How did you feel about your most recent audition or performance? Let’s think about those emotions for a bit.
Firstly, what were the highlights? What aspects of your performance filled you with satisfaction? Fantastic! Take a moment to celebrate those wins!
Now, let’s focus on growth: What areas do you think could use a little polish? Be as specific as you can!
Were you able to concentrate fully on your craft precisely when it mattered?
Reflecting on your focus:
What was on your mind as you arrived at the audition?
What thoughts filled your head 20 minutes before you took the stage?
How about in the crucial minute before—what were you honing in on?
And those final 30 seconds—what was the mental landscape like as you prepared to step into the spotlight? Reflect on your breathing patterns.
As you walked on stage, what was your focus? “ME-centric”,or “what if X,Y,Z”?
During tuning, where was your head at? Your breathing?
As you prepared to play, was your focus
How did you approach the first 20 seconds of your concerto?
What was your mindset for the rest of your performance?
After you played, what thoughts rushed in?
And how did you feel about it later on?
If something unexpected happened during your performance, how did you respond? What did your inner dialogue sound like? Were you your own biggest cheerleader or critic? How quickly did you regain your composure and get back on track?
Were you able to tap into that sweet spot of optimal energy for your performance?
Could you control your energy levels, ramping up or cooling down as necessary?
Who was in charge: the audition, or did you remain the master of your fate?
Now, turn the lens inward: what valuable takeaways can you distill from today’s audition? What lessons will you carry forward into future performances?
While there are a few ways to get oneself Centred ,this particular method is loosely based on Dr. Don Greene’s 7-step Centering down method. This one is for people who have too much excess energy and who need to release some of it to get into their particular energy Zone.
You can also read my 10 Minutes for Optimal Focus post on this site;there is no “1 size fits all ” for this sort of training.
1. Find a point in the room-somewhere about four meters away, and well below eye level to focus your attention on. We’ll call this your Focal Point
2. Concentration your attention on your breathing using a :4-2-6-2: rhythm (in through the nose for four seconds, let the air just sit there for two, exhale slowly for six, relax for two, repeat) or something similar; the important thing is to always have the out-breath longer than the in-breath. Do this until you have “the feeling”. This is a short-form of the Body Scan; check each of your main, and most important muscle groups-when you find unwanted tension, tense, then release the muscles while focusing on being relaxed and supple. With practice, you will be able to get there in as few as three breaths.
3. State your present Goal. Make it short and to the point.
4. Think of three things that, if you did them, you could achieve this goal. These statements should be two words or lessThen, visualize this goal, use at least your first three primary senses-Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic (seeing, hearing, feeling). You need to really feel, see, hear…exactly what you want to happen, what your result will be.
5. Find your body’s centre-point; approximately three finger-widths below your navel, and two-three finger-widths into your abdomen(you can also find your centre by rotating your hips in ever smaller circles until you find your optimal point of balance).
Imagine all your energy concentrating there. Then, imagine the energy pooling there. Just before you feel your energy reach its most intense, shoot that energy from your centre up and out through your eyes to your foal point (step 1) like X-man Cyclops: (youtube.com/watch?v=vheCMvfRbFM).
If that’s not your thing, try just taking one last full breath and blast it out in a steady stream while repeating your Goal (from Step3).
In the beginning, this will, naturally, take some time-take as long as you need to get it right. As with anything, with diligent, regular practice, you should be able to get this routine/ritual down to just a few breaths.
Feel the energy, feel the focus, feel the confidence…go get ‘em!
This is a sample of a quick, effective set of exercises to help you get into that space where you can do Optimal Work.
Change your physiology, change your focus, change what you’re saying to yourself, you change everything!
The Formula
Bounce on your toes for 30 seconds then Jogging (lightly, 20 sec., hard, 15 sec. Repeat 3X)
Three Mindful Breaths
Inhale 4 counts, hold 1, exhale 7, relax 1, repeat. (or something similar that works for you as long as the exhales are longer than the inhales)
Arm Rotations :
Hold arms out to the side-shoulder high, palms down-rotate forward 20X, then 20X backward
then
Palms up-rotate 20X forward, then 20X backward
Interlock your fingers in front of you, palms forward, raise them above your head, following your hands with your eyes-hold for 15 sec., breathing deeply through your nose (as always)
Sprinter-pose : Left foot forward, feet ca. 30 cm apart, pump your arms vigorously(like a 100m sprinter) for 30 sec., rest for 15 sec. then switch to right foot forward, repeat 30 sec.
