Meet Marissa Postler

 

We were lucky to catch up with Marissa Postler recently and have shared our conversation below.

Marissa, so great to be with you and I think a lot of folks are going to benefit from hearing your story and lessons and wisdom. Imposter Syndrome is something that we know how words to describe, but it’s something that has held people back forever and so we’re really interested to hear about your story and how you overcame imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is such a wild thing. Our brains can give us so much tangible evidence that we are worthy of embodying a certain identity, and yet when our feelings tell us otherwise, they somehow win the argument.

I have struggled with different versions of imposter syndrome my entire life, and still do every time I take on a new identity. The biggest one I’ve overcome though happens to be the one that’s always been most important to me, and that’s the identity of “musician.”

Would you believe me if I told you that I literally majored in music but still couldn’t wrap my brain around calling myself a musician? I don’t know what my definition of musician was that I wasn’t meeting, but it didn’t matter because like I said, imposter syndrome doesn’t care about facts. It’s a feeling.

The only thing I ever wanted to be good at was music, and it killed me inside that I wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. And that caused a spiral of self-fulfilling prophecies. I wasn’t spectacular at music so I didn’t think I could be a music major. Therefore, I didn’t get any better. Because I wasn’t studying/practicing music like someone who wants to embody the identity of “musician.”

I get upset with myself sometimes when I think about how long it took me to zoom out and see that I was creating that reality for myself by getting stuck in self doubt and allowing it to stop me from taking the very actions that would allow me to break free from said doubt. But now I’m mostly just hell bent on helping other people figure it out so they don’t waste any more time not pursuing the things they want to.

The math is so simple once you zoom out and see that all of our actions have consequences, including the ones we DON’T do. By sitting around being sad that I didn’t feel like a “real musician,” I was proving myself right.

Today I know that I’m a real musician, because I’ve done a million and one things to prove it. Things I used to not be able to do, because I hadn’t taken the time to build my skills and grow into my musician identity.

Last spring, I took a leap of faith in myself. I could count on one hand the number of solo shows I had played at that point, with me singing and accompanying myself on piano. If I strung together every song I could vaguely play, I had maybe an hour and a half of music total.

But I was offered a three-hour gig, and even though the performance was literally 14 days later, something in me told me to say yes and assured me I’d figure it out. And I did.

I basically dropped everything I had been working on and gave myself permission to treat piano like my full time job. Because frankly, I wished it was! I had so much FUN practicing for three hours a day every day. It was so invigorating and I was getting constant dopamine from the fact that it was WORKING.

Two weeks later, I gave a performance that was rough around the edges, but far greater than anything I had ever done before. And even though my brain was certainly listing off all the things I wish I had done better, I had real tangible evidence that I CAN do this. And in fact, they immediately booked me to come back several more times in the future!

I couldn’t believe how rapidly I stepped into the identity of “musician” once I gave myself permission to start ACTING like it. As soon as I started doing what musicians do, namely PRACTICING and PERFORMING, it became super obvious to me and everyone around me that this identity DOES belong to me. But it absolutely started with me acting as if it were true and doing what people with this identity do.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’m so grateful to be able to sum up my answer to this question with one word – MUSIC! I am a musician, educator, and coach, helping empower others with the same skills I spent half my life longing for before I realized it was up to me to build them.

I perform and release music under the name Mar in Color, often by myself and also in collaboration with my husband and his hybrid live/electronic bass music project, TechTonic. We had a wild year of performing together more than we even dreamed of over the last few years put together, and we can’t wait to see what the rest of 2025 has in store for us!

A lot of my energy this past year has also gone into teaching and coaching aspiring singers, pianists, and songwriters and creating programs for them. I’ve met and been lucky enough to work with several incredible humans who all remind me of myself in different ways and it’s been so healing to help them along on their journeys as I continue to grow and deepen into my own.

One thing in particular I’m really excited about is the launch of my signature coaching program for aspiring singer/songwriters looking to create and release their first EP. The program is geared toward beginner and intermediate musicians and it’s called RELEASE because we’re gonna be releasing a LOT of different things during our time together.

