Blog

Speech given 19th July 2011

It is London in the UK, the year is 1992 and I am 25 years old. I am standing on stage of Sadler’s Wells theatre just before the curtain goes up. It’s an autumn evening outside, wet, misty and cold. Inside the theatre is charged with the warmth of more than a thousand people, a packed house. We are about to perform opening night of Bizet’s best known Opera, Carmen, a production made up of young people in their 20s. In the Royal box sits Diana, Princess of Wales here for opening night as patron of the theatre company, obviously and prominently without her husband Prince Charles. The overture finishes, the curtain rises and I am down stage ready to sing.

Since being asked to come and speak with you about confidence and humility I really had to think hard about what to say. Finally, I decided to talk a bit about my own life experience and see if I could illustrate these two concepts as I have lived them. Hopefully you can then decide what you think about these two things that seem totally unrelated at first glance.

As you know I am a Psychologist in private practice in Mittagong. But for most of the years between 16 and 28 my one ambition in life was to make a career as an opera singer. I studied music and singing at school, then at Sydney University and finally in London. I worked for British Youth Opera then Opera Australia for a number of years. I made the front page of Opera magazine from an Opera Australia production of Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea in 1993. It may not have been Who Weekly, but it seemed pretty good at the time!

If you had asked my friends back then whether I was confident, I think most of them would have said “absolutely”! Singing had always come naturally to me; I was the lead in many school productions and enjoyed acting and being on stage. I had won several singing competitions. It seemed I was on the right path, but one thing kept getting in the way – my own voice.

Initially trained as a Baritone, I learned a lot of this repertoire, but several teachers insisted I was not a Baritone, I was a Tenor. So then I trained as a Tenor. But this is not as easy as it sounds. Many other good singers have crashed on the rocks of frustration and confusion trying to go from Baritone to Tenor. Over time it started to dawn on me that maybe I was going to be another one.

However, while this inward battle raged, outwardly I remember appearing confident. Good at showing others that everything was under control, I kept this up. In some performances at this time I was literally flying by the seat of my pants. I did not know from one night to the next whether my voice would hold. Mostly, thankfully, it did. But in rehearsal for an early Music performance at historic St James Church in Sydney, it became clear that I could not sustain some of the music. The director had a private rehearsal with me, heard what was going on, and kicked me out of the concert.

I realise now that much of my seeming confidence at the time was based on what I had done in the past or on my future potential. I could visualise singing the notes but at the time my voice couldn’t do it. It was the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced. Several other male singers who I had competed against were going on to careers in Europe and America and I was sure I had the ability to follow. But my voice didn’t seem to agree.

As a singer, your body is your instrument. Gradually, as I really started to take notice, it became clear to me that my body was either letting me down or telling me something. But still on the outside I appeared confident, right up until the point when I decided to quit professional singing at the age of 28.

Which brings me to important point No. 1: for true confidence, actions speak louder than words.

I finally learned that no matter how much I wanted it, just telling myself and believing I could make it as a tenor in a singing career wasn’t enough.

Life goes on. After some major soul searching and the support of my family and my girlfriend (soon to be my wife), I went back to University to start a degree in Psychology. I didn’t sing at all for 8 years.

The word confidence comes from the Medieval French and Latin words confidence or confidentem meaning ‘firmly trusting or bold’. The original Latin word fidere means ‘to trust or to have faith’. If you asked me the question today, “when you were working as a singer did you believe and trust in your voice?” I would answer absolutely not.

So why did I say earlier that I appeared confident to my friends? I think the answer is that I was not actually confident. What I had was a truckload of bravado.

This word comes from Spanish and Italian and means “to brag, boast or be defiant”. In the Opera even today, when someone sings well the audience yells ‘bravo, bravo’. To get up in front of an audience night after night you have to be brave, and looking back I know I showed a lot of courage. But what I know now that I didn’t know then is that bravado is not the same as confidence. Bravado is about defiantly (and sometimes desperately) keeping up the appearance that everything is ok rather than a quiet, rock solid trust in your ability.