Three Mindful Breaths
Transition to 3 min mindfulness meditation (simply observe the breath as it comes into the body and as it leaves. When random thoughts come into your mind- say hi, and let them drift away.return to observing the breath…repeat…repeat…repeat)
Now
Get “ the Stare “ ; that look that says “I mean business”, set your intention-what is it you are going to accomplish now ? Find 3 things that, if you were to do these, you would perform at you optimal level.
When you have them firmly in your mind, visualize yourself doing (X) as well as possible, maybe even better; see, hear, feel, smell, taste what it’s going to be like.
When you have “The Feeling”, when you can “See It”, when it “Sounds Right”, let out one last blast of air (you could think of it being a “Laser Beam”) and go kick ass.
The 15th century Swiss doctor, toxicologist, philosopher Paracelsus wrote: „As a man imagines himself to be, so shall he be, and he is that which he imagines” I’m sure most of us will recognize this quote as being the basis of the title and first line of James Allen’s book As a Man Thinketh…
This verse will be the starting point for my sermon, today.
Alexandra is a very intelligent, attractive, usually very buoyant, sometimes opinionated woman, who is, presently, assistant to the artistic director of the most important theatres in the German-speaking world).
A talented dancer, she was on the road to making ballet her career, but a physical problem with her feet meant she didn’t get taken on by any of the serious ballet schools. In Gymnasium and in her university studies she graduated with first class honours.
She was recruited directly university to her position at the theatre.
Alexandra is presently at a major Artist Management Firm based in London.
Now, with all this talent and success, you’d maybe think she was a pretty confident person…? Think again. She related that she had always had a horror of taking exams, while at school, and that these interviews had the same effect on her. “Exams and interviews are just a terror, it’s a fact of life, and there’s nothing you can do about it!” Anyway, she couldn’t possibly see why she would stand a hope in hell of even getting considered for even a preliminary phone interview.
She had recently had an interview for a job similar to hers where the interview had simply gone “all wrong”, only confirming her feeling of being way out of her depth.
Bit of a long intro, but Alexandra is fairly typical of the sort of people I deal with, be they musicians, dancers, actors, athletes, business or young people; they have the goods, but they feel so down on their abilities that they force themselves to screw up in these sort of situations: interviews, auditions, and even performances.
As long as people see the situation, or themselves as being so, or so, or so, it will be so as long as they believe this story that they’re telling themselves.
Confidence is one of the main building blocks of a great performance (I’ll deal with the others in later posts). Without it we can’t summon up the courage to go for it, to get ourselves into the flow/zone, or whatever. Without it we give into our fears, and we know what they invariably break down to: not being enough, being unworthy; in other words, Imposter Syndrom.
For today, I’ll give you a few tools that can, if practiced work wonders.
Confidence is a muscle that must be exercised constantly.
1/ Fake it! Do this until it becomes real.
If you were able to maintain a level of self-confidence that was just unshakeable, what would you be doing differently? You can watch the « Cowardly Lion » scene on Youtube for inspiration- « If I were king of the forest… »
How would you sit/stand?
How would you be breathing?
Would your major muscle groups be tense, or relaxed?
What would you focus on?
What would your self-talk be saying to you?
Figure these things out for yourself, practice them, pretend that this is you and, with practice, it could be.
2/ Visualisation.
Visualization is a great tool for correcting mistakes in one’s performance, as well as improving one’s self-image. Take Point 1-Fake it. Sitting comfortably, eyes closed, imagine yourself in the situation you wish to improve on. See yourself fully in the situation, feel the confidence, feel your mastery of the situation. If, at first there is something that doesn’t go as you want it to, then stop the film, rewind it and make corrections. Our minds don’t register the difference between something we have visualised and a real event, so each visualization session will be clocked up as a success ( as long as you are always seeing youself in a positive light). The more success, the more confident we become. We are also rewiring the brain to produce this reaction when this and similar situations arise.
3/Highlight Reel.
Put together a list of some of your best moments/successes that you can sit down quietly and visualise every day. They don’t have to be huge, just successes. Come up with a couple of past successes, imagine succeeding in something coming up soon; again it doesn’t have to be massive in the beginning-you’re going to build on this going forward. Then see yourself succeeding in a larger event somewhere down the line. It’s important to always visualise things that are in the realm of the “possible” because your subconscious will always know when you’re fooling yourself.
4/ Gratitude.
