THE SCARIEST MOMENT IN SONGWRITING

I believe that the scariest moment for any profession is the moment before you start. And the exact same goes for songwriting too. Most of us have voices that play in our heads. Those voices often tell us that the task at hand “can’t be done”. “You aren’t good enough”. “You can’t handle this”. “Songwriting is not something you can just do if you aren’t born with it”. You know the drill. It is the rare person who has never heard those voices. The negative self-talk keeps us from starting. If you don’t start, or don’t try, then you can’t fail. Or so “they” tell us. So, we drift through life taking the easy road because these nameless voices don’t believe in us. When you think about it, it seems silly, doesn’t it? Letting nameless, internal voices change the course of our lives? And giving up on something we are dying to do because we can’t summon the courage to just give it a try. And this is not just about songwriting. In fact for anything in life, whenever we want to start something new, we hear voices telling us that it is impossible and it scary and this and that. And they only shut up when we get into it, start doing what we wanted to do and start getting results. Show the voices “who the boss is”.

I’ve discovered that the best way to defeat the voices is to start. If you overcome the “scary” moment at very beginning of your writing process, you are halfway to the victory. The only group that succeeds in anything is the group that starts instead of letting the voices to defeat them. The only writers who ever get cuts are the ones who step out on the limb and play their songs for people. The ones who start writing and are not afraid of showing their craft to people. They are confident and this confidence is the greatest gift they could possibly ask for, specially when the confidence is based on some great songs to back them up. There’s no way around it. If you have some dream you would love to chase, but you haven’t because the voices keep telling you that you will fail, I beg you to start. Try. Give it a shot.
 
Trying and failing is easier to live with than never trying at all. I’ve done it both ways. I have lots of failures. I emphasis on “lots of failures” because it really had been more than you can imagine. Lots of rejection. But the rejection doesn’t sting like the pain of knowing that I never got up the courage to try. I get rejected, I failed, I learn my lesson, I get up and I try again. And this loop is going on until I win and get to the next level and I am not afraid of going through this very same loop again in the next level of my career. My biggest regrets in life are not things that I tried and failed. They are things I never tried at all. If you want to do something. If you have a dream tugging on your heart. If you believe that you have something to say that is worthy for others to heart. Start. Just start. Don’t wait until the time is right.
 
The voices will convince you that the time is never right. But you can overcome. Don’t forget that the same voices will tell you lots of other things to that most of them are not true. You can take one baby steps in the direction of your dream. And, by starting, you have already won the battle against those voice. That’s already a big step. You have entered the group from which all the winners are chosen. And you have kicked regret to the curb. None of us will succeed at everything we try and even the things we will succeed, we will almost never win it with our first try. It takes time, it takes countless hours of practice and numerous occasions of failure and rejection but if we keep being strong enough, we will win eventually. But trying is the key and the first step of living abundantly and being at peace with why you are here and who you are. I believe that with all of my heart, because I truly experienced it will every single cell in my body.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with more than 18 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has produced more than 3,000 and written more than 4,800 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.