by Jeff Nelsen and Katy Webb
Are You Deliberately Practicing Fear?
Are you tired of walking onstage excited and offstage disappointed? We see you. We get it because we’ve been there, too. Practice and performance differ in so many ways, but here’s one way in which they’re similar: practice makes permanent. If you’re hoping to get better at performing by simply performing more often for more people, you might just be practicing (and solidifying?) the act of getting nervous in front of your audience. Yikes!
Are you ready to learn one way to be more deliberately constructive in your performance practice? This emboldening strategy from Fearless Performance will help you improve with every performance you give, build an empowering mindset, and learn what you need in order to share your best.
With a comfy cozy cup of coffee or tea, sometimes it feels like we can conquer the world! But if you’re reading this, it means you’re thoughtful enough to seek out more information on your passions. You know that closing yourself in a practice room with your tasty beverage of choice will not lead to practice gains simply because you put in more time.
Instead, whether you’re fully aware of it or not, you’re making improvements through principles of deliberate practice, like setting clear intentions, collecting feedback on what you’re doing, and making strategic changes. Well, those strategies don’t just work in the practice room. We can make massive improvements when we deliberately practice performance as well.
Behind the technical abilities and musical knowledge that we share with our audience lie our performance abilities. Even though the audience doesn’t get to see these skills, they can greatly impact the musical experience. Among the many magical performance powers you get to bring with you into performance, the top five we suggest that you practice and track are:
self-trust, self-talk, energy, recovery, and fearlessness.
Ultimately, these performance abilities combine to create your quality gap: the difference between what you just did in performance and the best you know you’ve done before. When we are deliberately practicing performance, we are working to identify patterns and make improvements within these five areas so we can enjoy as small a quality gap as possible—basically, so we can play our best in performance, every time.
What gets measured gets managed. Keep performing as much as you can…even serenading your dog with a C-major scale in your kitchen counts! It’s all about how seriously you take it. Then, after each performance, fill out your Performance Scoring Checklist (click the link for your free download). Start collecting your thoughts and data, then use our simple prompts to make adjustments, re-shape your mindset, and start collecting what helps you perform your best.
Cheering you on!
