Playing Without Fear: My No-Sweat Performance System - PHH 037

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want.

The way they want.

But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I, although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it?

Let's get started. Welcome to the show. Today we're talking about no sweat performing, really. And let's face facts, performing is scary. Even though you've practiced that piece a million times in a million different ways, you feel you know it backwards and forwards and inside out. There are so many variables in a performance situation that it's no wonder performing is scary. Now, the standard dialogue that we use to try to help us put fear into perspective is, what's the worst that could happen? Well, I could die. Well, I'm not going to die, so therefore the worst won't happen. Humorous? Yes. Helpful? Not so much. Yes, there are ways, good ways to bulletproof your music and yourself. But that's not what today's show is about. Today we're putting the focus on the fear itself. That feeling of fear is real. Even though we can tell ourselves there isn't anything to be actually afraid of, we are going to call out the fear that we feel, bring it into the light, give it a name, and most importantly, learn how to get past it. I'm telling you, if you think you always have to suffer from fear or nerves before you play, you, you are wrong. You may have nerves and you may be fearful. Even expert performers feel those things. But consider these two different scenarios. Performer 1 is backstage waiting for her turn to play her piece. She feels her hands start to shake. Her stomach is queasy. Her palms are sweaty. She can't remember how her piece starts. She remembers that all these things happened last time she performed and it wasn't the performance of her dreams, to put it kindly. Now Performer two is also backstage waiting for her turn to play her piece. She feels her hands start to shake, her stomach is squeezy. Her palms are sweaty. She can't remember how her piece starts. And her last performance didn't go so well either. But she has armed herself with tools and techniques that give her a different perspective, one that isn't focused on what might go wrong, but is instead directed to what she can and will do that is right. And we're not talking about perfection here. We're talking about management of your fear, your expectations, your adrenaline, your focus. And while I can't guarantee that you won't have any fear, I can promise you that the strategies we will talk about today will allow you to play for others with confidence, with assurance that your performance will be a reasonable representation of your practice. You might even find that this helps you enjoy the music more while you're playing it. I know. Radical, huh? And maybe the next time someone asks you to play, you'll find yourself saying, sure, I'd love to. Now, that's no sweat. Performing.

Now. By the way, the strategies we're talking about today are some of the topics that we're going to be digging into on our getaway retreat at the end of March. It's March 23rd to 28th in the Orlando, Florida area, and I've had some questions about our getaway retreat. I thought I could answer them here today on the podcast, in case these are questions that you have to, too. An obvious question, of course, is what about the whole Covid situation and how are we handling that at the retreat? Know that the house has enough bedrooms for everyone. We're not doubling people up. I mean, unless it's, you know, two people who want to share a room. We're not doubling people up. You will have your own bedroom. You will also have a bathroom all to yourself. Most of the rooms have en suite. There's one bedroom, I believe, that has a shared bathroom. But, you know, we're trying to help you stay safe and separate. There's a lot of space in this house, and we're not overcrowding it by any stretch of the imagination. We also will require either a proof of vaccination or a negative test, like so many places do before you come in. I think that's only fair to everyone. So those are the basic precautions that we'll be taking others. As far as masking, we haven't settled on that yet, but I think we need to do what makes people feel safe.

So that's what, you know, that's what we'll be taking into consideration. So that gives you an idea of what. Of how we're addressing this. And Then people had some travel questions. If you are flying to the retreat, yes, we can arrange for rental harps. If you're flying, you're going to fly into Orlando. And that would be MCO is the airport code. So you'll be flying into Orlando. It's easy. And yes, we will make sure that you get from the airport to the house. We do our little airport runs, so no worries there. And then the last question that I've had multiple times is, well, what do we do at the retreat? Well, it's a mix of one on one instruction and group workshops and master classes. Ensemble playing. Boy, have I missed ensemble playing. Oh my goodness, I can hardly wait. And of course our traditional music games and all that good stuff. I am so looking forward to it. And of course my good friend Mary Jane d' Arville will be there too, doing coaching and instruction. Instruction and games. Of course. It's an MJ specialty, so it's going to be a lot of fun and I hope that that answers your questions. I know that you want to make your plans and we're coming up on, you know, it's coming up quickly. It's only a couple months away. So do hop over to the heartmastery.com page and look at the upcoming events and you can register and get one of those couple of rooms that are left and join us at the retreat. At least I hope you can.

