Can you really "be yourself?"

When you were growing up, who do you think you could’ve been like?

Who did you want to be?

Well I had many heroes in music and sport. My first music hero was the Red Wiggle, Murray Cook. I didn’t just want to play the guitar with Murray, I wanted to be Murray.

I would sit in my Dad’s bedroom, turn on the tv at 7:30am in the morning, grab my guitar and strum along, pretending like I was Murray. In reality, I must’ve sounded like I was slaughtering someone. My poor parents and neighbours.

And my sporting hero was Roger Federer. When I went to those tennis camps as a 7 year old, I’d infuriate my coaches by using a one handed backhand. Even if I plundered the ball into the net, I’d finish with the same photo finish pose as Federer did.

They were just cool.

As I grew up and started pursuing music, I was constantly reminded of how I’ll never be good enough because I wasn’t like someone else.

It could be as brutal as my university jazz teachers saying “if you can’t play like Wes Montgomery, then don’t bother being here” to something humbling at home where my Mother would compare me to a cousin in Hong Kong I’d never even met who just finished her grade 9 suiziki exam on the violin. Somehow I’m not good enough on the guitar as her, because I didn’t play the violin!

I’m pretty sure you’ve had some experiences like this. After all, how can you be a musician if you don’t compare yourself or if you’re not compared?

We musicians do this every single day. These days it comes in the form of scrolling Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.

You know the drill:

You discover a new artist, you watch and listen to them produce the most amazing jazz solo, the most beautiful voice, or mix the cleanest and slickest track. You watch their reels where they play in front of hundreds, thousands, high-fiving with the crowd. You’re filled with instant inspiration and awe.

But once that fades away and you finally put your phone down after 3 hours of scrolling, that sinking feeling of self-doubt starts to brew in your stomach.

You wonder are you having another bout of gastro, but then you realise it’s the voice of comparison:

“I’ll never be that good.”
“How are they so talented?”
“Why do they have half a million views and I don’t?”

It’s relentless.

So you decide, “I have to find a way to be like those people. I have to find a way to be that good.”

You start searching for music coaches, gurus, who advertise how they’ve cracked the code, found the method, and their way is the ONLY way.

And their method looks like this:

That’ll be $900 plus a monthly $47 subscription so you can download the 179 templates I have for you.

Cool. Thanks.

But how the f*** do I “be myself” when I barely know who that is anymore?

That’s the part no one tells you.

It’s almost like an inevitable destiny. When you become a musician, you are invited into the world of comparison. It doesn’t matter if you are playing at your local pub or aiming to walk into the cauldron at Carnegie Hall.

You will be compared to someone else, to copy the greats, then somehow forget all that and “find your voice.” Then when you try to “find your voice” you’re not even sure what you sound like. You start doubting every bar you play and deleting every chart you write. And suddenly you’re more afraid of sharing a song than you are of spiders.

For me, comparison didn’t just knock my confidence — it wiped it out.
I went from a confident (sometimes cocky) 19-year-old, to a mid-20-something who was terrified of making a mistake or being seen as a failure by other musicians.

Somewhere along the way, my identity was defined by how not only would I never be a good-enough musician, but I’d also never be good enough as a person. It became the bedrock of my mental health struggles.

And it all came to a head in one jazz ensemble class in 2021.
My “moment of truth,” if you can call it that.

Is there a hole in my hand?

It was a regular day, routine jazz ensemble class in late May 2021, one week before our exams and two weeks before the second hard Sydney COVID lockdown.

We were playing All the Things You Are.
I was the sole guitarist in the class, and there are four horn and sax players

Everyone was relaxed, joking around, but underneath it all we knew that we could not afford to stuff this week’s practice up.

The quiet voice of dread whispering, “don’t screw up this week.” taunted me as all the horn players breezed through the solos. That voice knew that when my turn was up, one slip up would be confirmation that I was no good.

I did my best to shake it off.

“No problem, I’ve done this so many times. I’m in the groove. let’s go.”

I switched from playing with my fingers to with a pick. Within the first bars, I dropped my pick.

“Oh dear.” I thought to myself. “That’s okay, I can continue with my fingers.”

Except suddenly my right hand forgets where the strings are.
Twelve bars in, my left hand cramps. “This has never happened in my life!”
Then my forearm turns into jelly. My eyes start sweating if that’s even possible.

The band kept playing, but all I could hear was my own heartbeat, fast and heavy, like it wanted to leave my body.

My teacher stopped everyone, walked gently towards me and says “Woah Brian, what happened there?” 

I stared at my hand, opening eyes as wide as I could and wondered “no way I actually fucked up there. Is there a hole in my hand?”

I looked at my teacher, like I had disappointed my favourite uncle and said:

“I’m not sure what happened there, sir.”

But I lied. I knew exactly why.

I wasn’t even trying to play like me.
I was replaying every note my teacher had shredded the week before — on a completely different tune (On Green Dolphin Street). My brain was running his lines, not mine.

There was no room left for my own voice.

I did myself no favours on the way home on the train.
I doom scrolled Instagram — smooth jazz players my age breezing through standards like they were bored, fingers faster than Usain Bolt on a Red Bull drip.

I kept wondering:

Up until that day, despite my self-belief being thin and fragile, I still thought I was good enough to some degree. But after that day? It vanished.

By early 2022, I dropped out.

Because every time I picked up the guitar, making mistakes didn’t feel like mistakes.

They felt like confirmation that I was never going to be good enough.

It’s been 4 years since that class, and I still wonder what went wrong with my hands. That day shot my confidence to pieces and it took me a long time to regain confidence in my ability.

It seems silly given I’ve been playing guitar since I was 4, and I’ve performed in more pressure situations than that class.

