Latest / Wanzology / Fear Is The Mind Killer
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- Fear Is The Mind Killer Yum bum, bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum bummmmm-mah!! Hi!! Welcome! Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! I'm your host, The Wanz, coming to you live and direct from the upper left-hand corner of the United States of America. Yeah!! How you doing? You good? Everybody in your world good? If not, I hope they feel better. If you're not doing good, it's gonna change, just hang in there! Hang in there!! It's been a very, very, very, very busy time. Ooh, Lord. I was part of the Seattle Film Festival's award ceremony this past weekend, which was very interesting; I've never been part of something like that before, but I had done a narration for a film called We Ride Why. It's a documentary, pretty fascinating film. When you're a fish out of water, it's interesting because you're seeing other people talking to each other, socializing, and the things that they're talking about, you don't really have any experience with. There were a lot of filmmakers there. I'm not a filmmaker. I'm a singer-songwriter. I'm a performer. I, I don't direct, you know, and I don't produce, and I don't edit, and all the other things that go into making a film. The youngest participants were, like, 14, and their project was pretty amazing for 14-year-olds. I came away from the whole process feeling, "Wow, this is really cool. I'm really glad that I came." So what does that have to do with WANZOLOGY topic? It's this, during the ceremony, feeling like a fly on the wall in a unfamiliar environment... Well, let's go back. The film that I narrated won for Best Documentary. To watch my friend go up and accept the award was very, very humbling, because he poured his heart and soul into the storytelling and every facet of the creation process. They sent me a script and described what they wanted. I read it, made a couple of changes, and that was it, I was done. But he complimented me for my work even though I felt, you know, I didn't really do much. It hit me that there I go again, thinking that I'm not what people see. The reason that I struggle with that, it's the basis of my depression. It's like people say what they see when they see me, and when I go home and look in the mirror, I don't really see who they're talking about. You ever had that feeling where people will either downplay or they'll oversell you and give you all these compliments and you're like, "Wow, what did I do to deserve this?" Or they'll just rip the shreds out of you and tear you down and you go, "Geez, what did I do to deserve this?" Both of those reactions are based on fear. One of my favorite movies ever is the first version of Dune, where Kyle MacLachlan plays Paul. That came out in like 1984, '85, something like that. Toto did the soundtrack…I was gonna love it anyway!! But in there, there's a portion where he's in a fight and he's trying to control himself. He's trying to keep his wits about him, and he says, "I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." And that phrase has stuck with me. This is the battle that I go through constantly as a creative, as a human who is trying to be the best human he can be, maybe be a little better than he was yesterday. The struggle of getting past fear can sometimes be daunting. I don't know about you, all I can talk about is my experience. Maybe you can relate, maybe you can't. But I tell you, there are some days where it's just rough. Rough, rough, rough trying to get myself motivated to attempt to get things accomplished. I'm working on learning more songs on the guitar. I'm working on booking myself as a solo act, like a casual is what I call them, but I know I'm not the best guitar player in the world, best acoustic guitar player that is, and I know I'm not the best singer in the world. This is where fear enters in That little voice. Actually, it's a big voice. It's not the little voice, it's the big voice! "Man, you can't sing this. You only wish you were as good as Lou Rawls. You only can hope to be as good as this person or that person." And then you sit down to practice, and your practice doesn't go so well, or you forget the words to a song and your brain just goes sideways. That's fear. Fear does that. Fear does not let us be human. We're human beings, gonna make mistakes. “How else are we gonna learn if we don't make mistakes? Remember, one and one is two, two and two is five! Oops!” Remember, you have to make mistakes in order to learn If you don't think that you'll ever make mistakes, you'll never learn anything. At least that's the way I see it. So I dive deep into my consciousness trying to find that little worm of fear. Why are you here? I find it and I ask it, "Why? Why are you here?" And it says, "Don't go getting all full of yourself because there's always gonna be somebody better than you," just like my dad always told me. "Son, there's always gonna be somebody who's bigger than you, somebody who's stronger than you, somebody who's smarter than you, someone who's just plain better than you." Thanks, thanks for the warning. One thing he never taught me was how to handle it. How do you handle being in a position where you feel inadequate compared to others that you're with? You ever go out dancing? You go out dancing and you see somebody who wants to dance, and you go up and you ask them, "You wanna go and have a dance?" And they actually say, “Yes!” and you're walking slowly, very slowly to the dance floor, and you turn and face that person, and when you look at them and they look at you, all of a sudden all control of your motor skills are in question. “Do I actually remember how to dance?” Then, you know, you forget about it because you let the music take over and it's over. How about that time you really, really, really wanted to talk to someone and you didn't really know how to get their attention? They were a stranger to you. How do you introduce yourself? "Hi, my name's Jeff. Can I talk to you for a minute?" Yeah, it works like that sometimes. Fear is the mind killer. It makes up all these fantasies about what's possible. Not what's going to happen, but what's possible in any given situation you're trying to, quote-unquote, forecast or prepare yourself for. Job interview. You go to a job interview and you go in, you feel like a