No fear there. No sweat there either. So let's start talking about what fear means to a harvest. What does fear look like for a harpist? Well, it can look like a lot of things, can't it? It can be afraid of everything from a string breaking to your hands getting sweaty and shaky, to you getting lost, not being to finish the piece, dropping your music, tripping on the way to the harp, just having people look at you. There are a million things to be afraid of.

But what's on the other side of your fear? What's on the other side? Well, a performance, right? I mean, if you imagine for just a second that you're playing and you're playing for other people and it goes pretty well. Not perfectly, but it goes pretty well and you're pleased with what you did, imagine what that would feel like. Just take a moment and sort of, you know, marinate in that feeling just a little bit and then realize that that feeling of having had a good performance is something that you can feel before you play. You don't have to feel the fear. You can feel the future that you want.

So you don't have to Be afraid of what's going to happen if you've prepared properly, and we'll talk about that. That's part of what we're talking about today. You don't have to fear the playing. You can feel what it's going to be like to play well ahead of time and enjoy the entire process. You can even learn, believe it or not, to enjoy those nerves. I had a friend who was a concert pianist and her teacher always told her that don't think about us being nervous. It's a state of heightened anticipation, which is really quite wonderful and a lovely way to think of it. You're anticipating what you're going to do, and sure, all those nerves come into play, but let's think about what it could feel like to have this go well. If you find your groove while you're playing, right, or if you can lose yourself in the music in a good way, you can build a track record of success. And you'll know what to expect, right? I mean, your palms may shake and maybe your stomach gets upset or your thoughts get scattered or your fingers are shaky. All those things could happen. But if they happen when you perform and you play anyway, then they're just part of the process and you'll know that you'll be able to get past them. So what we're talking about today is preparing you to share. To share your music with other people or just play it well for yourself. And we're talking about preparing you, not so much your music. I mean, I know you've got to practice. And preparing your music is truthfully the easy part.

Preparing yourself to play it beautifully, to play it with freedom, to play it with focus is different. You've got to prepare yourself for the obstacles that get put in front of us when we play. Everything from.

Distractions in the room around us or those adrenaline surges that make our hands shake and our palms sweat, all those things.

All those things. We learn to get past them. But before we can get into this no sweat system, I need you to do one thing for me. I need you to abandon your idea that perfection will happen. Right? Perfection is not going to happen. I mean, every once in a while, and it's like a blue moon kind of once in a while, you'll play a performance that's really better than you possibly could have expected. Maybe even better than it usually goes in practice. That sometimes happens. But most of the time our performances won't go quite as well as our best practice session. And there are some reasons for that. Reasons beyond nerves. Believe it or not. Although nerves play a part of it, I guess. Remember that when you're nervous, right? Your adrenaline starts surging. Your body does not know the difference between a life threatening situation where it needs to summon up all that adrenaline and playing a harp piece for somebody. Your body doesn't know the difference, so it summons up all its fight or flight resources, right? The adrenaline kicks in. So we're hyper focused and hyper aware. So that little mistakes or buzzes or out of tune strings that wouldn't ordinarily bother us.

Are extremely jarring and distracting in performance because of our heightened awareness. Ditto for any distractions in the room. People who can play with, you know, 14 kids having a play date in the next room and a radio blaring in a tv and da da da, can't focus in a quiet room when they're performing. It's amazing how our powers of concentration are totally different when adrenaline is in charge. Of course, adrenaline is responsible for a lot of those other physical systems. But remember that those cold fingers that you have, that's a fight or flight instinct too, right? Your body is shutting off blood flow to your extremities so that it can direct that blood where it thinks you're going to need it, like your vital organs. So it's nice to know your body's protecting you, but it's very hard to tell it that, you know, this is really not the time. I don't need this right now. I just need to be calm. Now there are lots of ways you can calm yourself, but that's not what we're talking about today either. So I want to reiterate that I want you to not think about being perfect. We're going to be talking about setting the bar at a reasonable level, setting your expectations reasonably for yourself so that you aren't so worried, so that the stakes aren't so high, so that you haven't set an impossible bar for yourself.

