It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach To Self-Confidence

By Alexandra V Dotcheva

A life-changing book about building yourself up from midlife crisis, elevating your self-worth, and achieving more than you ever imagined or dared dream of by mastering a simple yet meticulous prioritization process that you can apply to your health, career, finances, and relationships right away! An immigrant shares her success story and blueprint for defeating self-doubt, attaining optimal health, and building perpetual, scalable wealth, with an irrepressible belief that you can do it, too!

 

Do you have a long history of low self-esteem and lack of confidence? Are you constantly struggling with fear of failure, fear of rejection, or fear of the unknown? No need to feel overwhelmed: starting from scratch is perfectly fine, as you will learn from this book, written by a successful late starter in life!

 

Oftentimes, poorly defined priorities can get in the way of our self-esteem, lower our self-confidence, and negatively impact our decision-making for years or even decades! Based entirely on personal experience, It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach to Self-Confidence will show you ways to put your life in order by learning about the five essential aspects or pillars of life, to which you may not have given the needed attention. 

 

This book explains:

• How to Assess Your Current Life Situation and Create Concrete Goals
• How to Teach Your Mind to Embrace Challenges
• How to Develop an Action Plan in All Areas That Are Crucial to Your Success
• The Importance of Keeping Yourself in Excellent Health at All Times and Understanding the Healthcare System
• How to Adopt a Healthy Diet and Exercise Regimen Without Compromises
• How to Keep Your Body Free of Toxins
• How to Integrate Spirituality Into Your Daily Activities
• How to Become a Role Model in Your Career by Adopting a Strong Work Ethic and a Mindset of Helping Others
• How to Attain Full Control Over Your Finances
• How to Expand Your Financial Base Once You Have Attained Control Over Your Money Habits
• How to Determine What Types of People Have a Place in Your Life
• Mind-Training Techniques for Lasting Success 

There will never be a perfect time to get started. Start today and let your mind embrace the change you have been contemplating!  

 

Buy this book now to make your confidence soar through the knowledge that will empower you to optimize your health, multiply your financial choices, establish truthful, meaningful relationships, and reclaim control over your life again! 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Classic Day Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781598493245

Alexandra V Dotcheva

Born and raised into a musicians’ family in Bulgaria, Alexandra Dotcheva came to the United States in 2000 after earning a bachelor’s degree in Music from the National Academy of Music in Sofia. She earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance from Louisiana State University in 2007. Alexandra Dotcheva joined the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra in 2006, and in 2008, prompted by the economic crisis, she decided to pursue a career in nursing at the St. Joseph’s College of Nursing in Syracuse, NY. For her academic and clinical performance she was awarded the John Trzeciak Award in 2010, and the Stella Sroka Award for Excellence in Cardiac Nursing and the Esther G. McCarty Memorial Scholarship in 2011 upon graduation. Alexandra Dotcheva has been practicing as a registered nurse since 2011, with a strong passion for educating patients on acquiring optimal health. Her nursing experience includes ICU, orthopedic trauma, and home care. In 2014, she began her investing career with a focus on rental real estate and, later on, options trading. She is the owner of three real estate businesses. Alexandra’s passion for health, martial arts, fitness, and financial independence, as well as her experience with the challenges of cultural integration prompted her to write the book, It Really Is Simple: A Holistic Approach to Self-Confidence – A Practical Guide, in which she shares her path to success in an effort to motivate readers to embrace change and pursue their dreams, in spite of fear and insecurity. Her mission is to help people overcome self-imposed limitations that prevent many from realizing their goals, finding peace of mind, and acquiring prosperity. By sharing her own journey to achieving control over the most important aspects of life, Alexandra’s goal is to inspire others to turn away from various forms of fear and self-doubt and go after their dreams instead of leading lives subdued to conventional ways of thinking that have long been proven outdated, inadequate, and damaging to a person’s self-esteem and self-confidence.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Why This Book?

