Lessons From The Stage: do what you love and don’t sweat the small stuff

I’ve listened to the song ‘Can’t Hold Us’ by Macklemore a million and one times over the past 6 years or so, and yet, this Friday at a hip hop cover night, I still managed to not prep enough, lose the sound of the beat for half a bar, and then butcher two punchlines in the first verse live on-stage, which *almost* made me not want to upload this full video and instead just give you a highlight reel like I uploaded to Instagram earlier today. And then I watched it again, and I looked at all those smiling, clapping, dancing people in the crowd and thought F*** that!, am I really throwing all of the good parts of this night under the bus to wallow in a small hiccup? Hell, there’s a better lesson to talk about from this imperfect video than if the song had gone off without a hitch!

I think it’s WAY too easy for us as people (and I know for me personally!) to lose the fun in the things we get to do and instead obsess over small imperfections, or even just the *fear* of things “going wrong”. Worst of all, sometimes that makes us afraid to do them again, when the reality is that anyone who has succeeded at anything messed things up over and over again, in little ways and in big ones, until they got better and better and better and ended up wherever they landed.

Your favorite writer has 20,000 crumpled up pages in a recycle bin. Your favorite music artist has some horrible song they recorded on their first USB microphone 10 years before anyone knew their name. Your favorite athlete attempted 50,000 shots in front of a basketball hoop during their formative years before they could hit a free-throw percentage worth raising an eyebrow at.

BUT, that’s usually not the part we see, and it can be discouraging when we compare ourselves to a perceptions that things come together much more quickly than they actually do.

The point is, I hope that, whatever you all dream about doing, you do it without fear; if a rung on the ladder breaks, grab a higher one and keep climbing.

In the meantime, I’ll keep sharing everything with you, from the triumphs to the f***-ups.

Love you all, go do something that scares you this week.

/Petravita ❤

P.S. I’m currently working on lots of new music, keep your eye on http://soundcloud.com/Petravita or search up ‘Petravita’ on your favorite music streaming service!