So with that thought in mind, let's talk about the system. Now, this system isn't about your music. It's not about preparing your music. You know, you need to practice. And this system isn't about making you superhuman and invulnerable to fear. Gosh, I mean, I would love it if I could do that for you or if I could do it for myself. But that's not going to happen. So it's not about that. And this system also isn't about meditating so your nerves won't kick in, or a special diet or exercises or beta blockers. Although Some of those things may help you. All of them can be effective for different people. But that's not what I'm talking about today either. What I'm talking about is perspective. Adjusting your thoughts, your words, your habits, to put fear, your fear, in a more healthy perspective. I want you to learn that it's only what you don't know or don't examine that can harm you. Which is why we're going to start with what for most of us, is the hardest step. You need to identify your fear.

When you identify your fear, you're going to call it out, you're going to give it a name, and it's time to really look it in the face. What. What are you afraid of? I mean, I'm reminded of that lovely Dr. Seuss story, what was I scared of? It's a great story. And in that story, the hero is scared of a pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them.

Now, eventually, he and the pale green pants become friends. I'm not suggesting that you need to become friends with your fear, but you do need to know exactly what. What it is that you're afraid of. And I'm going to ask you to dig deep. And it's one thing to say, well, I'm afraid of.

Making mistakes.

Well, what about making mistakes is so scary? And is that really what you're afraid of? Or is it the result of those mistakes? Like, maybe you won't be able to go on after you make a mistake? So, you know, and that's probably not the root fear either. I really want you to dig deep. So think about it this way.

Every time you think you can identify a fear, ask yourself, well, if that fear were no longer an issue for me, what would I still be afraid of? For instance, if you say, well, I'm afraid of making mistakes, well, suppose you weren't afraid of making mistakes. Would you still be afraid?

Well, you might be afraid of not getting to the end, or you might be afraid of. And I'll anything. But I'll tell you what this generally comes down to. When you dig deep enough, you will probably find that there's a fear that's more related to how you think others will perceive you or how you will perceive yourself. We musicians put ourselves, our innermost selves, our egos on the line every time we play.

And usually we don't want to disappoint the people we play for. We don't want to disappoint our friends or our relatives. We don't want to disappoint our Teachers, we don't want to disappoint ourselves. And there's some level of that that generally is behind all those fears.

The worst performing disaster I ever had. And you've probably heard me talk about it if you've been on one of my webinars or. I talk about it. Well, not all the time, but I talk about it often enough. I had a giant memory slip in front of an audience full of harpists. I was a student and it was, you know, it was a high stakes performance, a lot on the line, and I really screwed up. And after having screwed up to the point where I had to stop and start over, I had to stop again, had to walk off the stage, had to get music, had to come back and had to play again. It was a horrible experience. But once the music was there in front of me, I was fine and I played and it was. It was okay. But what that taught me about my fear, the fear in that moment, I probably should have had more fear before I started. Maybe I would have practiced more and that would have solved it. But there were other. Some other issues there too. But the fear in that moment was not that I had made a mistake or that I had a memory slip, or that I had to stop and start over twice, or that I had to bring the music back out with me and play from the music. That wasn't what I was afraid of. What I was afraid of was how all those harpists would judge me.

That was my fear. And that's not a fear I need to live with. So that experience taught me a lot, and it taught me to look behind what my fears were. Once I got to that place, then I could start to deal with it. So don't be afraid to dig deep. Only you need to know what you're afraid of, but you need to know it's worth looking.

And that brings us to step two, which I call look under the bed. You know how like those little scary monsters in the night, you know what's hiding under the bed? Is there really anything under the bed? Well, that's what I want you to do with your fear. Is that fear real? Is it really there? I mean, look at the list, whatever list you might have of performing things that you fear about, right, that you're worried about, and stare each one in the face. You know, get. Turn that light on. Look under the bed. Look at it. If that thing you fear happened, what would be the result? I mean, for instance, if you had to stop and start over, what would be the result? Well, you'd start over. That's it, right. If you made a lot of mistakes, what would people think? Well, that you made a lot of mistakes. What would you do if you couldn't finish your piece and if you had to restart it? Well, you'd restart it. What would you do if, you know, if a string broke? Well, you'd replace the string and then you'd start again. Right. Those what ifs almost always have, well, this is what would happen next. This is what I would do. You could almost think of this like a fire drill, right? You're planning for an emergency scenario, or what would happen. If I were playing and this thing happened, I lost my place, or my hands were so sweaty I couldn't get them on the strings. What would you do? Well, if your palms were that sweaty, maybe you'd have a handkerchief with you on stage so you could dry them off. And if you had to stop and dry them off and start over or, you know, start from the middle of the piece, okay, that's what you would do. But plan for that emergency, plan for that fire drill. Imagine that scenario several times. Each time, envision the outcome that you would want.

