The Art of Letting Go

September 2026

Nathan Bowser
Singer/Songwriter, Vocal Instructor

One of the great paradoxes I’ve found in singing is that sometimes the best way to find yourself is to let go of yourself.

Throughout my years as a performer, I’ve noticed that my best performances are usually the ones where I think the least about me. I’m not thinking, “How do I sound? Do I look good? Am I singing this well enough?” Instead, I’m thinking about the story, the message, and the person I’m trying to reach.

I first really discovered this while serving a mission for my church in Las Vegas. I had the opportunity to put on concerts about every other month, and I remember realizing that it didn’t really matter how good of a singer I was. The concerts weren’t about proving anything. They were about sharing something meaningful and giving people hope. And strangely enough, the less I worried about myself, the better the performances seemed to become. Somehow, the concerts always turned out better than I expected.

I’ve seen that lesson follow me ever since. I’ve performed concerts to raise money for my own education, performed in shows that were deeply personal to me, and found that even when the circumstances are centered around me, the performance becomes more powerful when I can make it about something bigger than myself. Audiences can feel the difference. They can tell when our energy is turned inward toward ourselves and when it is turned outward toward them.

And I think this is where humility gets interesting. Thinking that you’re amazing can be pride, but so can thinking that you’re terrible. Both thoughts keep the focus on you. A performance is an act of giving. You can have years of training and every vocal tool imaginable, but if you can’t get outside yourself, the performance may still fall flat. On the other hand, someone who is just beginning to sing can move an audience deeply if they are willing to genuinely share something with them.

That doesn’t mean technique doesn’t matter. That’s why we practice. We take lessons, rehearse, do breath work. We listen with strained brows as our instructor tells us for the fourth time what the cricothyroid and thyroarytenoid muscles have to do with sounding like a unicorn or a narwhal. We pick up as many tools as we can. But eventually, the day comes when we have to let all of that go. We trust that the work is in our bodies, and we become present enough to give ourselves completely to the people listening.

If rehearsal is the practice of picking things up, then performance is a practice in letting go. We prepare so that we can stop thinking about ourselves and start thinking about what we came to give.

And maybe that’s the beautiful paradox: the less a performance is about proving who you are, the more fully you get to become who you've been working to be.

Happy Singing, songbirds.