UNSHAKEABLE FOUNDATIONS
9 Key Mindsets to Overcome Nerves and Play Your Best Every Time
What do the top musicians have in common?
Musicians operate in a huge variety of circumstances – playing different instruments, in different musical styles, and covering everything from solo performances up to large groups. Great musicians themselves down the ages have been very different, too – all sorts of different personalities can be hugely successful. Some are outgoing while others are introverted. Some embody wild creative flair while others showcase precise technical mastery. There’s no single blueprint for success – exactly what you’d expect in such a creative field. But there IS a specific group of mindsets that the best musicians all share. In fact, it goes further than that – these will be shared by the top performers in just about any arena. Feel free to apply these ideas to other areas of your life too.
These key mindsets are available to you too
The good news is that they can all be learned. More than that, they MUST be learned. No-one is born with an innate ability to possess these skills. This stuff is all trainable. If you see someone who appears to do all this naturally, then know that it’s been trained in some way that’s simply not visible to you. Chances are that this will have been unconscious training, delivered simply through the circumstances of their past. But it’s practice that has developed these skills nevertheless.
The secret to consistently great performances
In order to deliver at the upper range of your talent and skill day in, day out you need two things. Yes, you need good mechanical technique – all the fundamentals need to be solid. But you also need good mental skills. Ups and downs in performance are often traceable directly to psychological ups and downs. This group of mindsets that the great performers share forms the solid foundation that your performances are built on. They’re crucial to your development in the practice room, too. The level to which you’ve developed these mindsets will set limits on what you can achieve in performance (and with your music in general). In areas where these mindsets are lacking, they’ll hold your performance back. The best musicians are consistent (and consistently good!) in performance because they’re consistent psychologically. Playing well is the result of creating a particular internal state that allows your best playing to come out. Simply put, musicians who can consistently create this internal state for themselves perform consistently. This ebook can’t cover everything you need to get to consistently great performances, but it is going to give you a solid roadmap so you can see where you’re going and start you out on this journey.
You’re going to discover:
• What the key mindsets are
• How to evaluate and develop them
• A simple way to check that you’re applying them in performance
No matter how impressive the conceptual design that you put together for your performance, and the technical skills that you use to construct it, remember that any structure is only as solid as the foundation it’s built on.
Let’s get started…
The key elements of your ideal internal state
Here are the 9 key mindsets. Don’t try to do anything specific with them just yet. For now, just read through them carefully – we’ll talk about how to evaluate where you are on each one in the next section.
1. Self-motivated
There’s no need for external forces to tell you where to go or to push you to get there. The motivation and direction comes from within. You’re making music for yourself, not to meet someone else’s expectations.
2. Positive but realistic
You always see things from the angle of success – what can happen and what is possible rather than the opposites. In any given situation your default is to think about how you can build things from here rather than to complain or criticise. This is always realistic and pragmatic, though – practical steps to take rather than far-off daydreams.
3. Enthusiastic
You’re always capable of getting energised to play your best regardless of how you feel that day, the music you’re performing, or the situation you’re performing in. You can get your energy where it wants to be regardless of fatigue, music you’re not thrilled by, or low-stakes performances/practices.
4. Alert and focused
You’re capable of long and intensive periods of total concentration. Further, you tune into what’s important and tune out the unimportant stuff. And you do this regardless of the situation – whether there’s no pressure or great pressure, your focus remains strong and targeted.
5. Self-confident
You have a healthy but unshakeable sense of confidence and belief in yourself and your ability to play well. You don’t find that you get dragged down by other people’s worries or negativity. On the contrary, your confident attitude and calm demeanour tends to rub off on others.
6. Determined
Your desire to reach your goals is so strong that it’s incomprehensible to others who don’t share your love of music. You’re relentless in pursuit of them. You’re not thrown off-course or dissuaded by obstacles and setbacks but continue to move forward consistently one step at a time.
7. Responsible for your own actions
You don’t make excuses. Either you did, or you didn’t. Ultimately, everything begins and ends with you and you’re comfortable with that.
8. In control of your emotions
Unhelpful conditions, stupid mistakes etc can be powerful triggers of negative emotion. If you can’t control anger, frustration and fear then they will control you. You’re able to rise above this and tap into positive emotions instead.