Not the disaster outcome, right, where, you know, the whole world crashes around you, but the outcome you would want. Well, after my palms got sweaty and I had to stop and wipe them, I started from where I left off and I played brilliantly to the end. Okay, there you go. There's an outcome. What does it feel like in that future that you are imagining? Right. We talked about feeling the future. Well, this is the future. What does that feel like when you've survived the disaster? Now, I can tell you from my own performing experience, having survived a disaster, it feels good. It doesn't feel exactly like a victory because I, you know, because I. I screwed up and I had ways to have prevented that screw up. So it's not like it just happened. I could have prepared better.

So. But on the other hand, I survived it, and it was my lesson, and I learned from that. And I came out of it feeling okay. And I got one of the nicest compliments I ever got from Mildred Dilling, a pretty famous harpist who happened to be in the audience and heard my disaster and complimented me on my poise and my, you know, sort of never give up attitude. And that was, you know, a hugely great feeling. Right? So you can feel that and say, okay, well, so surviving is a big reward in itself, right? If you have the disaster and you survive it, how do you feel afterward? You might even come up with a sentence for yourself to keep that fear in check. Right? Something like, when the worst happens, I start over. When the worst happens, I keep going. But I don't know, you know, figure out what will help you, but do prepare. Look under the bed, face it, figure out what's so bad about it, and then create your emergency plan. Okay, so now we know what we're afraid of and we've got an emergency plan to survive whatever might happen.

And now we're going to set our expectations. I call this the minimum positive result mpr. Okay? And really we're going to set an expectation that we are about 100% sure that we can achieve. We are going to set the bar low for ourselves. Performances have so many things that are unexpected, so we're going to try to keep this within our control and make it so totally reasonable and doable. We are going to create success. Stack the deck in your favour here. So, you know, we're not going to magically hope for a really great performance. Instead we're going to say, I just want to make those last three chords really beautiful, or I want to play the first measure correctly, or I want to start at the tempo, I want to continue, I want to get that tempo right when I start, or I want to remember to do that crescendo in the middle, something that you know you can focus on and that you have a pretty good chance of doing well in the performance.

So we're going to set your minimum positive result. And by the way, when you hit your minimum positive result in the performance, right, your performance is over. And you if your minimum positive result was to play those last three chords beautifully, and you played them pretty beautifully, even though the rest of the piece was a disaster, you met your marker for success. And you must give yourself a gold star because you did what you set out to do. And once you take that small measure of control back and you say, okay, I can't control everything, but I can control this.