Looking around today on the internet, on TV, movies, magazines and the whole world of popular culture I think it is easy to mistake bravado for confidence. In a time when people can become a pop star overnight after posting a video on YouTube I would imagine that many of you would be a bit confused about the difference too. Many of you, I would imagine, believe that you have to show your friends and those around you that you are confident by doing things that you are not confident about at all. Because that’s what confidence means right? And it’s really, really, really important to be confident, even when you don’t feel it, right?

Well, maybe not.

Don Bradman, the cricketer from Bowral, who you’ve all probably heard of a thousand times, was supremely confident. But he never felt the need to show off or prove himself to others. In fact, even though he became the greatest batsman the world has ever seen, he always seemed to have a lot of humility. That’s because, despite being naturally gifted, he also practiced for years, and years and years as he grew up. So when he played first grade and international cricket he knew that he could hit a ball to any place in the field he wanted. How? Because he had true confidence in his ability to do this and he didn’t even need to think about it.

Actions speak louder than words.

This brings me to important point No. 2: follow your bliss.

This famous phrase comes from the writing of Joseph Campbell, an academic mythologist and writer of many books, the most renowned being “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” (well worth reading by the way). Follow your bliss is so important as to be a universal truth in my opinion. What I have found is that true confidence doesn’t come from bravado, even though bravado can be very helpful to get you through some tough situations (hence the saying ‘fake it till you make it’). True confidence comes from following your heart in doing the thing that you love and then working hard, practicing and patiently building your ability to do it.

I would say I am confident now, as a psychologist and in my own ability, though I still have a great deal do learn. But I don’t feel the need to prove this to others as I did when I was working as a singer. I make mistakes every day because that is just the way things are and it is how I continue to learn. I became a psychologist because I followed my bliss and pursued a career as an opera singer … and failed. As I was struggling so much with my own voice, I noticed I was becoming more and more interested in listening to others tell their own stories about struggle.

In a speech from 2008 at Harvard University, the author J.K. Rowling talked about the crucial benefits of failure in her life and how she followed her bliss at university rather than doing what her parents wanted. But in failure she realised she had seen the bottom, had nothing left to lose and so followed her heart to do what she had always really wanted, to be a writer. Failing as an Opera singer has paradoxically led me on to the path that I feel deeply is my vocation. As a psychologist I have the immense privilege of helping people wrestle with tough, difficult issues so that they can shine a light into their souls and begin to understand the truth about themselves. This can often be hard, slow work but I get to help people create meaning and purpose where previously there had been brick walls.

So remember these two points.

Follow your bliss. If you know what it is you truly love in life then follow it, but be prepared for things not to work out the way you thought they might and keep listening to your heart and what life is telling you. And when you follow your bliss remember, for true confidence, actions speak louder than words. Don’t imagine things will all fall in your lap just because you are following your heart; you also have to work and work and work at it. But in your bliss lies the truth that your heart already knows.

I will finish by quoting Rainer Maria Rilke, a German writer, in his ‘Letters to a Young Poet’

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers.

The tiny woman in her early 50s finishes talking about human remains then immediately charges off down these ancient Roman flagstone roads, crossing the ruts where horse chariots once passed. 15 Australian teenagers have been hanging on her every word, wrapt with attention. Now they struggle to keep up with her as she scurries to the next ruined Villa. “Pocket rocket” I hear one of them say with affection. She has already autographed their books, they are her groupies.

The woman is Estelle Lazar and we are in the vast excavation that is Pompeii. It is mid April, Spring in the Bay of Naples. We are here on an ancient history tour focusing on Roman sites. From the Vatican museums, the Roman Forum, the catacombs and even the old Appian Way, we have absorbed much. But here with Estelle in the uniquely preserved town of Pompeii, the pages of these teenagers’ textbooks are leaping into vibrant, rich and complex life. They are utterly fascinated, pulled to explore and immerse themselves in what they are discovering.