Have you seen the movie MirrorMask? I did, many years ago. I’ve watched it multiple times since, simply because I feel an urge to do so every once in a while. In the movie, there is an important fortune-telling tool called the Really Useful Book. It’s an unusual type of book because it is weird. But it works. Every time. Perhaps that’s why it seems weird. It has the ability not only to tell you what’s coming but also to turn into a life-saving guide as it sees fit. I kept thinking about this very practical tool for years and looking for ways to create my own. I did that, too. In your hands, you are holding a simple system aimed at transforming the crippling and possibly destructive self-doubt plaguing you and so many other people into strong and lasting self-confidence. This is achieved by utilizing a comprehensive, holistic approach, which will reveal to you the importance of understanding and consistently nourishing the most essential aspects (or pillars) of your life. These essential pillars comprise the following:

•Health

•Spiritual needs

•Career

•Finances

•Relationships

I’d like to warn you that as you read, it may appear at times as if certain ideas or concepts have already been discussed in this book. Lest this become annoying to some readers, I want to make it immediately clear that increased text length is not at all the purpose of this approach. It is not done with the intention of selling content. Each and every one of us learns differently. A concept expressed in several ways could have a better impact on some people, while others benefit from a specific explanation, but it must be one that would push the right perception button and catalyze their ‘a-ha’ moment or, hopefully, moments. To illustrate some of the key points, there may be an occasional mild profanity employed. Again, this is only for the purpose of reinforcing a key concept.

If you have been struggling with a lack of faith in yourself and have felt a need to build strong self-esteem and great relationships with like-minded people to accomplish your wildest dreams, this book is for you. It is meant to be an easy read and a fun journey into your new self-making. You may well be familiar with some of the ideas presented here. Sometimes, however, when ideas and concepts are seen from someone else’s perspective, it can help bridge the final gap that seems to prevent us from taking the first and most crucial step towards the achievement of a long-craved outcome!

This book is about building the person you want to be, even if it may feel like you need to start from scratch. If what you read in the first chapter makes sense to you, then you will likely decide to apply the principles described in this book. If it doesn’t make sense, please move on. I say this without any sarcasm. On the contrary, I am a firm advocate of the notion that time is our most valuable asset; once lost, we can never get it back. Don’t waste your time reading this book if you feel it is not for you.

Here is why I wrote it. For over twenty years, I struggled with a lack of faith in the single most important entity that would bring me success in any area of life I wished. That entity was me. When it finally dawned that it was I who had gotten myself into this mental mess in the first place, I decided to reverse it just as methodically as I had built up and enabled it to eat at me for over 20 years. Once I was able to see through the fog of low self-esteem, I recognized it had all happened by my own choice. Therefore, there was no reason I couldn’t grab this mindset by the throat, turn it inside out, clean it up well, and start all over again.

The reversal process took me five years, during which time I set up the building blocks for the life I had decided that I wanted. It then took five more years to see all the tangible results self-efficient people care about — impeccable health and physical shape, an exciting, trusting, and fulfilling relationship, a gratifying and successful career, an ability to expand financially to the point of complete financial independence, and spiritual reward in the form of peace of mind, which I had desired for more than two decades.

Once I got on that road, I started observing the people around me more carefully. What I saw at first gave me courage and reinforced my feeling of being on the right path, meaning I slowly developed an ability to objectively make a comparison between myself and others in terms of mindsets. Differences in mindsets soon became evident. It was important to stand my ground and not let these differences become common traits again, for negativity and cynicism can be far more tempting to the feeble mind than positive thinking and integrity. I had to keep reminding myself not to fall for the negative thinking and poor attitudes of others and constantly refocus on my goals so I could build up the person I wanted to be and the life I wanted to have. It felt a bit like an obsession at times, knowing my long history of self-destructive mental patterns, which I was on a mission to reverse.

And it worked. I now know that a person and their chosen way of life are two sides of a single self-assignment on which no success should ever be taken for granted! It is exactly the same as graduating from college or earning your first black belt — that’s where your life begins as you have just learned how little you really know, only now this knowledge is no longer intimidating. You simply embrace it and keep going.

By the time I became professionally successful, I had already met many different people due to the nature of my job. I still have the privilege of meeting and getting to know men and women of all ages, coming from hundreds of places, professions, families, and socioeconomic backgrounds. I couldn’t help but notice from the beginning that at least ninety percent of them were truly amazing human beings. As I enjoy the opportunity to work with people from all walks of life who are kind, hardworking, loving of their families and friends, helpful, selfless, knowledgeable, smart, witty, funny — people with whom I would love to spend more time every once in a while, simply for who they are — I find that about eighty percent of these individuals are struggling to get control over at least two fundamental aspects of their lives. This lack of control manifests itself in several combinations. The two most obvious ones are health and money; a third factor is relationships. Invariably, the common denominator in their struggles is the fact that they have let things spiral out of control over the course of many years and have no confidence now in the premise that what has overwhelmingly gotten out of whack could be reversed and put back in line. These people would rarely acknowledge being the only ones able to change the course. They have lost or have never developed faith in the most important entity there is and ever will be — themselves! I kept stumbling upon this painfully familiar trend, and it started bothering me. I still find it very unfortunate, mostly because, again, the vast majority of people deserve so much better, not to mention every one of them (with rare exceptions) is completely able to take matters into their own hands when it comes to health, career, finances, relationships, or spirituality.

