Tag: performance anxiety

Blowing Performance Nerves Out of The Water! My Top Five Tips

Nicole Neal3 Comments

Well, there’s only really one real sure fire way of blowing your nerves out of the water, and that’s to get lots of performance in. Do it over and over and over again. Normalising it, normalising the activity of getting up in front of others and laying your soul bare (or so it feels like sometimes!) to those that will listen. The more you do of something (generally) the easier it becomes and the more natural it becomes too.

Do you remember when you first learnt to drive a car, or ride a bicycle, or any other new skill in fact? It was really exciting right?! New possibilities, new movements, new ways of doing things. All very positive. Sure it probably felt a little clunky and more than a little bit awkward at times too, but you knew it was all adding up to the experience of learning to drive (or whatever skill you’ve imagined here!). And then soon enough you’re driving without really thinking about it – well, you’re obviously thinking otherwise it would be a rather dangerous activity, but you know what I mean. It just becomes “situation normal”. Something you can do every day with ease.

Well, the same is true for performance. The more you can get yourself out there, get yourself “match fit”, and used to playing in front of others instead of to the cat or the blank wall then the more normal it will feel. The more it will begin to feel like you’re driving the car instead of it driving you.

So what happens in the meantime whilst you’re clocking up the driving hours?

There are a number of things you can do to help manage and work with your nerves….. Here are my top five tips of the moment*:

(1) Realise that you absolutely, 100% choice about the way you feel about a situation.

No one makes you feel nervous, excited, happy, sad, joyous or poo-your-pants scared. These reactions are all learnt by us in our formative (and sometimes not so formative) years, and are adapted as strategies that we then run unconsciously, without even thinking about it. By drawing your attention to that fact, and to the unconscious strategies you might be running – by raising your awareness of how your mind and body are operating, to follow on from a recent blog post on here – you can begin to change how you react to certain situations.

(2) Think of that nervous, slightly fluttery tummy feeling as “excitement” rather than nerves.

Because you love to play guitar, right?! Or you probably wouldn’t be reading this, or care about getting out there and playing for or with others? So give this a go. Next time you’re about to step up and you get that kind of jittery feeling tell yourself that you’re just very excited – excited to be playing your guitar, excited to get to play it for others, excited to share the awesomeness that you’ve been working on and excited to cut loose and get some more experience under the belt! Yeah!

(3) Get back down into your body!

Yep, that sounds weird doesn’t it?! What I mean to say is that, when we’re very nervous we tend to get all up inside our own heads. Thinking of all sorts of different scenarios. What ifs. Can Is. And so on. This takes us away from (a) being aware of what our body is doing, how we’re holding it and (b) reduces our body’s availability to play, to move as freely as possible to make the music and translate our movements into music. I know for sure that when I relax my torso my tone actually changes, it’s like my body allows the guitar to resonate with a greater ease, so getting out of my head and into my body is very important.

(4) Focus your attention on something in your music. For me I find it really helps to really hone my concentration in on two things – the tone quality I’m creating and my sense of musicality. If my conscious brain is actively tasked with these two things it finds it very difficult to have any other kinds of thoughts, let alone those potentially destructive negative thoughts.

(5) Think into the future and how fantastic you’ll feel five minutes after your performance. Yes, there is work to be done, but imagine how you’re going to feel immediately after you’ve finished! Regardless of the outcome, and any lessons to be learnt or improvements to be made or otherwise, I’ll bet you’ll feel fantastic. And you’ll have another live lesson, another experience from which to learn.

*bearing in mind that I’m totally open to learning new things, and more than happy for these to get replaced by more effective methods. These are what work for me currently.

Just get out there and do it!

Nicole NealLeave a comment

I’m talking about performing…. Performing in front of others…. Others that don’t include your teacher, significant other, the goldfish or the dog.

Ooh the mere thought of it sends some into veritable conniptions!

Feelings of nausea, dread, impending doom, going into battle or even to one’s demise are feelings that most of us have experienced at one time or another when nearing a performance.

And that’s ok. Seriously. It’s a completely natural reaction that the mind and body has to a perceived threat. That threat is obviously not a physical threat – no one’s going to punch you out for fluffing a note or two, at least you hope not. It’s a threat to our egos and our self-esteem. I’ve spoken a bit about this subject before in a recent post.

And for those who are stepping up to the plate for the first time these feelings may not really have been experienced before or not in the intensity with which they now appear, I can tell you that it’s all perfectly natural. It’s ok. In fact it’s more than ok to have these feelings (first up, it means you care about what you’re going. Always a good start). Not only that, you have permission to feel these feelings – don’t try and run from it, suppress it or hide from it. What challenge or issue was ever really truly solved by taking that course of action, hey?

It’s just our brain’s protective system trying to look after us. It’s trying to do us a favour. It’s trying to keep us nice and comfortable.

Some people are happy with comfortable. But nothing much was ever achieved with comfortable. To learn, develop and grow one needs to get a little uncomfortable. Think on the nerves as growing pains. An inevitable part of growing up.

And I applaud wholeheartedly those that step forward, step up, willing to take the feedback, willing to learn from their experience. It does take courage, it is a little bit icky and challenging. That’s half the “fun”! If it were so easy everyone would be doing it! But you, considering performing, or getting up there for the 100th or 1000th time, you’re special for doing that. Don’t forget it! You’re bloody awesome whatever the outcome of the performance. Just remember to use the experiences of the performance to make yourself, your playing, even better.

So my advice for those just getting into performing just get out there and do it! Like most other things, the more you practice performance, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. So dive in and roll with it, feel the feelings, embrace shaky hands, embrace fuzzes and buzzes and memory black spots and grow with the experience.

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