Overcoming social media anxiety for musicians

I’ve already mentioned that my post on performance mindset drew some feedback on how musicians in my social media community struggle with perfectionism. What I didn’t expect (although it makes sense in hindsight) is that people also drew a connection with performance anxiety on social media. One commenter in particular admitted they don’t post their own music on social media because of the stress of being good enough for others.

This concern over sharing one’s music or performances on social media is something I hear from a lot of people I work with. I, too, have had to overcome a fear of showing up on social media in order to build my own musical community.

One idea in particular has helped me the most in overcoming my fear of social media, and I’d like to share it with you today.

Understanding the creative pain of posting

Usually when we’re concerned about sharing on social media it’s because we’re worried that our music or style isn’t good enough to share with other people. We’re usually held back by the threat of embarrassing ourselves in front of others, the fear of what others might think of us, or a desire to avoid negative feedback.

If, as a start, you can switch your thinking around (as I suggested in my first response video) so that you truly believe your music is for you before it’s for anyone else, that can help. We can start to worry less about what other people think if we realize that their opinion doesn’t actually impact the value of our music.

But even if we do absorb this perspective, we can still face a fear of other people’s responses. How do we avoid negative feedback?

The desire to avoid negative feedback usually impacts us at the point of social media creation. Once we muster up the courage to post something, we filter, edit, and polish our posts so that they’re as appealing as possible to as many people as possible. In other words, we engineer what we put out there to be flawless in order to avoid negative feedback. Lowering the statistical chance of negative feedback by raising the statistical chance of being liked.

Yawn. Am I the only creative here that thinks that doesn’t sound like very much fun?

Besides that, all that engineering doesn’t even help us feel better! Even after crafting the perfect pic or video, we’re still left with the sting of perfectionism, for two reasons. First, we’re never sure if we made it as good as we could have, which leaves us wondering if we could have done better. Second, we can polish our spirit away from the things we share if we dilute, filter, and edit away anything that might be perceived as inviting a negative response. By polishing away our spirit, we can also edit away the emotional resonance that we’d set out to capture by creating the artistic piece in the first place! Talk about counter-productive.

The way through

The way I’ve found my way through the creative pain of posting is not to try to ignore the filter of social media, but to get it to work for me.

I recommend that musicians think of the filter as working in the opposite direction. Rather than setting up a filter for yourself so that you filter what you put out into the world, I encourage you to share with the world authentically and let your music or performance be a filter that filters the right people back into your life.

Will everyone like what you post? Probably not. But getting everyone to like your post is not the intent anymore. Having your post highlight who in your community is genuinely excited by what you do, is. Regardless of the feedback, regardless of the number of likes.

I know this sounds difficult to do, but I can tell you it works. I’ve lost count of how many of my own social media posts I poured my authentic heart into, and didn’t receive any likes at all once I posted it. If I was focused on accumulating likes, this would crush me, and I probably wouldn’t continue to develop this site! But because I’ve focused away from accumulating likes, I know my posts are doing my work for me. They’re sharing what my true, authentic message is and acting as a magnet to some people, and repellent to others. I love that my posts are working this hard for me!

I hope this message encourages you and inspires you to action. By sharing your music authentically on social media, you have an opportunity to attract like-minded people and a really supportive community.

But you won’t find that genuine community if you’re polishing everything up before you even get it out there.

Create music that means something to you, develop a performance that expresses the message you want to share, and share that project with other people, authentically. Let the right people be filtered in to you. You’ve got this!