This guide is intended as a wholehearted salute to those who believe themselves to be late starters in life. It is a wake-up call for those who still let their self-doubts get in the way of starting the new life they secretly desire. And it is a thumbs-up to all those who have already done so in the face of fear.

My patients have told me many times that I am a very thorough nurse. A book can put this statement to the test. Through my experience, I have come to believe most people are exactly where they want to be in their lives by personal choice, even if they may not wish to admit it. But here’s the thing. You must only admit this to one person, that most important entity — yourself.

CHAPTER 1

Let’s Do This!

When I was eleven, I made a conscious choice not to have self-confidence, following the example of a person I admired. It seemed the right thing to do, and it made me feel unique — special in a way. I still admire this person today, but for completely different reasons. As time went by, I slowly and painfully realized that this choice to not be confident had been a poor decision. By then, however, twenty years had already passed and getting out of my own mental prison seemed as if I were commencing a fight with an unmatched monster.

What is self-esteem, and what is self-confidence? And why is it that so many people suffer from a lack of one or the other, or both? Self-esteem is the belief that you are a worthy human being, just as deserving of love, respect, and appreciation as any other, and the internal gratitude for receiving the love, respect, and appreciation you deserve. Lack of self-esteem makes you feel worthless and inferior to those around you. Self-confidence, on the other hand, is the belief that you can and will overcome any challenge life hurtles at you, and the pride rooted in your heart with regard to your ability to handle these challenges with grace. Lack of self-confidence creates a feeling of inadequacy and kills the desire for achievement due to fear of failure, again leading to various degrees of inferiority complex.

Some of the reasons you may have developed an inferiority complex are discussed below. Of course, this is not an all-inclusive list.

1.You were somehow socially awkward as a child and came to realize it much later in your life, when you started looking back at your relationships, recognizing repetitive patterns. For example, you may have liked a certain group of interesting and ‘super cool’ peers at school, but they never seemed willing to pay attention to you, talk to you, let alone accept you in their group. Perhaps your jokes didn’t impress those around you; maybe you always found yourself short of words when attempting to respond to someone’s hurtful remarks. You might have also had some sort of impediment, which constantly made you a target for various types of bullying.

2.You discovered relatively late that your habitual methods for success no longer worked once you entered what many like to call ‘the real world.’ Let’s say you always received excellent grades, making yourself and everyone else believe you were a very smart student by nailing the exams with minimal study time. You are now at the point where you’ve realized that passing tests easily probably didn’t indicate a high intelligence level on your part; rather it meant the passing requirements at your school were (likely) low. This is not surprising, as in many ways, the present education system hardly prepares us for the challenges of life. I understand that the term ‘real life’ has become a bit of a cliché, but it describes so well this particular period of time in which we are expected to perform at high levels, especially in terms of responsibility, accountability, and integrity. Therefore, I like to use this term, just as many other people do to express the difference between ‘what we were taught’ and ‘what actually happened’ or ‘what’s really going on right now.’

Some of us quickly learn that everything comes at a price, but because we are systematically fed a fast-food mentality and notions of instant gratification, many of us are not willing to pay the price for the goodies we want for ourselves, no matter what aspect of life these refer to. More often than we think, we keep trying to take the easy way out, failing time and again until we finally realize that fundamental truth: nothing comes free and there is no shortcut to anything worth pursuing. Some people are disappointed so many times that by the time they fully grasp this idea, they have already experienced numerous failures and become discouraged, tired, indifferent, and their self-confidence levels have dropped to an all-time low.

