Why I've Learned to Love Joining Things I Am Terrible At
On shock therapy and why I strongly recommend you too not to wait until you’re “ready”
Last month, I played in front of an audience for the first time. Nobody heard a single note I played. And it was one of the best things I've ever done.
The Battle of the Bands
A cultural center in Brussels organized a Battle of the Bands evening with a twist: musicians who didn’t know each other were randomly grouped by lot, given bizarre constraints, and asked to perform in front of a jury. Nobody knew in advance how many people would be in their band, or what instruments others would bring.
I showed up with my Iranian daf - a frame drum originally from Kurdistan that later entered Iranian classical music. I was clearly the least experienced musician in the room. Not even close.
Our group ended up with an English-speaking drummer, a French-speaking singer, and Italian bass and guitar players.
Communication was awkward. Cohesion was basically nonexistent. And the daf - which isn’t loud enough to cut through a typical band setup - disappeared completely in the mix. We didn’t advance far in the competition.
And yet I would do it again without hesitation. Here’s why.
What I Realized When It Was Over
Walking the 30 minutes home to decompress, I started replaying the evening. And something unexpected emerged: I’m not as good as the others musically, sure. But I’m also not as musically incompetent as I’d feared.
The jury asked us to evoke rain. My daf is perfect for rain. None of the more experienced musicians thought of it. I did. Admittedly a bit late, and I wasn’t assertive enough to voice it in time - but I recognized the opportunity. That quiet realization felt significant. It wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed home.
Beyond the musical side, there were other tangible gains. The daf is an excellent conversation starter - everyone’s curious about how it sounds. I connected with the organizer beforehand (I’d asked if my inexperience would bother people, and she was extremely kind). Brussels is a small world. She has a wide network, and you never know what comes from a single conversation.
But the biggest gain was simpler than any of that. The discomfort I felt that evening will be much less next time something similar happens. Not necessarily because I’ll be in another Battle of the Bands - that’s unlikely - but because when I end up in the next uncomfortable situation, I’ll remember: I survived this one too. Nobody chased me home. Everybody had big expectations of my drum, but not big enough to remind me: “Hey, we heard nothing!”.
The world kept turning.
Why Waiting Makes It Worse
I don’t throw myself into things like this out of arrogance. I do it as a form of self-discipline. A training.
The logic is simple: the more you postpone what you want to do, the scarier the jump becomes.
Discomfort compounds in the imagination far faster than it does in reality. The longer you wait to feel “ready,” the higher the bar you set for readiness - and the harder it becomes to ever clear it.
This applies to talking to strangers, to performing, to learning a language. I know, because the first two ones have been genuine struggles for me.
I’ve always been clumsy in social interactions. Job interviews in my native Italian were a disaster.
And yet my job interviews in English went better - not because my English is perfect, but because I’d spent years training myself to talk to strangers in another language. I was better equipped for the discomfort.
That’s really all it is. Training. Repeated exposure. Accumulated small survivals.
The Language Learning Version
The same principle transposes directly.
There’s a conference in your target language and you’re sure you won’t understand anything? Go anyway.
In the worst case, you stay silent and nobody notices your struggle.
In the best case, you try to interact a little, people appreciate the effort, and you leave with more than you came with.
Want to travel but feeling intimidated? The discomfort is real and normal - but you’ll come out the other side with something better. At least one thing will improve, especially if you manage not to completely panic.
Watching videos in your target language? Stop thinking “that’s too difficult” and just try. Even catching a few words here and there creates a dopamine hit that motivates you to dare more. That’s not self-help noise - it’s what actually happens.
Your personality is different from mine. Maybe shock therapy sounds extreme for where you are right now. But I’d ask you to try it enough times to find out whether it’s actually as bad as you imagine. The probability that it works is higher than you think.
The Challenge
The drum nobody heard taught me more than a polished performance ever could have.
What’s the scariest thing you could throw yourself into this month - and what’s actually stopping you?
Can I help you?
Download my case study.
Fluency by Frequency - my “manifesto”
Try my method two weeks for free.
Hello Chiara. I‘m the person who posted some attempts at Persian under your latest YouTube video. Thank you for your kind replies. I thought it best to not write more there, and try something new to me (like this thing).
Persian and Arabic were a large part of my degree course at university, but that was an awfully long time ago. I never managed to make use of either in my working life. Nor in my social life, being basically a shy person. So things got very rusty, to say the least. But as an old man, I thought trying to revive the Persian would be a good way to keep brain cells active. I enjoyed the Persian much more than the Arabic. Semitic language grammar I still find intrinsically fascinating, but I have to say it was not well taught to me. And no one speaks Fusha on the streets, so I pretty much abandoned it except insofar as it helped with the Persian.
The Islamic Republic has never made it easy for folks with a UK passport to visit, but I made it into Iran on three occasions. I cannot say I didn’t experience some worrying moments, but overall my memories are wonderful. I think you hinted you’d visited Uzbekistan on that old video on Bahador’s channel? I’m jealous.
As I mentioned I’m an old man now. Please don’t concern yourself about my motives. Despite interest in all, the only Italian I know is fragments of opera arias, the only Dutch I know is the names of a few bicycle races, and the only French I know is from abominably taught lessons during my school days. But if there’s any way I could help promote your fine work, please don’t hesitate to hint. And please don't stop playing that دف :)
This really landed! I wrote something recently about how 95% of the world already lives this way — consuming music, culture, life in languages that aren't theirs and it's only the native-speaker 5% who seem to think that's a problem. Your Battle of the Bands story is exactly that energy. Throw yourself in, hear what you can, feel the rest.♥