Start and end your day with a short session of remembering all that you’re grateful for; five things is enough (people, things situations etc.)-it’s a great fear-fighter!
5/ Monitor your +/- thoughts.
Every day the average person has ca. 60’000 thoughts. Usually, 40’000 of them are negative: “Idiot, watch where you’re driving, How can she go out dresses like THAT?, damn! Idiot! You screwed that up again! I’ll never get this right etc. What seem to be fairly benign, off the cuff thoughts, build up, day by day, putting a hugely negative bent on our basic outlook on life.
Take a notebook and, for a week, write down as many of your negative thoughts as you can. Then, look at them, and categorize them into useful/not useful, necessary/ not necessary sorts of thoughts. Then come up with empowering, realistic alternatives; they don’t have to be on the super-positive scale, neutralising a negative thought will do the trick. This will start you on your way to a more positive general attitude in your life. A positive person is also a more confident person; and a nicer one too!
Before reality comes a thought, an idea, a dream. If you can really see it, feel it, hear it, it can become reality, because it is already real in your mind.
Aristotle said it simply over 2,300 years ago: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
If you have never experienced something, you cannot visualize it; visualization is the recreation and/or mental improvement of something already experienced. Something new; a new experience, playing at a much higher level… this must first be imagined.
For decades people believed that it was humanly impossible for man to run a mile in under four minutes; they thought one would burn up inside, or some such thing, from the exertion. Roger Banister, a young English university student was convinced that it was possible and set out to achieve “the impossible”. After a couple near successes he finally beat the 4:00 barrier, finishing in 3:59.4. This in itself was a great achievement, but what is interesting for us is the fact that almost immediately after Banister’s record run, he and several other runners beat the mark in that same year; a sub 4:00 mile was now imaginable. This phenomenon can be seen over and over in human history with E=mc2. Einstein said that he saw the theory in a dream before he started to actually work it out. Hand-held communication devices didn’t exist in the late 60’s, but Gene Roddenberry imagined the communicator in Star Trek; once this device came into the universal imagination, it was only a matter of time before the mobile phone became a huge part of many people’s lives. Caveat: none of these things happened just because someone thought “oh wouldn’t it be nice…” (that only applies to The Beach Boys ;-). No, there was some very serious work involved. Work, setbacks, more work, visualization…did I say visualization? Maybe it’s time for a new topic!
Learning to visualize
Start small, start familiar. Let’s take one of my favorite examples: In the Cowardly Lion’s song from The Wizard of OZ, “If I were king of the forest” is a great example of the process, Imagination-to-Visualization.
We can see his imagination, allowing him to see the true courage that was already hiding within him. His song is, in fact, a sort of Incantation, in that he is physically “into it”, mentally focused on it, and the language he is using is strong and positive. This Triad of using the body positively, focusing on his wish, and the use of strong, positive statements starts his mind working on him becoming the “King of the Forest”. Once he’d imagined his courage into being, he is able to put it into play when he really needs to. If he could do it, so can you; everything you need to succeed is somewhere inside of you.
Exercises
Play a note on your instrument, your favorite note, a note that you like to hear yourself play, your best note (get the idea?). Listen to the sound, feel your muscles, the air flow, the feel of the bow on the string, the way you feel when you play that note, the smell of the brass, the wood, the resin. Notice what you are seeing while you are playing and get as much information about that note as possible. Now put your instrument aside, sit comfortably and close your eyes. Take three very deep breaths (in the beginning this will probably take a bit longer); on the first exhalation, check your body for tension. If you find your throat is tight, tell it to relax and it will relax. If your fingers or wrist feel tense, tell them to relax-they will. Go through your body on the long exhalations and release all tension. You may also want to use the Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) method. This consists of slow, deep breathing, followed by systematically tensing, holding, and the relaxing all of your major muscle groups. It can be done in 5-10 minutes. This is best done in a sitting or, better yet, lying down position.
Now go back and remember all that you put into your memory banks about that note. Recall the smell, the feeling, the texture of your instrument, how your breath felt Use all of your senses. What you’re doing here is putting down markers (bookmarks, if you will) for future reference. When you have this reference of yourself playing this superb note, it’s a short step to allowing your mind to conceive this quality. This can be for any note you might imagine yourself playing. Over time you will find that you will be able to speed up or slow down this mental practice but I will come to that later.