3.You have come to the conclusion that you’ve been studying for, focusing on, and practicing the wrong profession for a long time. If you are in a vocation requiring continuous dedication from early childhood, your discovery is that much more painful. You’ve invested thousands of hours to become the highly qualified professional needed to survive and thrive in a ridiculously competitive market. It turns out the market you have been programmed to master is starting to shrink and keeps shrinking. Now you need to change course and learn something completely different, after having already dedicated ten, twenty, or even thirty years of your productive life to becoming what you clearly weren’t meant to be.

4.You’ve determined that you need to change your career while everyone you know is already well established. Lack of emotional support from others is making you seriously doubt yourself and is holding you back from bringing new career aspirations to completion. Some of you may not dare mention contemplating a career change to your friends or loved ones. On top of that, you have not yet started making arrangements.

5.Once upon a time, you had a dream deep in your heart and mind, which for various reasons was suppressed and never brought to fruition. Suppose you wanted to go into a sport or learn a hobby or a craft that inspired you, but your parents or friends deemed it ‘too expensive,’ ‘too dangerous,’ ‘too nerdy,’ or simply an outright waste of time? As the years went by, you found yourself thinking about that dream every once in a while and vaguely re-experienced that thrill of aspiration. How about you realize it now? What is stopping you today?

6.You feel unable to prove yourself to those who matter, or at least those you believe matter to you. Although you’ve tried and done what seems like everything humanly possible, you find there’s always that one person (or sadly all too often, persons) who has a propensity for making derogatory and diminishing comments, critiques you, or is outright unhappy with who you are, even though they most likely haven’t made half the effort you have been making all this time. How strongly do you believe to be in the right company at this stage of your life?

7.You simply feel paralyzed by the idea that it’s too late for you to change your life or start something new. Anytime you begin pondering on a possible life change, you get stuck into analysis-paralysis mode and give up.

8.You have a tendency to establish only small or short-term goals for yourself. You are probably thinking: I’ve tried so many things, or I’ve worked this job for so long and have nothing to show for it. So, why fool myself with big or ambitious goals when I’m having trouble delivering even on the small ones?

9.You like being in a comfort zone. Anything pushing you out of such a zone makes you feel extremely awkward and uncomfortable. You get anxious just from the idea that things may not go your way at work, at home, on a trip or business meeting, or even at the home improvement store. Anything that doesn’t go as planned is upsetting and frustrating.

10.You really wish to try an investment strategy or start a business, but you’ve heard so many people fail, or personally know someone who went into their own business, invested their money in the stock market, or in real estate and lost it all! This makes you apprehensive and hesitant to start. To that end, you keep working in a boring office or in a stress-infested company, in a position you find uninspiring, unfulfilling, and miserable.

11.You feel insecure and vulnerable in social situations; in other words, you experience social anxiety. You are concerned with what others will think of you, how they’ll perceive you. It might feel uneasy starting a conversation with a stranger in an elevator, rolling your car window to ask for directions, or simply speaking to an acquaintance you like at the bar on a Friday evening. Why? Out of fear you may say something silly. This fear is seen in men and women alike, but more frequently in men. If you are a woman, perhaps you’re self-conscious about your looks, your weight. You might think your hair looks weird, a dress is too short, or your complexion isn’t ‘perfect.’

Do any of the above situations describe you? Perhaps you can see yourself in several of these scenarios at one time or another? Or could you think of a loved one who is battling the serious consequences of low self-esteem and total lack of self-confidence right at this moment, unable to enjoy the quality of life they deserve?

Could it be that a lot of it is self-inflicted, with just a little help from others? Before we go any further, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

My Story

Most people can likely relate to several of the above examples. We all have a story to tell when it comes to specific experiences and the ways we’ve handled or mishandled those situations. I would first like to offer you my personal story in which you will learn how I went from being a happy and confident child to becoming a disoriented and depressed young adult with almost zero self-esteem who eventually had to dig her way out of a self-imposed destructive mentality. I had to recommit to the change multiple times until I was finally able to expand my horizon by setting goals for personal, professional, and financial growth. All this helped me view each new challenge as a learning opportunity or a building block for the integrity I needed to succeed in my search for self-confidence.

I was born in Bulgaria into a family of professional classical musicians. In my part of the world, if your parents had their minds set on a specific profession (oftentimes their own occupation), there was little room for negotiation when it came to choosing your future career. There was an implicit understanding that even if you didn’t like it, you would continue practicing so you could learn discipline instead of wasting time engaged in useless pursuits. Of course, when I was a child, my idea of useful versus useless activity differed widely from my parents’ concepts, but at any rate, it was required that I practice the violin several hours each day. I was allowed to spend a couple of hours playing in the street with the neighbors’ children, but my parents didn’t particularly care for my argument when I tried multiple times to make a case for the unfairness of my life. In particular, I kept highlighting the fact that the neighbors’ kids were playing outside four to seven hours daily, which was particularly irritating during the summer and winter breaks!