million bucks, and you come out feeling like 25 cents because you were asked questions and you weren't prepared for those questions, you were prepared for other questions. You ever have that happen? You know what that feels like, right? Or that moment when everyone for some reason is looking at you! You're standing in line somewhere and everything's fine, you're thinking about this, that, or the other thing, and all of a sudden you notice that one person's looking at you, another person's looking at you, and there's like 20 people looking at you, and you don't know why. Oh, you just spilled on that person. Now what happens? What's going to happen to you? Fear. Fear keeps us from trying things. Fear keeps us from accomplishing things. Like I said, I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who has these thoughts. "Why don't you just go out and find some place for you to play, Mr. Wanz?" And I'm like, "Yeah, so?" And they go, "It can't be that hard. You're so good." And I'm like, "Wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Compared to who?" "Well, I really like you. I really like the way you sound. I like your songs. I love it when you sing.", “Well, that's all fine and good, but are you gonna pay to come see me? And where are you going to do this at? Where would you do it at? What if you live out of state?” And my brain just goes to work. “Oh, see? They're telling me all this stuff. They're just blowing smoke. I can't be this, that, or the other, I can't be... Nah!” And I go away with a little bit of disbelief that somebody would compliment me that way, totally forgetting that I have no memory of ever being on stage with a microphone in my hand in front of a crowd and it went completely and totally horrible. I've had mishaps and bad performances, yes, but that shouldn't be anything to be afraid of. That should be a learning experience. Like I said, you have to make mistakes to learn. It's a convenient or inconvenient fact depending on where you're at in your head. So listening to these other people, I decided to go down to this one place locally. It's a bowling alley, and it's got a little cafe/bar in it. I've been in that place before, and you look around, there's probably room for 30, 50 people, something like that, nothing huge, right? And then the person who runs it is someone that I'm acquainted with from way back in the day, like 2001, 2002 or so. I walked in with a specific purpose. I wanted to ask what their policy was of having live music. I find the person who manages the bar area where I'd be performing, and I said, "So what would it take for me to be able to come in and play a couple hours, like say for a happy hour on a given day of the week?" And that person, without thinking about it, just turned around and said, "Well, it's about time!! It's about time you came and asked!!" And boy did I feel stupid. Stupid!! So I don't understand why. I mean, I got past it. I BS'd my way past that, and we ended up talking for a while and set a date. So now the gig's all set. Great. Now what? Well, I've got some time. How am I gonna promote myself? Who am I gonna invite? How am I gonna do this? Do I need to put out a newsletter that goes as far away as Germany or just the Seattle area where I live? Or do I wanna go north or south or whatever? Then there's the song choices, am I gonna do the same thing that I performed before or am I gonna insert new songs? And if I have to do old songs, do I still remember how to play them? When am I gonna rehearse? All these things. Oh, no!! And all of that is fear. Fear is the mind killer. While you're thinking about all the things that could possibly go wrong, trying to discern when and where and how you're gonna do the things that you need to do to successfully execute whatever task you've set yourself up for, you're wasting time. You're wasting the time that it would take to actually try. I hate it when I've already gotten past that stop sign. “Dude, if you would've just said okay, and just sat down and played a couple of songs, there, you practiced them. See? Dun, dun, dun!” But no, I gotta have these discussions and great debates. It's like the UN in my head, it's crazy! You wanna ask somebody out? Say, “Hi! You ever think about maybe going out with me sometime? Would you like to go out to dinner?”, “Do you like such and such? Me too.”, “I was gonna go, would you like to go with me?” Doesn't have to be this big, formal, stressful thing. And I'll close with this, for me, nine times out of 10, I am my own worst enemy. I am the worst. I am the one who is blocking myself from doing the things that I'd like to do, not for fear of not being able to do them, but more for fear that I won't live up to somebody else's expectations It takes me a while to get to that point where I go, "Oh yeah, that's not my job!" Living up to somebody else's expectations, that's not what I signed up for, I have my own, and so do you! The power of choice is universal for all human beings. Every single human being you can possibly think of has the power to choose, and you and I are not excluded. How does it go in the theme song for this show? “Keep putting faith in front and believe The best is yet to come, you'll see. Nothing in this life comes completely free, but every once in a while, you just get lucky!” How hard is that? You gotta choose what you gonna do, where you gonna go, when you gonna go, all that stuff. But that's the power. That's the power of being you. Really! Don't believe me? Well, then you're gonna have to put yourself in a position to try it out. You may be surprised. Find the thing that you're the most afraid of. Find the person that you're most afraid to engage. Find the place that you are really intimidated about going, and grab a partner, because I totally am supportive of the buddy system, and go! Practice asking that person that you trust. Okay? You got this. Which is what everybody says, "Oh, don't worry about it, you got this." No, the future has yet to be written, but you know what? In your life, you're the sucker holding onto the pen. When you write in pen, you can't erase it, so learn from it if you misspell fear. Cool! Thanks a lot for listening. I encourage you, take chances. You never know what you're good at until you try to be better at it than you think you are. That's all I got, I'll talk to you next week! Take care of yourself! Bye!!