Who says \"You can't?\"

You've probably heard me tell this story before because it's a story I've told myself and believed for over twenty years now.

Back in school, when we had music lessons, we always got grades on our singing. We had to learn a song like "Yesterday" by the Beatles, "My Bonnie Is Over the Ocean" by Element of Crime, and lots of other German folk songs.

And my music teacher always had this awesome attitude of saying: "Everyone can sing."

Unfortunately, there came a "but" with that.

So she said: "Everyone can sing, but if you can't, you'll at least get a C- for knowing the lyrics."

I wanted to become a singer. I loved singing, and I dreamt of standing on stage and singing my own songs one day.

And then she told me with every song we had to sing in front of the other students... and with every year that went by... she always told me: "I can't sing." She did not say it explicitly. She showed me by grading my singing with a C-, manifesting the belief in myself that "I can't sing."

And when I was 18 years old and had finished school, I did not know what else I could do.

I wanted to be a singer. But now I had all this proof that I couldn't be a singer because I couldn't sing, no matter how much I tried each time. I never just said the lyrics; I always tried to sing them.

Thinking about it now, I don't understand why teachers can grade students on how good their singing is when they never teach them how to use their voice (their own unique instrument) properly so that they can actually get better at singing.

It's a real pity.

Over 20 years have passed since my music teacher implanted that belief in my mind.

But you know what?

It's not her fault.

I now know whenever someone tells you that "you can't do it" (whatever it is), it is their own belief. It's their perception of what is possible and what is not.

But it's YOU who can choose to believe those words or don't.

I believed my music teacher because at that time back then, she was an authority figure. She must know. She's a music teacher. She's older. She's got the experience. I better believe her.

And so I never pursued singing.

I kept singing in my car, looking forward to rides where I had to cross great distances so that I could just sing all the time.

But I never even thought of picking up singing lessons.

I made my music teacher's belief my own. In the end, it was only me who said. "I can't."

At the end of May 2024, I traveled to London for a one-day seminar in Public Speaking with the amazing Elisa James.

The entire seminar was absolute amazing, but what has impacted me the most happened at the dinner table after the event.

Elisa James used to be a singer, touring the world. And since she's all about the voice, I asked her the question I've carried with me for the past two decades.

I asked her: "Is it true what my music teacher said and that some people are just not able to ever learn how to sing?"

And the beautiful thing about Elisa is, she did not just give me a "Yes" or "No" answer.

Instead, Elisa told me a story of how she herself wanted to be a singer when she was a kid. And when they had the audition for the school choir, she did not get picked.

So she rattled on my old belief by telling me a story!

And then she challenged me and sang five different notes, asking me to sing the same note.

I managed to hit three correctly.

She proved to me that I actually had an ear to hear the music.

And I could hit a note.

And for someone who believed for all those decades that she couldn't sing, this was the moment that changed everything.

My childhood dream of being able to sing came back from the depths where I had buried it under heaps of debris of "I can't".

Elisa did not just bust an old belief that I had, she gave me something far more valuable.

She allowed me to become more of the person that I had reduced myself to because of all the "I can't" I had picked up over the years.

I'm not a singer YET.

I cannot sing YET.

I have started, though, to learn it.

I'm trying out apps like "Simply Sing" and "Yousician," learning more about music theory, and soon, taking singing lessons.

I'm not gonna hold on to the belief that "I can't."

It has stopped me for far too long.

And there's a ripple effect of how that one interaction with the wonderful Elisa James has impacted me.

Did you know I always wanted to be a skater girl?

Yes, I always wanted to skate on a skateboard. I loved Avril Lavigne's song "Skater Boy" because I wanted to be a skater girl. I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on my PlayStation 2.

Still, I never picked up skateboarding because, coming from the village and small town where I'm living, there were no skaters. There were no places where you could actually skate. We have cobblestones, dirt roads, and roads without pedestrian walks.

So I never picked up skateboarding, and at one point, I told myself: "I'm too old for skateboarding. I can't learn it now."

We all know that we're never gonna be as young as we are right now.

So, why do we carry our dreams with us over all those years?

At one point, we'll get to the end of our road and think back and say: "I wonder, why did I never ever try to do it? It would have taken me a year. Five years? But at least, I could have done it. Now, I'll never find out."

I don't ever wanna get to the end of my life and say: "I've never done it because I believed I could not do it."

I want to get to the end of my life and say: "At least, I did it!"