This all was funny to remember years later when I came to the United States to complete my master’s and doctoral degrees in violin. I had to support myself, so among other things I started teaching violin lessons to make ends meet. I was shocked by all the choices the American children were given by their parents. Practicing an instrument was optional. Or the mandatory portion would entail anywhere from fifteen minutes to, say, an hour a day. Wow! That was not the case with me growing up! My father would sit and supervise my practice sessions for two to three hours daily when I was six years old. At age seven, I had to pass an entrance examination to get admitted to the music school in Sofia, the capital of my country. Once admitted, there was a violin exam at the end of each school year, but the three entry exams during the twelve years of school were the most important ones, namely for the first, fourth, and eighth grades (our equivalents of elementary, middle, and high school in the US). By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was practicing the violin five to six hours a day. By then, my parents didn’t need to push me. And, by the eighth grade, daily practice was between seven and eight hours. After high school, it was not unusual to put in anywhere from eight to eleven hours every day and mind you, you didn’t get paid to practice. You practiced to become competitive, gain admission to a good graduate music program, and then win an audition for a prestigious orchestra or become a soloist. I am sure this rings a bell with those committed to sports.

But here’s what happened. I was considered among the best players in my class up through the ninth grade or so. I had very high self-esteem as a student, but not so much personally. There were these other, excellent young musicians (much better than me, as I learned later) who were the ‘really popular’ kids, and some of them were also pretty outstanding bullies. I guess some types of popularity come with certain entitled behaviors; but who knows? At this point, I wore glasses with thick, and I mean thick, lenses. I was born with a defect, which required me to wear those horrendous eye crutches that made me look quite homely in the eyes of my classmates, girls and boys alike. I had been subject to bullying because of my eyeglasses since age five, but it intensified in grade school.

Also, at that time, there were several Chinese martial arts movies playing at the theater close to our home. During the Cold War, the majority of movies we saw came from (now mostly former) socialist countries. We, however, would crowd the theater for American movies such as Westerns, Star Wars, E.T., Indiana Jones, and some dramas. There were also Italian and French movies. But those Chinese martial arts movies were something else!

By the second or third grade, I wanted to learn karate so badly that I had started ‘practicing’ in our shared bedroom every day, without really knowing what I was doing. I wanted to be a martial artist so I could properly deal with the bullies at school. There were no private karate schools, unlike in the United States. Just like music, you had to start pursuing it professionally from a very early age in order to be admitted to the martial arts department of the sports school. Bureaucracy abounded then.

I will never forget the day I decided to share with my father and uncle (his older brother who happened to be visiting from out of town) that I wanted to learn karate and had, in fact, been ‘practicing’ on my own for a while. I believe I was in the third grade. My dad simply exploded. How dare I even think about such a thing! Didn’t I realize violin and karate were not compatible? How could I possibly practice on my own, risking injury to my hands, which would render me unable to play the violin? What the hell was I thinking! So, my dream went poof in a matter of just fifteen minutes — the time it took my dad to emerge from the shock and calm down. I was not allowed to mention martial arts from then on. In the meantime, as the bullies at school grew stronger, I secretly kept contemplating the possibility that maybe someday I would be a martial artist, a very competent martial artist at that, never, ever to be bullied again.

I realized I needed some defense mechanism, and for whatever reason then, I developed a mindset grounded in low expectations. I was eleven years old when I decided not to expect my day to be awesome; if we visited friends with children my age, I expected not to get along with them. I had been disappointed so many times already; therefore, the only reasonable thing to do was expect the worst. I also established a tactic for reinforcing this new state of mind by pointing out the disadvantages of each situation rather than embracing the advantages.

In addition, I figured out with my eleven-year-old brain that I had to come up with something to protect myself and save face at school, so to speak. Knowing I couldn’t rely too much on physical strength, I started working on developing a sharp tongue. It took a while, but since I had some genuinely helpful (although unintentional) role models in my immediate family, I began learning and was a diligent student indeed. By the sixth grade, I knew I was performing better on tests than anyone else in my class. Yet, I spent the majority of my time immersed in music. School was second priority. Many of the exams were oral. The teacher would ask you a question, and you, in turn, elaborated an answer. I became ingenious enough to create answers that would prove my point when I hadn’t used the textbook, and I’d still ace the exam.

