Bravery

Project Intro

This was essentially a self-designed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy experiment to reduce social, and especially performance, anxiety.

The Problem

In school it was years before I was able to play a band instrument at an audible volume—as long as there were others playing along with me. It didn't matter how much I practiced and how good I got. In college I could finally sing audibly around other humans if someone was singing with me, but louder. I nearly died of pointless embarrassment if I had to give a presentation. I even had difficulty climbing if I noticed that someone was watching me! I thought this was a ridiculous way to lead my life, and resolved to do something about it.

Methodology

I was aware that my singing voice was better than average and that most people are fine hearing below average singing anyway. So I decided this was an inoffensive focus for my social anxiety experiment. Starting off so self-conscious, I couldn't bear to feel like I was obligating anyone to listen. So there were formally designed escalating phases of this experiment.

Phases
1. Share on LiveJournal with a small group of friends. This experiment began in 2008 while LiveJournal usage was already dwindling.
2. Share on LiveJournal publicly.
3. Also share on other social media where a lot more family and extended acquaintances reside.

Since the goal was reducing social anxiety, and not providing portfolio-quality vocal recordings, I established some rules for myself to avoid any perfectionist tendencies and other time-wasting.

Rules
• I could record a song at most 3 times.
• I had to use the best of the three-or-fewer, with no track splicing.
• Minimal vocal effects to mesh with the backing track.
• Minimal effort to acquire backing tracks.
• No singing lessons during the experiment.

Results and Discussion

The original page with recordings and notes can be found here.

After just one year I found I was able to sing in front of other people in person, at least sometimes. I didn't worry about people watching me while I was climbing. I even had less anxiety about giving presentations as long as I was well prepared! This experiment had far more impact on my life than expected. Shortly after I ended this experiment, I went in for several job interviews, and I wasn't overwhelmed by performance anxiety. I was able to focus more on whether the job and the company were a good fit for me.

Informal Continuation

After this experiment ended, it had become a bit of a habit to push a little bit at my social anxiety—and sometimes at other anxieties. I can identify quite a few phases and examples in retrospect.

Informal phases and results
• At my next job I experimented more with wearing clothes and accessories that stood out. I have mentioned some things I learned from this on my blog.
• I found that without any particular effort I ended up talking to people in more departments during lunch, which turned out to be a huge boon to my job and to the company.
• After that job I traveled overseas alone for the first time.
• On my return, I threw a big birthday party that involved an open stage, which some friends built for me. Since I had that stage, I started throwing monthly-ish jam sessions, where I had to not only sing and play in front of others, but I had to sing and play songs I didn't even know.
• I suddenly magically had networking mojo. As far as I could tell, it just appeared one day.
• I cofounded a startup shortly after that, which definitely pushed at some anxieties instilled by parents who grew up without much income.
• I moved to a new country on a job-seeker visa.