15 Tips To Overcome Self Doubt In The Music Industry

Whether you are a musician, artist, recording engineer, mixing engineer, mastering engineer or producer, you probably know the feeling I'm talking about. The feeling of inadequacy, not being good enough, being judged or criticised and a general feeling of anxiousness and worry.
Here's 15 tips I use to overcome these feelings and hopefully you might find them useful enough to apply to your own life. I'm no doctor, these are based on my own experiences.
TIMESTAMPS
1:30 - Why do we want to do music as a career?
2:06 - The 2 main worries
5:12 - Some worries can be helpful or harmful
15 Tips
8:05 - 1. Being self aware is the first step
8:38 - 2. Stress, worry and anxiety usually comes in waves
9:12 - 3. Monitor your caffeine intake
10:10 - 4. Try your best and don’t be afraid to fail
10:56 - 5. Take breaks
12:10 - 6. Exercise
13:01 - 7. Sunshine
13:41 - 8. Healthy Diet
14:23 - 9. Discomfort can make you better
15:32 - 10. More experience = more confidence = less self doubt
16:23 - 11. You can only do what you can do.
17:08 - 12. Focus on helping people rather than your own ego
17:42 - 13. Ask for help / feedback
18:24 - 14. The small things we do every single day add up to long term progress
18:55 - 15. We’re all going to die one day (putting things into perspective to what really matters in life)
20:33 - Affirmations
Follow me on IG: josh.bartel

[@FingersKillCymbals]

This is really good, very helpful

[@prodbyzapz4597]

This video deserves more views

[@lisabartel4996]

Love it 🥰 Proud mumma

[@midnightgreen3924]

This was actually super reassuring, thank you. This week I’ve been at a point where I almost feel ready to give up just thinking I can’t handle working so hard to produce something that’s so at the mercy of someone’s subjective opinion like music lol. Tip 15 is definitely comforting 😂

[@Josh.Bartel]

I can definitely relate to that! I think anyone who genuinely cares about their work will have these feelings from time to time. It’s way more common than you think, people just don’t often share it publicly haha

[@mechanicalbreaks8319]

One of the biggest obstacles that is scary for me is stepping away from music production as a hobby and making it a career choice. I’ve been making music for over 20 years but never felt I could take the big step. “There is no spoon” What is your advice on this especially when there’s a lot at stake financially, i.e investing in equipment and paying bills?

[@elsongs]

I don't have impostor syndrome. I know I have skills and talents. But every time I put my music out there on social media, nobody really listens to it. I'll get like 65 "likes" but when I look at the number of actual listens, it's less than 10. Or even less than 5. It's like I put out all this time and effort into doing something, and it just gets ignored. I'd rather people tell me my music sucks - because art is meant to evoke a reaction, and if that is their reaction, so be it. And if they tell me my music sucks after listening to it, then I've still succeeded in having someone listen to my music. But to not get any reaction whatsoever...that hurts me much more. I've been working on an album for several years, I finally finished mixing it down in lockdown in 2020, but it's still not mastered and released yet. I'm scared to death that I'll put in all this time, effort and money into it and nobody will even give it a listen.

[@Josh.Bartel]

I need to make a video on this cause it’s a massive topic. Here’s a few of my initial thoughts: - I believe fear is the main thing that stops people being successful - don’t hold off releasing music. Create a release strategy and just put it out there and move onto your next project regardless whether it’s heard or not. - if you have likeable music and enjoy making it, persistence will pay off - Marketing and branding (including social media) are pretty crucial for most artists. I used to feel similar to you with this KZbin channel. I still release videos that get barely any views and yet 1 year ago I had around 100 subscribers and now I’m approaching 1000. Not big by any means, but the love of making helpful videos has kept me somewhat persistent. I believe if I keep going while continuing to improve the quality of content it continue to grow. I think this is similar with artists, there are a few that blow up overnight, but 99% have been chipping away at their music for years and years before they even get any recognition. Most music that is released isn’t heard by anyone! But the people who are consistent over a long period of time have the best chance to be noticed. Just a few thoughts and hope that helped. I’ll do a video discussing this 🙂