By the ninth grade, things started to change. All of a sudden, I’d noticed several classmates better able to play their instruments, even though I practiced for far longer periods of time. It was akin to barely reading my textbooks but still acing oral and written exams. The difference was the violin actually mattered to me! I knew I had some physical challenges, such as excessive muscle tightness, which I hadn’t been able to overcome, and I started questioning my capability of handling my overall rigidness as a performer.

On top of all this, I developed a complex, which I handled by blaming the more successful kids for having better teachers, better instruments, better everything. I was diminishing my achievements in social situations simply to earn some verbal approval from people. I wanted them to say things like, Oh no, you are doing so great, and you are one of the best. It did net the desired compliments, but the more compliments I received, the more approval I craved and the more I knew my sense of security was completely false. I kept practicing long hours but asked little of myself when it came to analyzing the problem more deeply and sincerely. I was afraid.

Even with these deepening mental issues, I was admitted into the National Academy of Music — the college equivalent for music-related professions — by passing several hard rounds of examinations with some players who were serious competition. I was ranked eighth among thirty-three candidates. Not bad, considering I’d driven myself insane over the past three years, and they were only admitting twenty-three violinists. Over the next four years, while pursuing my bachelor’s degree in violin, things fluctuated, with a mixed degree of success. During the first year, my stage fright climbed to a level I had never felt before. The solution, it seemed, was to practice even more. I conditioned myself to get up at 5:20 a.m. every weekday and on Saturdays. I would be at the academy by 6:10 a.m., wait in line outside for the building to open at 7 a.m. (temperatures of -20º Celsius weren’t uncommon in the winter months) and get the key to the practice room I wanted. I then practiced until 9:00 p.m., with some breaks, when the building officially closed, and the doorman went from room to room to remind us it was time to go home. By the way, there was no air conditioning in the summer and minimal central heating in the winter. It seems surreal now, but it was very real back then.

My teacher at the time was Professor Ginka Gichkova, a renowned violinist and pedagogue. She had a unique analytical approach to violin playing and interpretation of music, which she was always eager to convey to us with passion and vigorous enthusiasm. I never saw her tired and never heard her complain. She despised gossip and had no patience for whiners. Importantly, there was yet another notable element in her teaching philosophy — she abided by the principle of constantly questioning yourself in order to always strive to make your violin technique better and better. She was simply adamant about it and that’s where I got in real trouble.

Looking back, I can’t help but feel a bit embarrassed about the way I completely missed my teacher’s point at the time. Truthfully, I was profoundly immature and had no clue whatsoever. I was twenty-two years old and managed to make a real breakthrough in my playing, which kept me inspired for a while. But my serious lack of insight came with the semiconscious choice I made during my last year in Professor Gichkova’s class to let my self-questioning thought process defeat rather than motivate me. It was just that simple, and I could not see it to save my life! I was a physically healthy and willing to work twenty-two-year-old, but in terms of mindset, I was already a dead end!

By the end of my fourth and last year at the Academy, I had a ton of practice hours behind me, but I kept avoiding stage performances whenever I could. It was then that I experienced a serious nervous breakdown. It happened while playing for a famous Bulgarian cellist. He was offering to use his connections to advocate for scholarships to a greatly reputed music school in Switzerland. I couldn’t play a single note at the audition, even though he had tried to make the event as informal and student-friendly as possible. I simply froze in front of him and the other candidates. I remember calling my mother from a street phone later that day (yes, those still existed back then). I told her what had happened and requested that she arrange for me to see her homeopathic practitioner, who was also a friend. So I went. The two of us had a long conversation. The practitioner strongly believed I was trying to overly control things instead of allowing myself to live my life. She also gave me some drops and told me to cut the practice sessions in half. I graduated that year and went to Switzerland anyway, with the money my parents had worked so hard to save for the travel expenses. It was a fiasco, of course. I didn’t get accepted and returned to my country, resolved to just give myself a break for a year.

