no such thing as the one big break. Everyone puts all this emphasis on some mystical one moment in your life that will define you as a musician-- it doesn't exist. Opportunities come in an endless stream for those willing to look for them, so don't get caught up in trying to find that one performance where everything will come together. It just puts unnecessary pressure on yourself to be completely perfect!

Keep failing, and love every minute of it. If everyone loved everything you tried, life would get so boring!

A great video: (It's only a minute long. Watch it!)

Feedback? Questions? Email me: Nehal@Musicians-Make-It.com

More articles on music success:

Visualization- The most valuable success tool

Want to be a successful musician? Think big.- You aren't average, but people will try to make you think you are. Don't let them hold you back from following your dreams-- every famous musician started out just like you.

Have you failed as a musician?- At what point do you just give up and "call it quits"?