I just had something happen that shook my self confidence and interrupted my song writing flow and I wanting to jot down a little about my experience just in case it may someday help someone else.

After the emotionally difficult incident, at first I just sat with it for a while and tried to distract myself, mostly just feeling bad.  Then I decided I couldn’t take it anymore.  Mostly because I couldn’t concentrate on anything I was trying to distract myself with.  I decided I might as well try to actively make myself feel better.  After all, I knew that if I did nothing, I definitely wouldn’t start feeling better very soon.  So I opened up my text editor and I started writing.

I wrote down how I felt and what I was thinking while I was feeling bad. I wrote about the pain I was feeling.  I wrote about acceptance of the things that shook my confidence.   I did the scary deed and explored my inner world looking directly at the things that hurt and then describing those things in words.

Then I made myself start writing what I wanted to be thinking and feeling.    I wrote about the real, good things that I omitted when I was tearing myself down.  I know that not only am I'm flawed, but I accept and work on those flaws actively.  When you are feeling bad about yourself, it’s easy to forget about the great, amazing things about you.  I even wrote down positive affirmations, taking care to really feel what I was writing and not just think it.

So I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote, until I could feel that I was starting to see a bigger picture and much to my relief my confidence and desire to make music started to return.  I’m still a little raw from the experience, but I’m moving forward.  It’s nice to know that, though it sometimes very hard, I can take direct action to help myself move forward and feel better when I’m beaten down emotionally and feel hurt and a little lost.

Cheers!