During that year, I played at elementary and middle schools as a background musician for a small group of actors to make some money. In addition, I participated in nonstandard music ensembles playing primarily music by twentieth-century composers, which was great fun. Thanks to my mother’s connection, I also met my next violin teacher who worked in the United States. He agreed to listen to me play and after that audition, he agreed to take me as a student. In America! Now, that was a big deal. I never imagined coming to the United States. I always thought I’d immigrate to Western Europe to escape poverty, corruption, and the lack of job stability. So, now that I was motivated again, I studied for and passed the TOEFL exam for English proficiency, as required by Louisiana State University. I then made and sent all the recordings the teacher wanted me to complete. I also crammed a 1,200-page music history textbook in English over the course of that year in order to pass the diagnostic music history test, get exempt from a remedial course, and directly commence the graduate courses. Needless to say, I aced the diagnostic exam.

My violin professor, Kevork Mardirossian — a violinist of astounding erudition and creativity, and a tremendously supportive teacher to all students who put the time and sweat into their practice — was a man who had known for a long time how to both work hard and live life. He told me he had rarely seen a person with a mindset as self-destructive and negative as mine, self-critical only for the sake of self-humiliation rather than goal setting and improvement. He always maintained there was no limit to a person’s ability to grow if that person was willing to put their passion, mind, and labor into it. Mr. Mardirossian is currently the James H. Rudy Professor of Music at Indiana University, but at this time, he was teaching at LSU.

There was one other problem of which Professor Mardirossian was completely unaware. While I was practicing nonstop as an undergraduate student, refusing any paid orchestra gigs that were offered to me in order to ‘perfect’ myself, I really had almost zero experience playing in an orchestra. Big mistake. When I came to the US, I immediately learned I shouldn’t have refused those gigs because playing in an orchestra professionally and practicing between four walls for hours on end were two very different things, neither of which was a good substitute for the other! I had to audition by playing orchestral excerpts and win a seat in the local part-time symphony orchestra to be able to pay my rent, earn enough for food and all other expenses; the graduate assistantship would cover my tuition. I needed to work legally, and the orchestra was one of the very few ways to do so on a student visa, aside from teaching violin lessons as an affiliate to a small campus-based music academy. My stage fright still reigned supreme, so my audition was far less convincing than my playing in the professor’s class.

I struggled with stage fright for several years. I was able to give decent recitals, but the orchestra auditions continued to be the absolute most dreaded events for me. Not surprisingly, I avoided auditions like the plague. At some point, several colleagues and friends tried to be helpful in making me realize that I had to actively seek audition experience in order to overcome the stress. It was the first time I was ever confronted with the idea that if you were really afraid of doing something, you simply needed to do it as often as possible. This was a challenging concept, and regretfully, I turned out to be the densest of students, having realized my perceived excellence so far had been nothing more than a personal myth. I kept seeing younger people with much fewer practice hours and less experience under their belts, excelling significantly by scoring great jobs all over the place.

Towards the end of my doctoral program, I won a part-time position with a professional orchestra in upstate New York. I was elated. By that time, I had learned some breathing techniques, some positive-thinking exercises and focusing drills. I was also taking a very small dose of a beta-blocker as prescribed by the general physician at the LSU Health Center, after I told her I just needed it for stage performance anxiety. I knew from several online musicians’ forums that many performers would use some type of a heart-rate-lowering pill when auditioning for orchestras. I also made sure it was perfectly legal. Otherwise, I was the healthiest creature on the planet!

The beta-blocker was not entirely unjustified. You have to know the nature of orchestra auditions to understand why many people take the pill. You are a student, play gigs, and your income isn’t exactly stellar, but it pays for rent and food. And gas. If you are smart, you save money for auditions. Each month, you look in Musician magazine and see that there are three to ten auditions in the next four months. You don’t care where they are — you just want a salary and a full-time contract with benefits. Twenty-five thousand per year seems like a frigging dream, and forty grand? Oh my, that’s rich!

So, you submit your application, buy an airplane ticket, and reserve a rental car and a hotel room. All these expenses come out of your pocket. You get there if your application has been accepted based on your resume (some of the most prestigious orchestras select candidates via a recording pre-round and only then invite a chosen group to play the first round of their audition). Then you learn that your competition ranges between anywhere from 40 to 500 people for the announced spot, depending on how famous the orchestra is. You are given about ten minutes behind a curtain to perform the pieces you are asked to play from the audition list. Then a voice rises from the other side of the curtain: Thanks so much! You fly back home. Do you now see the need for the beta-blockers and why I was so thrilled when I finally won the part-time seat in the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra?