9. Calm and relaxed under pressure
You don’t see being put to the test as a threat, but rather as a challenge. You don’t seek to avoid pressure but see it as an opportunity to explore the limits of what you’re capable of.
Where are you now?
Where would you like to be?
As you read through the list of different mindsets, you probably got a sense of where you were for each one quite naturally. It’s worth taking a short bit of time to be a bit more systematic, though, to make sure you’re fully aware. Having an idea of how you measure up against these mindsets and where you want to develop is a huge step forward. The one key thing I want you to come away from this checklist with is increased and ACCURATE awareness. To get this I’m afraid you’re going to have to do some work. Not a lot, though, and I promise you it will be well worth it.
Measure where you are objectively
Go back and read through the list of key mindsets again. As you do this, just spend a minute or two of reflection on each one. How strong do you reckon you are in each area? Be honest with yourself – you’re the one who loses out if you pretend things are better than they really are. And ground this in reality as much as possible. Don’t just make a judgement on how you feel generally about each mindset. Think back to specific examples where the mindset was relevant and remember exactly how you felt and thought in those situations. As you go through the list of key mindsets you’ll notice that, as well as relating directly to how you cope in the heat of performance, they all also have aspects that relate to the bigger picture too. Both angles are important so make sure you take everything into account. Are you assessing your mindset based on how you are in practice as well as in performance? Sometimes, looking at the practice angle gives you more data and, hence, a deeper insight into your mindset overall. Sometimes you might notice significant differences in your mindset between practice and performance – that’s useful information as well.
When improving in any area, simply being aware is half the battle. It’s only once you’re aware of the situation that you can consciously act to change it.
Plan where you’re going
If you’ve taken the time to assess where you currently stand then your increased awareness has put you light-years ahead of most other musicians. By investing time in thinking through this, you’ve ALREADY made significant progress. But there’s more – remember that you CAN develop these skills further if you choose. If there are areas where you think you’re lacking, then you have the ability to change that. And if there are areas where you’re pretty strong already then you can strengthen them still further if you want. Just one word of caution. Trying to improve everything at once is a recipe for overwhelm and failure. Working on just one area at a time is much more manageable – and you’re much more likely to see lasting success. Have a look across the whole list of mindsets and pick just one that’s most important for you to work on. This could be because it’s the one thing that’s most clearly holding you back, so improving it would make the single biggest difference to your performance. Or it could be because you reckon it’s the area where it will be easiest to make significant progress. Don’t fret too much about whether you’ve made the “perfect” choice. Just pick one and get on with it. When you’ve moved forward significantly in your first choice, you can always come back and pick a new one to work on.
How to develop these mindsets
This is not the place for a comprehensive strategy and list of exercises for how to improve all these different mindsets. That would need much more detail. But I do want to give you a couple of simple but effective approaches that you can use to get started.
1. Yet more awareness…
Simply being aware of the mindset that you want to develop and concentrating on that in your practice and performance can go a long way. There are specific exercises out there, but you don’t necessarily need them to make basic progress.
2. Go wider than music
Think about where you are with these mindsets in other areas of your life. Most people tend to find that these are not fixed quantities that apply everywhere, but that they change depending on the context. For example, you might be totally self-confident giving a talk in front of an audience but lacking in confidence when it comes to performing music in front of a similar audience. Or vice versa. If you can think of another area where the mindset you want to work on is better developed than it is in music, then use that. Connect with how you feel when the mindset is where you want it, and then try and transfer that mindset across to music.
TAKING THIS FURTHER
Changing mindsets isn’t something that happens overnight. It takes time. So don’t be discouraged if you don’t notice a radical transformation straight away. And these mindsets are just one part of the toolbox of mental skills that allow the best musicians to access their full potential. Having the full range of these skills at your fingertips is what allows you to play your best consistently, improve much faster as a musician, and flat-out enjoy your music more.
If you’d like to improve your playing by upgrading your mindset and mental skills, then I recommend checking out Unlock Your Performance. It gives you my best step-by-step exercises, support, feedback and more. Over 1000 musicians have already used it to make great leaps forward with their music.
Alternatively, you can check out the full list of my courses. Or feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] if you have any questions.
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