I’m afraid that fear is a constant problem for people like us. The talented and often wise John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) said, “Nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.”

That is not funny. Just a little scary.

We are often our own worst enemies. We tell ourselves that when we make a mistake, we are just wrong. Instead, we think we are not creative. We are not good enough because we’re not playing perfectly. We avoid errors and we knuckle down at our harps focusing on playing gingerly, so we don’t miss. We harbor a fear that if we were creative, we would play better. We see other people being creative, and we just appreciate their gifts, either because we don’t hear their mistakes or we view their occasional wobbles as charming.

Short of a brain transplant, how do we get around this? Here are a few things to incorporate into our own practice:

• Acknowledge that mistakes are not failures. Mistakes are part of learning. In fact, not getting where you meant to gives you the opportunity to learn from where you ended up. This can be a fingering conundrum, landing on a note variation, or launching a non-standard chord for example.
• The reality is that you only find “cool stuff” when you make “mistakes”. Otherwise, you’re just playing the same thing over and over. You do need to pay attention to where you landed and how you got there. Some of your best ideas will only get captured by turning on the recorder and collecting everything that comes out of your harp, good, bad and indifferent.

• Honestly, there are no mistakes. Sometimes there are elements that are not as pleasurable as others. But with an open mind those become steppingstones to the next ”right” note. Besides, if the music is too perfect, it gets boring.

• Acknowledge that, like a beautiful single malt whisky, some ideas need to mature to become what you wanted.  Give yourself time for creativity to happen.  Keep in mind that what you see others create is the finished product while you’re staring at the front end of the same process – you don’t know how many iterations your “perfect” exemplar went through before you heard it! Give your ideas time to breathe!

• Failure – what’s the worst that could happen? I cannot stress enough that this isn’t Rocket Surgery! You’re sitting alone at your harp and something you didn’t intend comes out? Get over it and move on! Unlike the movies, creativity is not going to smite you with virtue…you’re going to have to work at it…and take the good with the bad.

Some of the best stuff ever has arisen from having the wrong levers set, not quite remembering how the tune starts, landing on the wrong chord, or some other “mistake”. Make a beautiful noise! Work with it! And take in stride that nothing that comes out of your harp is a failure!

What’s your best mistake so far? Do you let things happen or do you focus on getting back on track? What would you do to leverage variations when they happen? Let me know – you know the drill!