What these kids are experiencing is interest or curiosity and with it they are feeling open and alive, ready to explore more and more of this ancient site. Most teenagers these days seem to struggle with concentration for more than five minutes at a stretch.

Interest and curiosity helps us draw into the sites, sounds and ideas that are always around us. Much of the time alas we can be distracted by our own or other people’s issues, but when our interest is aroused we can look outwards. Often interest is sparked by something that we personally find motivating. But other peoples’ enthusiasm and zest can also draw us in. The teenagers on our trip are fortunate to have a teacher back at school who loves Ancient History and has seen all these places before. They are also fortunate to have in Estelle someone with genuine and seemingly boundless interest in Pompeii, her area of archeological speciality.

What are the things that spark your interest and curiosity? What do you find draws you in? Which people in your life have enthusiasm for particular things? Remember, curiosity and interest can be contagious!

The core of hope is the belief that things can actually change. No matter how uncertain or difficult things are now, hope is the belief that things can turn out better. After the momentous events in Egypt over the last few weeks it seems clear that it was this kind of hope that spurred on the protesters in Tahrir Square even when it seemed their goal was moving away from them.

It seems humans are unique in the animal world in that we are the only species capable of imagining the future. The trouble with this is that we can often fall into the trap of imagining the worst, even believing this to be a foregone conclusion. This can lead to despair. But hope can always see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Interestingly, if you look at events like the ones in Egypt recently, it seems hope can often come just at those moments when despair or hopelessness seem most likely. So no matter what faces you at the moment, no matter how bleak things seem, let the optimism of the Egyption people guide you in hoping that though it may be tough right now things will get better. In the words of Emily Dickinson, a wonderful American poet who struggled with depression for most of her life:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings songs without the words
And never stops at all

“True gratitude is heartfelt and unscripted” (Fredrickson, 2009). My guess is that after the thousands of volunteers giving up their weekends and taking time off work to help with the cleanup after the recent floods in Queensland and Victoria, most of the people affected are feeling gratitude right now. And this feeling of gratitude will help them recover from the enormous emotional, financial and material toll over the next days, months, perhaps years.

We feel gratitude when we appreciate something that has come our way as a gift. The work of the flood volunteers is a gift given of people’s time and of practical help. But just as important it is a gift of solidarity. I watched a Victorian grape grower’s face fill with wide eyed joy as he recounted just how much he appreciated the help he received when a group came to clean up his vines. He said it was hard to put into words how he felt. My guess is that he will store this in his heart and treasure it for some time, because by their actions the volunteers showed at a fundamental level he is not alone, that they care about him.

The wonderful thing about real gratitude is that it opens our heart and spurs us on to give back in return, perhaps to those who helped us or perhaps to others. In the end it doesn’t matter who receives the gratitude back. This is the opposite of the feeling of indebtedness, where we pay back grudgingly. This will be clear for parents who see their kids blurting out a kurt ‘thanks’ when they receive a gift. They are being polite – but not grateful.

Like joy, gratitude is spontaneous. It carries with it a pleasant feeling of heartfelt thanks and appreciation. However we can do some things to allow ourselves to feel it more often. Try writing down once a week 3 things you feel grateful for. It doesn’t matter what it is, or who you feel grateful to, just write it down and spend a moment or two allowing your heart to fill with gratitude. In fact there is a type of Buddhist meditation, called Lovingkindness meditation, that specifically cultivates this. Once we feel it in our heart then we can spontaneously offer kind thoughts to others as well.

Another activity is to write a Gratitude letter. Write a letter to someone outlining what it is about them, or what they have given or taught you that you feel grateful for. Then go and read it to them. Expect tears, but don’t let this put you off because the heart has a language all of its own.