While performing on your instrument requires good technique and musicality, a considerable factor in how well you play actually comes from your mind and your self-confidence. How you are feeling definitely impacts how well you perform and the character of your performance. When you lack self-confidence, you are more likely to play below level and without musicality. Performance anxiety is often magnified.
On the other hand, when you walk onto stage believing in yourself, your performance is likely to be much, much better. But how do you get to believing in yourself?
There are hundreds of platitudes about learning to deal with these feelings. We’ve all heard them, but knowing that there is always someone better than you are and you should only be in competition with yourself doesn’t really help in a practical way for most people.
So, what does help? Here are a few proven tricks that actually do make a difference.
Practice Better to be Prepared
Feeling prepared will give you confidence, and certain types of practice will increase your feeling of preparedness. If you set up your practice in these ways, you will be more likely to have success, thereby building your confidence. These include:
- Ensuring your piece is in your muscle memory, so that you do not even have to think about technique.
- Creating a practice strategy and schedule to ensure your piece is well-learned by performance time.
- Practicing performing through studio classes, service performances, and other mock performances.
For much more specific strategies, you may want to look into books like Learn Faster, Perform Better by Molly Gebrian, PracticeMind by Hans Jørgen Jensen and Oleksander Mycyk, or the podcast and other work by Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier, Mind Over Finger.
Work on Your Mindset
There are several things you can do to help improve your performance by focusing on your mindset. One example is visualization. Starting in the weeks before a performance or audition, visualize yourself going through every step of the performance. Imagine walking on stage. Imagine how it will feel and what it will look like. Make sure you imagine a successful performance, even running through the entire thing in your mind ahead of time. Repeat some positive affirmations during this time that you can pull out right before you play.
Fake It Before You Play
There have been actual studies that have shown that standing in a Superman Pose or Power Pose (hands on hips, chest out, chin up, standing tall) before doing an activity can make you more confident and successful.
If that doesn’t work, practice looking confident in front of a mirror. Study what confident players do by watching videos. Practice what it looks like to walk out confidently, with a slight smile. Practice lifting your chin before bowing in a confident manner. Make eye contact with your audience. Think about keeping everything open, from your chest to your standing posture, instead of closed and anxious.
Even if you don’t really feel confident, pretending and acting like you are confident has been shown to boost confidence and performance.
Ground Yourself Before Playing
It is remarkable how much difference five seconds of grounding before you play can make. Before walking on stage, take several deep belly breaths to slow down your heart rate and calm your jitters. Then, before starting, spend a few seconds shifting the focus of your mind to what you are doing. Do not start playing until you have grounded yourself and prepared your mind to play.
Learn to Shift Your Focus While Playing
If you are one of those people who gets in their head while playing, try these tips:
- Focus on connecting with the audience and playing for them instead of focusing on not making mistakes.
- Surprisingly, thinking about your feet while you play can keep you from struggling with shaky hands and other issues. Thanks to Antoine Tamestit who shared this great tip at a CMPI viola masterclass.
- If you are playing with piano or orchestra, focus on their part or how you can fit your part into the music.
- Take all those negative feelings and put them into the emotion you are playing.
Give Yourself Small Wins
We all gain self-confidence when we have wins or successes. These don’t need to be winning an international competition or getting first chair. Instead, set up some potentially achievable goals that will help you build confidence. These can be measurable, such as auditioning for district, region, or all state orchestra; getting into a youth orchestra; or getting into a summer camp. But you can also get just as much of a feeling of success playing a concert or a recital at a nursing home.
Shut Down Your Negative Self-Talk
We all do it – talk to ourselves about everything we do wrong, how we are not good enough, or how we will never achieve what we want. This is negative self-talk, and while we cannot entirely get rid of it, we do have the ability to control it to some degree. There are a number of different strategies that you can use, including:
- Drowning out the negative self-talk with positives by forcing yourself to find positive aspects of your performance, or requiring yourself to say something positive every time you think something negative.
- Focus on verbs – doing something – instead of reacting emotionally. Reinforce what you want to do moving forward instead of reflecting on what did not go as you had hoped.
- Reframe negative self-talk that occurs. Sometimes a simple way to do this is to add the word “yet” to the end of any bit of self-talk. For example, if you say, “I can’t ever play the beginning in tune,” you can reframe that as, “I can’t play the beginning in tune YET, but I will be able to after I practice it more.”
Make Sure That You Practice Self-Confidence Every Day
While most of the points above focus on an actual performance, we all know that many of us spend hours, days, and sometimes even years upset about how we just are not good enough. All the previous tips can be practiced during practice sessions and lessons in addition to performances.
If you are really struggling with self-doubt and feelings of negativity about your playing, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Your CMPI Navigator can help refer you to someone who specializes in this area for musicians, someone who can help you work through these feelings and improve both your overall mindset and your performing ability.