I look back at that day and think it was the day that I started truly believing I was never good enough. I took that fear into every performance after that day, and every guitar lesson I taught.

It eventually eroded away at my love for music, like a tiny little woodchipper sitting on my shoulder. I took this to heart and started doubting whether I was even worth living for.

A lot of young musicians I’ve taught put their music ability on a pedestal, and if they don’t perform well, then they begin to doubt every aspect of their life. Every student I taught after that day was a reminder that, if something didn’t change, they were all going to go down the same road I did.

So I had to find a way to look at that day differently. And that’s the first step.

I only saw that day in a negative light. But then I remembered an important piece of advice a friend of mine once gave me. When I told him about how I was frightened by never being as good as the greats, he said:

I realised I couldn’t be like someone else, my peers, the greats, even my teachers. But could I see that day as the day where I stopped trying to be someone else, and start finding a way to genuinely be myself?

My first step was to go back to that day in class and look at it from a different angle. 

Rather than thinking it was the day that my confidence was shot to pieces, I thought: “Could I see this as the day where I stopped trying to be someone else?” 

You can spend a lifetime trying to be yourself, and never get there.

But the one thing you will find is that you will stop comparing myself to others. When you do that, you will take so much pressure off yourself, and perhaps that is what it means to be yourself.

To be fair to many artists, it is incredibly difficult to be unique and entirely original. After all, your ideas and inspirations comes from copying your heroes and peers.

Today, there’s an endless pool of inspiration coming right at you online. Everywhere you scroll, there’s a new guitarist or singer who seems to play flawlessly. You try your best to tell yourself that it’s probably not as perfect as it looks, but that voice in the back of your mind can’t help but remind you that you’ll never be that good.

And let’s face it, you exactly switch off either. But what you can do is become a fan of music again.

I remember all my peers at university talking proudly about how they wanted to be students of music. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it takes away from you being a fan and simply…enjoying the music.

That’s what happened to me. I hadn’t enjoyed playing or listening to music for years. Every time I listened to a song, I had to analyse it like I was trying to discover the fourth law of physics. Even at concerts, I’d be staring at the guitar players in each band, staring at their technique to the point I could almost burn them with my eyes.

I slowly started doing this during the COVID lockdown I mentioned that came after that class.

I stopped listening to music for three months. Ironically, this was what helped me slowly regain my love for music.

Instead I listened to podcasts and audiobooks. Most of them were of my favourite musicians, athletes and actors telling stories, and talking about their own mental health struggles.

When I got back to playing the guitar, I’d reflect on my life, the memories I shared with my friends, and how I was in my own battle with depression.

It made going back and playing the guitar simpler. I didn’t care about my technique anymore. I didn’t care about trying to impress anyone. I trusted that the years of practise, lessons and learning have all given me the ability to play the guitar to a high level, and perform a song beautifully. 

I’m not thinking I have to be as good as someone else. I just sit and play, have fun, and if I make a mistake, it’s because I made a mistake, not because I’m not good enough as someone else. 

I may not have the aura of my heroes like Tommy Emmanuel, but it doesn’t make me any lesser of a guitar player. 

In fact, every great musician, humble one will say honestly “there are so many more musicians who are better than me.” 

But what makes them great, is that they embrace that, accept that, and then focus entirely on what they can do. 

So here’s what I want you to take away from today:

If you’re scrolling through the internet wondering why you’re not as good as all these great artists, that’s okay.
There’s nothing wrong with scrolling. But if it starts making you feel bad about your own playing, take a step back and listen as a fan instead. Enjoy the music.
Only elitists and critics stay trapped in the never-ending Batman vs Superman argument. Real musicians respect honesty, passion, and joy.

When you listen this way, you realise most artists aren’t better than you. They’re just different. Different experiences, different styles, different stories. You can still admire them and learn from them without tearing yourself down in the process.

To be yourself, focus on what you already can do and what you want to keep building.
For every skill you don’t have, there’s something unique that you do.
I can’t solo over a jazz standard like my peers or Charlie Parker, but I can play fingerstyle pieces so soulful they make people cry. I can write, and tell stories that help others. That’s my voice. You have yours too.

Confidence isn’t built by doing things over and over until you trust that you can do them well. If you’ve played shows, taught lessons, or kept your craft alive through years of chaos that’s proof that you are more than good enough. That’s a skill no one can take from you.

And not being as good as someone else? That’s not failure, that’s a chance for you to be as good as you can be. No one is going to be as good as you in that sense.
The world doesn’t need another Ed Sheeran or Taylor Swift. It needs you.
Your stories. Your sound. Your version of the truth.
If you keep comparing yourself to others, you’ll always come second.
Compare yourself to you, and you’ll always win.

Trying to be others, for a day or two, isn’t too bad. 

So don’t be too hard on yourself.

Thank you so much for reading today’s newsletter. Today was a long one but if today’s newsletter has helped you take some pressure off yourself, then I’m glad it has.

But if you do want some extra support, to talk about the pressure you feel, the times you’ve compared yourself heavily to your peers or people on instagram, then I’ve opened up my calendar for some zoom chats. 

In these zoom chats, I am your shoulder to lean on, and just a friend, a fellow musician, who knows a thing or two about what you’re struggling is. I’m here to listen to you, and everything you tell me, there’ll be no judgement, and I’ll share openly what I’ve gone through, and hopefully that will help you not feel alone, and we’ll work on some ideas on how you can get through and get better.  

So if you’d like to chat, here’s the link to my calendar - ​​https://calendly.com/brianzhangmusic97/45-minute-catch-up

And if there isn’t a time that works for you, send me an email - [email protected] and we can organise something together. 

Until then, be kind to yourself.

-Brian

📹 You can also check out my latest YouTube video, where I talk about reaching out and being vulnerable:

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