As a musician you have a certain image you want to get across. You want others to see certain aspects of yourself, you want them to like you. And if you are ambitious, you put a whole marketing team on the development of that image.
The more famous you get, the bigger the gap can grow between how others see you and how you see yourself. Others will see you in the way you present yourself to them. They see the star, the confident person you present to them on stage.
In the meantime you might still feel as insecure as you felt as child. You might wonder when others will discover the gap and call you a fraud. This might make you even more determined on presenting the image of the secure person that you are expected to be.
The more emphasis you put on presenting yourself as the confident star, the bigger the gap between the confident star and the insecure child will grow. Both are images or yourself, but you don’t know anymore which image is real, you don’t know who you ‘really’ are.
The ‘real’ you is somewhere between the confident star and the insecure child. They are both aspects of your true self, which is more than either of them. Some good ways to discover yourself again are meditation, sports, yoga and self-reflection.
I’m not a star, though I see the gap in myself as well. Sometimes I’m very confident in the tours I book and the workshops I develop, and than again I ask myself: who am I to think that others need my help? For me it helps to have a daily routine of a combination of gym and yoga exercises. It’s like a bridge over the gap of over-confidence and insecurity.
What’s your bridge to close the gap?