I Sang Off-Key. On Purpose.

I was terrified of every kind of public appearance — concerts, lectures, anything where I had to walk onto a stage alone and stand in front of a full room. Everybody's staring at you. Sheer horror. But one day my voice teacher decided I was going to sing a solo. And not just anywhere. At a big concert in a club.

I didn't sleep that night. Tossed and turned. Got up. Paced. Went over the song again and again.

And then I thought: enough already. How much longer am I going to put myself through this? I decided to finish off the fear. Once and for all.

I had a plan.

I invited people I knew to the concert. Friends. Friends of friends. Coworkers. And I told them: “I've been taking voice lessons for several years. This concert is an important result of my work.”

They introduced me as a promising singer. A student of the school. The house was packed.

I walked out. And sang as off-key as humanly possible. On purpose. Not just missing notes. I made a point of not even landing in the right key.

Somebody started giggling. Others sat there baffled. Five minutes of total disgrace.

I stood on that stage. People were laughing. My cheeks were burning. My heart was pounding. I wanted the floor to swallow me. And then I thought: “That's it. It can't get any worse. I'm already here. I've already made a fool of myself. So now I can just sing.”

And at that moment something broke. Not in me. In the fear. It simply died. Because I did the very thing it was afraid of. And nothing happened.

After that I stopped being afraid of performing in public.

What are people afraid of? Not the stage. They're afraid of not being liked. Of being rejected. Kicked out. Thrown away. And that's a story from childhood. When a child tried to please their parents. And the parents were displeased. In childhood that's a matter of survival. For a small person.

Maybe the parents had problems of their own. And it had nothing to do with the child. But children didn't understand that. And took it personally.

Making a fool of yourself is useful. Who knew. Nobody died. Nothing terrible happened. We can't please everyone. There will always be people who are unhappy with us. But that's their business.

I'm not saying you have to humiliate yourself to stop being afraid. But it helped me. To rethink how much things really matter. I used to blow it way out of proportion. I thought so much depended on my performance. Turned out — it only seemed that way.