As a first step, imagine a great performance. Think of someone you really admire who you’d like to be like, not someone you’d like to be! First, you need to get into a receptive, meditative, open state. This is when you allow and welcome all of the ideas, thoughts, feelings, and images into your subconscious mind. I’ll deal with the how of getting into “state” later.
Imagining that performance in your mind, hear the way they play, the lovely phrasing and sound and sense their confidence as they play.
For the next step imagine yourself as the performer. Yes, YOU are performing at this level and can now experience exactly what it’s like. Performing in your mind’s eye, feel every bow stroke, every breath you take, the feelings in your fingers, your throat, your lips, hear just what a superior performance is like.
If you watch professional skiers waiting for their turn to race down the course, you will inevitably see them in a racing position, visualizing their descent with all the turns, and jumps that they have already encountered in training sessions. They are doing kinaesthetic visualization which is an act of visualizing with minimized physical movements, helping recreate the perfect run in their minds.
Coming back to your visualization, it’s no longer your idol playing, but instead you. Yes, you yourself, with your sound, your musical ideas but at that much higher level. Once you can imagine yourself playing at this level and you regularly practice your perfect visualization of your optimal performance, your mind will start to seek the ways and techniques for you to physically make this reality. The mind, being a sort of servomechanism, will, subconsciously seek the goal you have set it and, as long as your sceptical “left-brain” analytical thinking doesn’t get in the way, work towards a achieving this goal.
This has now become “real” in your mental world and you are able to visualize yourself playing at this level.
Being able to see yourself playing at this higher standard, having given yourself permission to play beyond your present physical level, you can use visualization as a tool alongside of your concentrated, goal driven, super focused, mindful practice to progress towards the level that your mind already knows you to be capable of.
Life today can be seen, to a large extent, as a series of “performances”. Our mental state, our happiness, contentment, state of frazzle, success in work, love-life, winning in anything can depend on how we “perform”!
Wow, how’s that for an opening statement?
And here’s another one: Did you know that the first 20-30 seconds of an audition or job interview are crucial to convince a panel or an interviewer that you are really worth further consideration?
Let’s look at a few scenarios from various walks of life.
You have a product, a really great product but you need investors to help fund your development and production launch. It comes down to one meeting, one pitch, one shot at winning the investment. Now, no matter how good the product, and no matter how well you know your stuff, if you freeze, become tongue-tied, forget to include important pieces of information during the presentation, it’s not going to look very promising is it?
A musician, actor or dancer at an audition, or someone at an important job interview has to have the optimal level of competence, confidence, “winningness”, just has to be there right from the get-go. How do you put your best foot forward when the voices of doubt, the “what- ifs? And when the otherwise laser-like focus just isn’t present?
The “Big Game”/or competition: those seeds of doubt, that failing razor-sharp concentration, those self-created stresses that cause your muscles to tighten up, (even ever so slightly) destroy all of those hours of training. You’ve certainly done all the work, but how to bring you’re A- game NOW?
Your teenager is going through something, they’re not the same, things are not going well at school. You’re going to have one of those conversations with them but, which version of You is going to show up? The proactive, understanding, loving parent or the provocative “bad cop” who’s attitude just might cause the teen to close up, shut up and shut you out?
The outcomes of these and many more situations depend on which “Me” shows up and how you perform in the moment.
I’ve studied performance from all angles, in numerous situations and differing circumstances, and analyzed the successful and famous, in their performance.
In all situations there are things that we can and things that we can’t directly control.
We cannot directly control “others”. What we can control is the work we have put into our performance, our preparedness and perhaps most importantly, our response to any given situation. Victor Frankl famously said in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning,“Anything can be taken from us, everything can be taken from us, except our one last freedom: the freedom to choose how we respond to any given situation.”
Between stimulus and response, lies that fleeting moment where we are free to choose our response. Choose wisely!
The science says, and don’t ask me how they know, that, on an average day we “think” around 60’000 individual thoughts (all approximations, you understand).
Of those, 95% (57’000) are the same thoughts we had yesterday, and of those, around 80% (45’600) will be negative thoughts.
Logically, of the 5% of new thoughts, 80% will also be negative (2’400), giving us a grand total of 48’000 negative thoughts per day!
Now, that was probably very useful from the beginning of our humanoid existence up until the last 100 years or so or if you happened to have been so unfortunate to be caught up in a war zone, but as far as getting things done and being proactive it’s not so useful.
Do any of these phrases ring a bell?