Then you can start to build on that and to find how to create that track record of success that's going to allow you to feel more confident before every performance. So start by setting a really small, reasonable low bar of expectation, a really easy minimum positive result in, and make that deal with yourself as you perform. Now, for practice, I also suggest that you set a one notch up npr. So we're going to level up your minimum positive result as you practice performing so that in your practice performances, you have just a little bit more to reach for, not too much more. That you can't reach for it, but just a little bit more so that you have that sort of margin for error, that extra headroom when you get to the real performance. Okay, so we're setting your MPR for something that you are pretty darn sure that you're going to be able to do even in a performance. And it's something that matters to you, right? I mean, not, okay, I'm going to, you know, sit with good posture at the harp. I mean, that matters, of course, but something that, that you really feel like you can do. Well, to help convey the music, you're going to set something that's your npr, you're going to pick a one notch higher NPR that you're going to practice reaching for. And then when you hit your NPR in the performance, you must celebrate it. Right? Acknowledge that achievement. And then we go on from there. Now this brings up the last component in this no sweat system. And let's just quickly review. We figured out what we're really afraid of. We've looked it in the face and created a plan to work around it. Or you know what if the worst happens, we've got our emergency plan. And you know what, it's going to feel great when we're done. Even if we've had to go to the emergency plan because we're feeling the future. And then we've set our expectations with our minimum positive result. And now that last step that's so important and it's the one that so many people ignore, you need to practice performing. Right? Well, there. I can't think of anything else that we would do without adequate preparation for it. Right. I mean, if you're going to take a driver's test, you practice driving first, right. And you even probably practice for the test. You know, okay, the tester person's going to sit in the car and they're going to tell you to do this. And so you're going to practice obeying those instructions. Like when you have standardized tests to take, you prep for those tests and they give you practice tests. Yeah, well, so why aren't we practicing performing? I mean, expert performers do they give preview performances and all kinds of performances before the one that really counts. So don't make your first performance of a piece the high stakes performance. Let's warm up to this whole performance thing. Start by recording yourself. You don't have to listen to the recording, although it's fine if you do. But the recording will help give you sort of that performing edge. Because we're all a little uncomfortable when we record ourselves, move your harp around. Don't keep it in the same place. If you're going to perform someplace else, then take the harp over there, try it out, or at least take your harp to another room in your house and you know, and move it around so that you get used to looking at different backgrounds and playing in different environments. It's hard to go from the place where your harp always is and you always play to a place where you've never played. So start getting yourself used to someplace else. If you can't play in the space where you're going to perform, see if you can play in another big room. Playing in a big room is very different than playing in your little practice room at home, right? Playing in, you know, an auditorium or a large church or something feels very different. So get used to that. Don't make your performance day the first time you ever perform there or perform in a big hall or something like that. You know, get used to it first and then play your piece numerous times for other people. Play it for friends, play it for strangers, you know, play it for. Play it for your family, play it for the dog, Play it over. Zoom. Play it any place you can. Those are your preview performances. My Heart Mastery members, you know that this is why we have sounding boards and Monday musicales are. We have a Monday musicale coming up tonight, right. So we have those as opportunities for you to play.

When there's nothing at stake, when you know people aren't going to be judging you even though they're listening. And it's going to make you a little bit nervous. You know that you're among friends in a safe place and you can preview your pieces before you take them on the road. Right? Consider these things as opportunities to try out performing so that you're not making that recital. You know, you have to play on your teacher's recital. Don't make that the first time you've ever played the piece in public. Right?

The cardinal rule is don't make a first performance of a piece. The high stakes one. Be sure that you've gotten plenty of opportunity to get the kinks out of it and to get used to performing it in other settings first.

So that's the rule. And I think that when you put all those things together, you'll find there's a lot less to be scared of. When you know what you're afraid of and you come up with an emergency plan to get around it. When you manage your expectations, saying, this is all I really need to have happen for this performance to count as a success for me, when you've managed those expectations to a point where you absolutely can meet them, then you create a feeling of confidence and success and competence that's going to let you get to that next level so that eventually your minimum positive result can be much, much more substantial. Right? Where you can expect much more from yourself because you know you're going to deliver that much more. But don't start from that perspective, right? And then certainly important practice, that performing practice may not make perfect, but it sure makes everything a lot easier. So that should help you start to perform with a lot less fear. And eventually you might be saying, just performing, no sweat, I got this one. At least I certainly hope so. Next week on this show, we are going to be talking about Kaleidoscope Practice. Kaleidoscope Practice is a system that I came up with after I was sort of forced to look really deeply at not just the way I practiced, but why I was practicing. And it led me to some interesting discoveries that actually became the core not only of my own practice and playing, but also of my teaching. And a number of years ago I wrote a book called a little ebook actually called Kaleidoscope Practice, Focus, Finish and Play the Way youy've Always Wanted. And in that book, I outline these five focus areas that I identified as being essential in your practice. While I often talk about these focus areas with my students and the my Heart Mastery members, I don't often remember to share them with the rest of my students at large. So we're going to be talking about those next week and talking about how those focus areas will help you guide your practice, guide your heart playing, and perhaps lead you to some skills that you hadn't realized were going to be important in your harp playing. So next week, Kaleidoscope Practice and the five focus areas. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful week. Spread that harp happiness around and I look forward to talking with you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast. I release a new episode every Monday morning so you can hear hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day.

See you next time.