Your Music, Your Art Isn’t Lacking Skill — It’s Lacking Courage

I’ve realized something fundamental about my creative work:

it isn’t that my music or art lacks skill.

It’s that it often lacks courage.

The courage to show up fully, to make something raw and unpolished, to trust that my voice matters simply because it comes from you.

For years, I chased perfection, trying to imitate others, worrying about how my work would be received. I compared myself to musicians who seemed effortlessly gifted, or artists whose work looked flawless online.

And yet, every time I step away from those fears, I feel alive in a way that skill alone can never create. True creation comes from showing up for yourself first:

from trusting that the expression you seek, whether through sound, color, or words, is valid simply because it comes from you.

Courage Over Perfection

The shift I’m learning is subtle but profound:

Letting go of imitation.
Letting go of trying to look “professional” or polished.
Letting go of thinking that others need to validate my work for it to matter.

My courage — to make music, to write, to paint, to share, is what defines me as an artist.

Paradoxically, the very thing I’ve feared showing most…

my rawness,
my unpolished edges,
my vulnerability

…. is exactly what makes my art unique.

That fear, that openness, is my artistic DNA.

It’s what separates art made from curiosity, necessity, and lived experience from art made to impress.

It’s what gives my music and paintings life, depth, and resonance.

I’ve also noticed that courage is contagious: the more I allow myself to create unpolished work, the more others feel safe to do the same.

Art, at its core, is relational.

It’s a dialogue not only with ourselves, but with everyone who encounters it.

And often, the work that touches people the most is the work that is most raw, honest, and imperfect.

Why This Matters: The Psychology of Creation

Studies in creativity and neuroscience suggest that fear of judgment and perfectionism can stifle the brain’s natural creative pathways.

Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow,” emphasized that deep, authentic creativity emerges when we’re fully present and absorbed in the act itself…

… not when we’re worrying about how it will look or whether it will succeed.

Artists in many traditions, from outsider art to Art Brut, demonstrate this over and over: skill and formal training are secondary to the courage to create.

The process itself, the act of showing up, experimenting, and expressing, is what shapes the art. The “mistakes,” the unrefined edges, the raw energy, that is the gold.

Your Turn: Finding Your Own Creative Courage

This isn’t just my journey.
It can be yours too.

No matter your medium (painting, writing, music, movement, or any form of creation) the patterns are often the same:

• You hold yourself back because of comparison or fear.

• You tie your worth to external approval.

• You move cautiously in your creative life, rather than following curiosity or instinct.

Here’s the invitation:

Give yourself permission to reinvent, to take risks, to explore your creative edges without needing validation.

Make space for yourself … literally and figuratively… to create every day.

Notice the tension between fear and desire, between skill and courage, and then choose courage anyway.

Start small: spend fifteen minutes on a painting that you won’t share.
Record a song you won’t post.
Write a poem for yourself.

Let curiosity guide you. Let playfulness and exploration take priority over perfection.

Your art doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to be yours.

Showing up, unpolished and honest, is what makes you an artist.

From that place, you will discover your own flavor, your unique expression, and the freedom to create without compromise.

And here’s the paradox: the things you most fear others seeing

… your mistakes
… your rawness
… your “amateur” edges

are precisely what make your art alive, recognizable, and profoundly human.