During the next two seasons, I auditioned several times for a full-time position with them. My stage fright got in the way again, even though I played better each time. By then, there had been several orchestral bankruptcies all over the US. It was 2008, and I knew bad times lay ahead because the local musicians’ union had debated whether to go on a strike due to ongoing heated disagreements between the musicians and management regarding salary increases, business model ‘improvement,’ and financial sustainability.

I also learned through the grapevine that two of the best younger violinists from my university who had already finished their graduate work at reputable schools had given up music! One had become a financial advisor, and the other had enrolled in medical school to become a surgeon. The news felt like a slap to the face. After I hung up with the mutual musician friend who told me all this, my brain was on fire.

So, these two who were at the top of the professor’s class, the cream of the cream, and subjects of so much admiration, respect, and envy, are now doing something completely different? I mused. Because they feel they’re not competitive enough to continue as violinists? So, what am I thinking and doing in this profession, really?

At that point, I had been a musician for twenty-six years! I knew nothing but music. I had no scientific knowledge (let alone in English) because, during the twelve years of music school, we learned very little biology and math, and no chemistry, only music-related subjects. Basically, you practice your butt off from age three, four, five, or six until age twenty-five when you start auditioning. You have already put in twenty years of work before you even begin applying for a job! And, what do most people think about after they’ve practiced a career for twenty-some years? You guessed it — retirement! You might wonder about the doctoral degree and its worth. It allowed musicians to teach at universities, did it not? Affirmative on that point, but the issue was I didn’t want to teach a profession that had less and less public support in the US. It wouldn’t have been fair to my students in the first place.

I remember the next week in the orchestra as a complete blur. That was in early 2008. I was performing in the main concert programs but playing my violin made absolutely no sense to me anymore. There was a vacuum under my feet and an even worse vacuum between my ears! I learned what it meant to be at a crossroads in life. I had spent eleven years in college earning a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a doctoral degree. I had written and successfully defended a doctoral dissertation in English just the year prior. I felt absolutely no desire to spend yet another four years in college without being guaranteed a job. Being forced at age thirty-two to think pragmatically for the first time in my life, the real questions were what profession required less school and would guarantee a job? What was desperately needed in the US at the time? How could I be useful to people if I stopped being a musician?

We had a viola player in our orchestra who was also a registered nurse. She had put herself through nursing school and done so with a child and a full-time job. Could I do it with no children and a part-time job? Things then got even worse. Ten days after I shared my intentions with my husband of three years, he announced that we were no longer compatible. He had initially expressed great verbal support for my decision. So, in addition to making moving and divorce arrangements, I focused my attention on the violist, who was also a nurse. Having hit bottom, I realized I had nothing to lose.

I called her. She invited me over to her house and spent two hours navigating me through the application process. It turned out that like me, she didn’t have any base of scientific knowledge when she first started her prerequisite classes for nursing school, and now she was a successful PACU (post-anesthesia care unit) nurse who loved her job! She was even kind enough to let me borrow her 1,100-page anatomy and physiology textbook, along with her textbook on nursing basics of almost equal page count. I began reading that same night and figured, if I started the prerequisite courses in the summer at the local community college and by fall, read each of these two books twice from cover to cover, along with the texts for all the other science courses, I would be in good shape. After all, I knew how to practice the violin nine hours daily, so all I needed to do was simply start reading for a similar length of time or even more if necessary. It also dawned on me that while there was a time limit on playing the violin in an apartment, there was no such problem with reading since it didn’t involve the making of noises, meaning I could read 24/7 if I had to. Somehow, this thought gave me great comfort as I realized there was no reason I would ever show up for an exam unprepared!

I knew there wasn’t going to be any mediocrity and cheating this time around — I was on my own! I found a cheap rental apartment, although not in the best area. Then I found some new violin students, enrolled in, and started the prerequisite science classes that same summer. Before I knew it, my schedule consisted of classes five days a week from 7:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. and studying until 3:00 a.m. And of course, there was all the playing at rehearsals and concerts with the orchestra, and teaching violin for a couple of hours two to three days a week. I also became a tutor at the community college for one semester. The textbooks were my inevitable companions during rehearsal and concert breaks. There was little chitchatting and gossiping with the colleagues. This went on for about a year.

Then I started a two-year weekend nursing program at