I used to sing a lot. In fact I used to have a chart where every day I would tick off a new square when I had sung. There was barely a day that went by when I missed practising my singing. Slowly though I stopped practising. At first I thought I had legitimate excuses like:

• I didn’t want to disturb the neighbours
• I had a bit of a cold coming on
• I was tired
• I didn’t have anything to sing

When I looked at my excuses though I started to realise that none of my reasons for not singing were any good at all. It wasn’t that I now hated singing, in fact it was the opposite. I enjoyed singing so much, the sense of freedom it gave me I can’t even describe but here I was not singing! So what happened?

I don’t know. I still don’t know. It was like something in my brain said “You are having too much fun and happiness doing this thing that you love. It can’t possibly last. You should just stop now rather than be told to stop in the future.”

How often do I do this? How often do I stop doing something I love for fear that someone or something will tell me to stop. In order to avoid the failure I just make sure that I fail before I even begin.

Well this week I am dusting off the music books, searching for my singing tapes and warning the neighbours, because I have had enough of making myself unhappy and damn it I want to sing! One of my goals for this year was to sing again and four months in I haven’t done anything about it, until now. So now I am going to try and sing, maybe not every day like before, but at least three times a week to begin with. I’m also not going to be too hard on myself if I do miss a day when I shoud be singing. Rather than punishing myself I’ll keep reminding myself of why I am singing in the first place, because it makes me happy, and in the end that should be all the reason and motivation I need.

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