“I can’t”, “It won’t work”, “It’s too hard”, “People will laugh at me if I do”, “They’ll look down at me”, “I’ll screw up, as well as the good-old “What if’s”.
These were just a few that I could remember within seconds; demoralizing, crippling, stop-you-in-your tracks sort of stuff, isn’t it?
How many of them ring true to you? Can you think of a few more, even a dozen more maybe?
But what is this really? What are these killer phrases, and where do they come from? Let’s have a look.
Firstly, how often would you say that you utter these or other similar beauties? Weekly? Daily? Many times per day? All the damned time? The first two of these we could call an Affirmation. The last two are getting into the Incantation category especially if we add emotion and physicality into the mix, as is very often the case.
Just for clarity, I’ll define Affirmation as: a word or phrase that, when repeatedly uttered along with intention (good or bad), has the potential to help one towards the stated goal.
An Incantations is basically an Affirmation with the addition of strong emotion, deep breathing, and a healthy portion of physicality (pumping one’s fists, dancing /using the body) while repeating the word/phrase.
If we take a phrase like “I’ll never be able to do this” and if we were to repeat it in a robotic tone, taking in virtually no air between each repetition whilst watching our favorite gardening show, the effect it would have on us would be minuscule to non-existent.
However, if we take the same phrase, say it in a stage-voice with lots of air, lots of volume, and link it to whatever we are currently doing, the result will start to look a fair bit different.
In using more air, getting a bit physical and connecting the words to something relevant those words are going to start digging into the body and they’re going to start meaning something.
If we now add a healthy dose of emotion into the mix, getting into those words, grimace, put some
em-PHA-sis in there; “I’ll NEVER be able to do this!!!” and maybe stamp the foot and scowl for good measure and walk around in circles, we now have a full-blown Incantation on our hands. This is when the phrase gets under our skin, into our mind and, with enough repetition, becomes a Belief.
Once this belief gets a hold of our mind, it has the potential to become part of our Identity-who we are.
The good news is, positive Affirmations and Incantations work the same way (examples to follow) But beware: the brain can sniff out phoney statements and things that we don’t, in our minds, really believe.
If you haven’t done the work, haven’t pulled out those 10 years’ worth of weeds, then you’re going to have trouble growing your prized tomatoes or roses or “whatevers” by simply repeating “there are no weeds, there are no weeds, there are no weeds!” because those strangled roots are just not going to believe you; they have the physical truth wrapped around them! Whatever we say to ourselves must be congruent with our deeply felt beliefs and the reality of the situation.
Change your circumstances or change your beliefs. Change your beliefs, change your Identity!
One way to rid ourselves of these ingrained beliefs; the things we constantly, subconsciously say to ourselves, is to monitor and regulate them.
If you were to carry a pocket-sized notebook for, say a week or even five days, with the writing implement of your choice and commit to noting every negative thought that you recognize (it’s going to be pretty difficult to get all of those 48’000!), after three or four days, have a look at what you’ve written.
Your notes could be about the body, digestion, food or drink choices, screw-ups at work, don’t like the way they’re doing”X”, how they’re dressed or statements such as “ah bugger, I did it again”, “I’ll never get this right”, “I’m such a f%*k-up”.
You get the idea. It doesn’t have to do with work or whatever you think the problem might be. Negativity is negativity and it can be all-pervasive when we don’t recognize it. So, write down everything you recognize as being negative.
Do any patterns start to emerge? How many repeat offenders are you clocking up? What’s slipping under the radar?
Once we have an idea when and where we are heading towards the “Dark Side” and start to notice more and more where these patterns occur we can think of words or phrases that can neutralize the negativity that pervades our non-thinking selves.
A good phrase to remember is “See things as they are, but never worse than they are.”
Here are some examples of everyday negative Affirmations and Incantations and possible neutralizers:
Somebody cuts you off in traffic and you say “%ç)*)*/*+*” )(/&%%ç%)**SOB)/…instead say ”Wow, I guess they’re having a really bad day, poor thing!” (Yes, it’s possible 😉
Ah bugger, I did it again! Instead say:
Next time I’ll do differently.
I’ll never get this right! Instead say:
What went wrong, what do I need to correct to make X work?
I’m such a f%*k-up! Instead say:
I’m fine. Better focus is all I need, and I can do this.
I’m sure you get the idea and can come up with more and better ideas when you reflect a little.
With some work and attention, you can notice and neutralize those useless thoughts.
Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters (NOT Disney’s Jungle Book) got it right with this little ditty:
