Famously referred to as ‘the yips’ in golf, nerves can be truly paralysing to the performer. Mild cases significantly harm your ability to enjoy the experience but the worst cases can rob you of your skills entirely and deliver a nightmarish experience that will haunt you long term; irrevocably eroding self belief and motivation. However, you CAN solve this issue. The solution to this isn’t a five minute fix but when honed it is very reliable, incredibly powerful and will last a lifetime; its well worth the investment!!! We in the arts world do not discuss this area often enough, where as in the world of sport and even modern business it is a currency that is prized and is frequently spent; in some places it’s a religion. If we too wish to cease, or reduce, the random probability of bringing our A game to the table then we need to take control and deal with it.
So, how do I deal with it?
1. Be in possession of a set of skills that match the ambition and standards you desire.
2. Be able to demonstrate these skills consistently without exception during practice.
3. Enter a mindset (state), which allows these skills to come to the fore every time you perform
regardless of circumstance or environment.
The techniques discussed here will only be of significant use if steps 1 and 2 are stages that you have already achieved. If not, read my previous article, How can I train my voice to be more reliable? This will help you plot a course through the tricky waters of skill development and vocal consistency.
Why does it happen?
So, once you feel you have achieved something resembling physical mastery nothing is more frustrating than being publicly mugged by your own mind. Matthew Syed (Olympic table tennis champion and author) describes his own ‘choking experience’
“Franz stroked the ball into play – a light and gentle forehand topspin. It was not a difficult stroke to return, not a stroke I would normally have had any trouble pouncing on, and yet I was strangely late on it, my feet struck stuck in their original position, my racket jabbing at the ball in a way that was totally unfamiliar. My return missed the table by more than two feet….. I found my body doing things that bore no relation to anything I had learned over the last twenty years. As my coach put it with brutal and characteristic honesty: ‘It is simple, Matthew,’ he said. ‘You choked.’
So if the skill was automatically programmed into the physical via many hours work, just like reading, or even driving, then how did it go wrong? Typical musical symptoms are things like, Why did my breathing go wrong? Why was my throat tight? Why did I race through the opening lines like a coffee addict when I didn’t in practice??????? My voice didn’t feel like my own. Arrrrggghhhhh!!!!!
In short, the problem is simple, our conscious mind (which should be focused on imagination, artistry and judgement) starts getting involved in the delivery of the skill rather than leaving it to unconscious mind which has the skill ready to go due to hours of practice. From this point everything starts getting confused, slugglish and the whole sequence comes undone; all your hours of skill development are inaccessible:
“But now imagine if an expert were to suddenly find himself using the wrong brain system. It wouldn’t matter if he were the greatest player of all time or merely a decent club player because he would now be at the mercy of the explicit rather than the implicit system. The highly sophisticated skills encoded in the implicit part of his brain would count for nothing. He would find himself striving for victory using neural pathways he last used as a novice”
Effectively we de-skill ourselves by using the wrong brain system for the wrong task. The conscious mind is slow, clumsy and unrefined whilst the unconscious is so quick and consistent we can’t even perceive its brilliance. When we try to perce
ive it, which we might do if we have doubts or are put off by our environment or circumstances, we invite incompetence and consequent humiliation in. If we hook up the brain systems to the wrong task then we face something akin to ‘earth’ and ‘live’ being wrongly wired. Not good!!
How can I stop it?
Knowing how failure occurs is an immediate help but it isn’t a solution. However, we can practice assigning the right tasks to the right system, all we have to do is find a strategy that works for us so we control it. This will produce clarity and confidence for the performer regardless of exterior forces so its value is beyond enormous.
Appropriate action varies from performer to performer. They must know their own brain inside out. If you aren’t an expert on yourself then how can YOU control YOU?
1. Get to know your own brain
This is much more pleasurable and less messy than it sounds. I encourage anyone I’m working with to be curious about their brain and themselves. This means different things to different people, as well it should. Philosophy, psychology and various therapeutic approaches can be useful and appropriate here. Personally, I love mindfulness and meditation because of their accessibility and speed. The goal here is to observe and understand your mental behaviours so you harness them appropriately for tasks in learning (skill development) and self expression (performance.) and the daily quest for human happiness.
Andy Puddicombe – co creator of highly recommended meditation ap ‘Headspace’ says:
‘Effortless effort or flow becomes part of who we are and how we perform. Other thoughts are mere distractions and the mind is trained to let them pass.’
This is indeed the gift of meditation; the ability to observe and then select in the mind; such an enormous gift for any performer. ‘No thanks brain, ill let that thought about my own inferiority pass by and ill pick up these ones about imagination and creativity…..cheers!!’
As I say, there are many different approaches to getting to know your own brain. Via the superb CVT course I went on late last year I was lucky enough to meet and be educated by Jayke Branson-Thom; a renowned performance coach. She is well versed in many different kinds of therapy and her broad range of skills offers valuable access points to both sporting and musical performers. The educational highlights for me were all about how to harness the power of adrenaline, how to use your imagination and how, with practice, we can become so strong and confident in these areas that doubt is something almost conceptual rather than emotional. I will discuss this further as we go but note; none of this is accessible if you are unable to know the beast that you are trying to control. Therefore, get to know your brain; your brain is a Ferrari but it’s pointless unless you have the keys!!!!!!
2. Use your life experience to help you evidence your strength
For coaches such former England Rugby Union manager Clive Woodward, knowledge of the player was crucial. He was keen on developing an in-depth knowledge of their individual personalities so he could create the appropriate alchemy for any given situation within a game. This is not a short or simple procedure but when the information is utilised properly the experiences of your life can be a potent weapon to evidence success, determination, courage, mental strength and composure. Once we evidence this we can transfer it into performance. We are products of our environment; understanding this and utilising it can be incredibly empowering. From time to time I have heard performers describe themselves in terms that seem to be at odds with their life experiences simply because they have failed to value themselves and their journey properly;
‘I’m no good under pressure, I always back away from the tough moments every single time.’
This is a direct quote from someone I was teaching who completed the London Marathon just 7 months after major surgery. Their evaluation simply wasn’t true and there was significant evidence to disprove this. When I joyfully pointed this out to them they were initially dismissive of the scale of this achievement. Once it sank in they began to revaluate the perception they had of themselves and realised, like so many performers, that they were being so harsh on themselves they had lost perspective of their own abilities.
We must remind ourselves of our previous achievements, both in and out of performance, if we want to create more of them in the future; getting good at this can give you a tremendous ownership, vital in the pressurised inconsistent environments that we are faced with in live performance.
When we evaluate our skills in development we employ a critical approach but we cannot apply this to our personalities when we are looking to evidence courage, imagination and charisma. If we do, we create doubt and that’s when the conscious system starts overriding the unconscious system. Doubt doesn’t sound good at all in vocal terms!!!!
3. Learn to love your ‘performance energy’ – then you can use it!!
Sweaty palms, dry throat, increased heart rate, adrenaline, butterflies in the stomach. We get the same symptoms during excitement as we do when we are nervous. So, are we actually nervous??? Maybe we aren’t. Perhaps we just tell ourselves we are. We get so used to interpreting these signals in a certain way that it becomes automatic and we never question it but we should if we wish to change. Can we interpret it in a different way????
I see this all the time in people who really enjoy performing, these signals translate down the joy route and, as the symptoms build, so does the excitement, and they love it. Others don’t, they see it as fear and it builds towards near panic attack!!!! Its akin to the glass half full/empty idea but the problem/brilliance with this is that the glass becomes emptier/fuller!!!!
The BBC produced an excellent programme called ‘The Truth about Stress’ which discusses this idea and related concepts at length. In one experiment the subject is told to repeat the words ‘I am excited’ over and over when in a stressful situation and subsequent findings suggest people could indeed change their interpretation from fear to excitement if they committed to this process.
Jayke Branson-Thom has some really helpful thoughts in this area. She promotes the idea that this ‘performance energy’ is something you must make friends with. Learning to accept its appearance and channel it in a way that is beneficial to you brings something special to the party.
Sportsman need to be able to manage this in a particular way so they can block out the audience/crowd and selected elements of the surrounding environment if they contain ‘a threat to performance.’ It must be focused. However, performers in the arts must manage this completely differently. Nobody wants to watch a performer who is isolated and locked away from communicating with their audience. The energy must be shared;
“Different people need different levels of adrenaline in order to be at their peak”
The first step to managing your state is, as previously discussed, knowing your own brain but the second stage is about managing it and recognising the fact that these performance inducing symptom’s are not a threat, they are actually an essential part of audience engagement.
You can go even further if you dare!!. When do you want your performance juice to arrive? Ideally about 5 minutes before is good. Once you get used to recognising it, interpret it as useful and if you have some understanding of your brain and patterns then you will start to gain control of it. It adds so much to performance when it is present; embrace it!!!
Clive Woodward would often philosophise the following:
“Enjoy it, its your moment and it may not come again. Don’t look back with regrets.”
‘There are no scars – there are just opportunities”
These are the kinds of thoughts that help us interpret our symptoms in a different way. Chris Coleman, the Welsh National team manager, would do the same where he created a physiological environment which interrepted risk as an opportunity rather than a threat.
“We dare to fail” – Chris Coleman.
4. Remember, it doesn’t really matter!!!
When we perform we are in authentic flight or flight. This is an incredibly powerful feeling and is needed if you need to outrun a bear, find your way out of a hostage situation or rescue someone from a burning building. It’s an inbuilt human reaction that helps us survive very real threats to our life. Singing badly does not pose a threat to our existence and we, and all the things that are dear to us, will still be there whether we succeed or fail. However, when we are in this state it is easy to completely lose perspective and feel a huge rush of panic rather than an injection of performance energy.
Sayed went through a process of harnessing and redirecting this so it was advantageous rather than destructive. This is also true of speed skating Olympian Sarah Lindsay;
“How to prevent the explicit system taking over? Considering that choking only ever occurs in highly pressurized circumstances, what better way than to convince oneself that a career-defining contest doesn’t really matter? After all, if the performer does not feel any pressure, there is no pressure – and the conscious mind will not attempt to wrestle control from the implicit system. That is why she (Lindsay) kept repeating “its only speed skating!” She was trying to convince herself that the final of the Olympic games was a triviality. By alleviating the pressure, she was giving herself the opportunity to compete without inhibition……My method was to think about all the things that are so much more important than sport: health, family, relationships and so on. During my pre-match routine, I would spend a few minutes in a deeply relaxed state, filling my mind with these thoughts. By the time I entered the court, my beliefs had altered: the match was no longer the be all and end all.”
Top-level performers need to make sacrifices and place practice and improvement in the centre of their own universe. Effectively, you need to loose perspective in order to focus. This paradox must be reversed before you perform under pressure. If so, all the skills that you have trained so hard to hone will be available and will pour out. Gaining a perspective via these kinds of approaches will reverse the pressure and free you up. You don’t need to apply pressure to yourself for the big event – it’s already there! You only need to apply pressure to yourself in order to create high-level skills that are embedded in the unconscious system way before the event arrives.
5. How do I know if my brain is doing the right thing??
Ill leave the final word to pianist and writer James Rhodes:
“Everything goes by in a flash and, at the same time, the world seems to slow right down and all of my anxieties about time disappear. There is infinite space in between the notes, total awe at the sound my fingers are producing, a sense of coming home. This is what Sting was talking about when he was raving about tantric sex.”