How Nancy Overcame Performance Anxiety ES64

Hello and welcome to Every Sing Podcast. I'm your host, Nancy Bos. Thank you for joining me here today. Today is going to be a really unique episode. Today I am going to vulnerably share my personal story so that you know why I am obsessed with personal narratives and why I think that understanding your personal narratives is essential to anyone using their voice to put out their message, whether that's speaking voice or singing voice. If we have a core purpose or a message or an inspiration that we want to deliver and we're using our voice to do it, I think knowing and understanding your personal narratives is absolutely key. So why not tell you my personal situation and why it is that it's so important to me that you discover your personal narratives in order to move forward in your passion. So I'm going to be reflecting on my own background, and I'm so grateful to you for being here as my friends listening to this podcast and getting so much out of it. And I realized that, that podcasts— I, I live on podcasts. There's so many great podcasts that I listen to. You know what I'm going to do is I will go over to LinkedIn and Facebook today. I've got a brand new Facebook page. I left Facebook in August, September, uh, when the whistleblower was telling the US Congress about how much Facebook was damaging teenage girls. And I wrote the book called The Teen Girl's Guide to Singing. Teenage girls are my audience. How could I stay on a platform that could be so dangerous and damaging to them? But I've realized that I gave up so much by leaving Facebook. I gave up thousands of followers and ways to contact people and get in touch with people who've never heard the message that I have to tell. And, and I know that I have changed and saved lives through my Singing Through Change Facebook group with Kate and Joanne, my writing partners. And I know that being on Facebook is, is the right thing to do. So In a way, it's the lesser of two evils. I was coached by a couple of people last week that yes, you need to get your ass back on Facebook. And so I'm there. So at any rate, if you search out long— that was really long-winded. If you search out Nancy E. Bos, B-O-S, on Facebook, you'll find me. Please follow or friend me there, and I will post the podcasts that I listen to regularly there and on LinkedIn, also Nancy E. Bos. So let's get into this—me reflecting on my own personal narrative around performance anxiety. I knew this was really important, so I took notes on paper so that I wouldn't skip any of it. I'm going to try not to talk too long about myself but spend a little more time talking about the takeaway message. But yeah, let's, let's jump in here. I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous to tell you this. I am being vulnerable. And I think that showing up with vulnerability requires courage. So I would say a word that is never used in any other way, I am mustering my courage. Muster? Muster. I am mustering my courage. So yeah, muster, that's a word. And, and I think my courage is fully mustered. So, so here we go. Like so many people, I have a traumatic moment from my childhood when I received negative input about my voice. Now, there, as, as, as many others have said, there are big T traumas and there are little t traumas. This is about as little t as it comes. This is seriously small t. So I was singing in elementary school chorus, choir. It was music class and we did some choral stuff. We all stand together on three little risers, so we're kind of crowded together, and some of the songs were uncomfortably high. Like, I don't feel like putting in that much energy to sing that high. I'll just drop down an octave. So then I started singing an octave down. Well, Susan Olsen, not the blonde, but the brunette Susan Olsen in my class— sorry Susan if you're listening, I know you know who you are— not, but at any rate, Susan Olsen turned around and said to me, "You sound weird." So what was this, third grade? And of All the things that happened to me in third grade. I mean, 365 days of being a third grader, some stuff must have happened. I know I kicked butt on the monkey bars. I was really good at that. And I think I won the Presidential Physical Fitness Award that I was really fast in the relay, but I don't remember specific moments except when Susan Olson turned around and said, "You sound weird." Hmm. Little t. So moving on then, I was playing piano lessons. I was playing piano since I was 4, and by the time I was, I don't know, same age, 10, 11, 12, I was in piano competitions, which means that all the kids show up at a college campus and they go into the little music rooms or practice rooms or concert halls or whatever. They play their 1, 2, 3 memorized pieces for an adjudicator who gives them feedback and points or a score. And everybody, in this case, this was one of those competitions where you get a 1 or 2 or 3. 1 is you suck, go home. 2 is you're fine, keep trying. And 3 is, oh my gosh, you're amazing, you must be a little prodigy. So I don't know, I think I usually got 3s, but maybe 2s. I don't care. I don't care. What I do care about though is that during that time my hands started sweating perfectly normal reaction to heightened state of performance, right? I am about to go out into the world and give the thing that I've been working so hard on. This is my goal. My hands are sweaty. This doesn't matter to most people who are putting themselves on the line. Most people, hands sweaty, fine, whatever. But if you're an instrumentalist, this is a problem, right? Hands sweaty. I don't have a, I don't have a crash story here. I don't recall crashing because my hands were steady or sweaty. But what I do recall is, "Your hands are sweaty. Oh, you must be nervous." Hmm. Now this has been defined as a negative thing. Not, "Oh, you must be excited," but, "Oh, you must be nervous." All right. Next, in junior high, I played flute and there were at least 15 flute players, maybe 18. And I was second chair. Lisa was first chair. Jankowski? Lisa Jankowski. Hey, Lisa. At any rate, um, This particular band director had things called a challenge system where I think it was every Friday you could challenge anyone sitting in a chair higher than you, take their chair away from them, and they would go back and take your chair. So if, if the 10th place person challenged you in 2nd place, then you would go, and, and if they won, you would go to 10th, they'd go to 2nd. Normally 10th place people don't have the courage to challenge 2nd place people. But third place did, and I lost. And then fourth place did, and I lost. And then probably sixth place challenged me, and I lost. And then, heck yeah, tenth place challenged me, and soon I am in the last chair of the flute section. It probably took