Discouraged?  Feeling like crumpling up your current project and pitching it?  Please read on.

I was reading Jonathan D. Kramer’s program notes during a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra concert that I recently attended and was astounded to read what the composer had to say about his own work:

“I have just played over the first movement of my concerto, and only now has it become clear to me that the transition from the first theme to the second is not good and that in this form the first theme is no more than an introduction — and that no fool would believe it to be a second theme.  Everybody will think this the beginning of the concerto. I consider the whole movement ruined, and from this minute it has become positively hideous to me.  I am simply in despair.”

This is Sergei Rachmaninoff speaking of one of the most beloved pieces in music — his second piano concerto in C minor — five days before he was to play the first complete performance!

It always stuns me that the greatest geniuses, the creators of the most profound work, are devastated by self-doubt — and, in Rachmaninoff’s case, go into deep and long-lasting depression.

I tell you that to say that your doubts about your work are in no way an accurate reflection of the value of the actual work, nor do they provide a valid assessment of your competence.  They are simply a reflection of your own doubts about yourself.

What was Rachmaninoff in despair over?  Please sit back in your chair and  listen while Sergei Rachmaninoff plays his Piano Concerto No. 2.

When you feel like quitting, let these unforgettable strains of music come back to you, and then think about the potential cost of second guessing instead of paying attention to your instinct.  Rachmaninoff’s instinct told him to write the music in that precise way; his second guessing told him that the form was incorrect.  But forms change — because people have the courage to act on intuition.  History recognizes these brave pioneers later as visionaries.