RELEASE is about releasing ourselves from self doubt, imposter syndrome, and any other flavor of anxiety that’s keeping us from pursuing our passions. It’s about releasing more of our voices – both our singing voice and our written voice – because they both hold so much POWER and deserve to be unleashed. It’s about releasing all the messy stuff that’s bottled up inside of us – feelings, stories, fears, grief, heartbreak, all of it! – and transforming it into potent and poignant songs that can heal both the writer and the listener. And ultimately, it’s about putting all of that together, along with some good old fashioned music lessons, so that anyone with the desire to do so can RELEASE their first EP!

I am currently piloting the program on a 1:1 basis with a few incredible humans and I can’t WAIT for you to hear what they’re cooking up! RELEASE will be officially launched as a group program in April, but I’m already accepting presale signups so please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions if this sounds like somewhere you belong! I love chatting with people who love music as much as I do 🙂

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One word that has really lived in my head ever since I read The Artist’s Way about a year and a half ago is AUDACITY. Julia Cameron talks in the book about how one of the more underrated factors that can often separate a “successful” artist from a less successful one (in addition to the many valid roadblocks life throws us) is audacity. Every time I’m in a situation where I’m feeling insecure or anxious or nervous about putting myself out there for an opportunity, a little voice in my mind says “Mar, AUDACITY.” Things don’t just ✨happen✨ to us if we don’t have the audacity to put ourselves in their path. The audacity to say “yes I would be a great choice for XYZ and I’ll prove it.”

Last week I got to perform at my coolest and most legitimizing venue yet and open for touring artists, which was a first for me! And the crazy part? When my husband saw it online and sent me the application, I almost didn’t even apply! The first thought that popped into my head was “oh they’d never pick ME.” If I hadn’t challenged that thought with a little bit of healthy audacity to try anyway, I would have literally created the reality I was afraid of – me not getting to play shows like that. I was SO grateful to past me for having the guts to try despite those fears when I got the email that they’d chosen me after all!

Another thing that I gotta admit I also took from The Artist’s Way (you should probably just read the whole thing!) is the idea of creativity and spirituality being intertwined. I spent my late teens and all of my twenties identifying as an atheist and staying far away from anything remotely spiritual, after growing up in what I believe to be toxic religion. Since softening my stance and exploring spirituality with an open mind on MY terms, my life has gotten infinitely better. I’m more in touch with mySELF and my intuition, more connected to my purpose, and to other like minded people on a similar path. And all of that has been LIFE GIVING for my creativity. Because creativity, I now believe, is not something that has to come from within us, but rather something we can channel through us. Looking at it this way has allowed me to create so much MORE, as well as more freely, and in ways I never would have considered before. It also reinforces my belief that anyone with the desire to create can and should do so, which leads to my third point,

Growth mindset! I cannot believe how long it took me to truly understand and BELIEVE in the power of having a growth mindset, even though I taught it to elementary kids for years in my previous career as a K-8 public school music teacher. But now I truly believe it’s the magic key that unlocks anything and everything you could possibly want in life. Once I really understood that talent is a myth and that all the artists I look up to got there not by being born with superhuman singing or instrumental abilities, but with years of dedicated practice, I suddenly had nothing stopping me from doing the same. And I’ve been screaming off the rooftops that there’s nothing stopping YOU from doing the same! It might not happen as quickly or as easily for some of us, but all of us have the ability to improve, and if we stay on the path long enough, we will absolutely get closer to our dreams. And if this is truly something you feel called to do on a deep level, then the journey is the fun part anyway!

In terms of advice, I think the best thing anyone with a desire to live a more creative life should do first is read The Artist’s Way 🙂

Tell us what your ideal client would be like?

I am absolutely lit up by working with people who are some version of my past self. Someone who is deeply passionate about music, who since childhood has always had a strong desire to DO music in some capacity, but for some reason never had the confidence or audacity to go for it, or perhaps life got in the way somehow. But now they’re ready to reclaim the truest and best version of themself by pouring into their passion and investing in the necessary knowledge and skills, thus allowing that person to emerge.

I am also a huge advocate of CREATING over just performing, so anyone with a desire to build these skills SO THAT they can create their own original music is especially my favorite kind of client! But I’m very happy just helping people find and release their singing voice too if that’s what they want to focus on 💚 Please reach out if any of this sounds like you!

Contact Info:

Image Credits

Photos by Morgan
Luke Myers
David Jones
Chelsea Whitaker
Dogtown Studio

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