about 6 weeks. That, that was devastating. And in the mind of a middle school kid, That was a pretty big T. I mean, there's, there's way bigger Ts in the world, but related directly to music and performance anxiety, mm-hmm. That definitely set the seed. And then there was singing in church, which I talked about in a previous episode, feeling judged by the people who are listening to me and wondering, what's the purpose? Why am I doing this? Well, pretty soon, by the time I was in high school, when I was singing in church, my knees would be shaking. Okay. I can wear a long skirt. I can still sing with shaking knees, but still never comfortable with what I was doing, always feeling like I was being judged about how I sounded rather than the message of the words. And the big one, big one was in college, uh, singing in front of my small group, normally music majors. I was a singing music major in college. Normally singing majors, every Friday they get together, the, the voice studio gets together. So that's maybe 12 students that all study with the same teacher, maybe 15. They all get together at 2 o'clock on a Friday, and every week 3 or 4 of them have to perform for the whole class. Or in some schools, everybody performs every week. And every Friday was painful. So singing in front of these people, being judged by them because it's a little bit competitive, like, "Oh, she's better than I am. I'm better than he is," you know, there's this edgy judgment thing. Knees are shaking, hands are sweating, which I'm told is nervousness, not excitement. And I didn't care about the music that I was singing because I was singing songs in Italian and German and French and Spanish in the classical style. I— well, I spoke French, but I didn't know what any of these songs were for or about. They didn't come from my heart. They didn't come from my soul. I didn't write them. That would have been helpful if they'd been songs I'd written. I was simply doing what I was told, following the rules, learning how to be a classical singer. And yeah, no heart and soul in that. No purpose, no personal narrative in me that said, "Yes, bring it, girl! This is your message. Bring it home!" Nothing. No cheerleader inside saying, "This is going to be awesome. It's worth it." Only, only the little devil on your shoulder or the bad voice that you hear in your head saying, "This is not you. This is not authentic. This doesn't feel good. You clearly are nervous." And it really, really, really tumbled downward quickly to the point where in my sophomore year I realized that I'm going to have to do a 30-minute recital next year, in my junior year, for at least 100 people. And in my senior year, I have to do a 60-minute classical operatic recital for at least 100 people. And no, excuse my French, but no way in hell this is not going to happen. I literally cannot do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be a music major bad enough to do this. So at the end of my sophomore year, I changed my major to Arts Administration, which was a music minor, a business administration major, and I threw in an economics major just because heck, why not? I love economics. Um, it was a good move. You know, from a practical perspective, because what was I going to do with my music degree anyhow? I didn't want to go be an opera singer in Europe, and I didn't want to be a music teacher. So yeah, business, good idea, good idea. Nonetheless, my performance anxiety was completely entrenched in me, and I left music behind completely. After college, I eventually Landed a job as an assistant manager at a Lady Foot Locker. I say eventually because nobody comes out of college going, "Gosh, I wanna be an assistant manager at Lady Foot Locker." But it was a recession, it was a hard time, and that was the job that I took. Eventually became the manager of a Lady Foot Locker Casuals and moved to Rapid City, South Dakota, opened a store there, and it became the number one Lady Foot Locker Casuals in the country. Kicking ass as a businesswoman. Yeah. And yet feeling purposeless and pointless and out of touch with my essence and who I was. Because one day I drove up to my house, parked in front of my little house, and had a lightning bolt moment. So the thoughts that were going through my head were, this is not fun, I'm not enjoying this, I don't feel any meaning. And the lightning bolt was "Music." That was it. Music. And my whole essence reacted with, "Oh yeah!" And I immediately ran in the house. This was the early 1990s. I went in the house to get on the phone and I called my mom and I said, "Music, Mom?" And she said, "Yeah, that's right. You are music." Oh, all right. So we're gonna have to go back and face this performance anxiety thing, demon. I joined a church choir. Joining a church choir— oh, I also joined a Sweet Adelines choir. Two of the easiest ways to get music into your life is a community barbershop choir, community choir, church choir. They're happy to have you, and you show up and make music with other people. It's fabulous. Pretty quickly though, the church choir director was moving on, and I became the interim choir director. I had never directed a choir before. I had taken some choral directing classes in college. One, one choral directing class. So I got them through as their interim director. I got them through and I experienced the position of being in leadership in music and creating ensemble. And I really liked that. I was hooked. I was hooked. Quit Lady Foot Locker, worked a couple of other jobs, and eventually got married and moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico, where I started taking singing lessons from Dr. Candice Magner. You're going to hear from Dr. Candice Magner next week. I cannot wait. For those of you who, uh, Barbara Strozzi is, um, anyhow, I'm gonna go. You know what, next week listen to this podcast. Stopping right there. So in Los Alamos, taking lessons from Candice, I thought I could be a voice teacher. I could stop working in business and start working with people to help them find their voices. Yes, that's what I want to do. And Candice was all excited about it because there weren't enough qualified voice teachers in town for all the people who want to take lessons, and she was so qualified to be my mentor. So Candice, Dr. Candice Magner, became my mentor as a singing teacher, and I learned so much as a teacher, right? The teacher is the student in the class that just happens to be a few steps ahead of the other students. And I had so much growth around singing and expression and storytelling and, and voice use. I wrote the Singing 101 book shortly after this, just to be a better teacher. But I still had debilitating performance anxiety. I literally was that teacher who taught because she couldn't do. I knew that inside of me, that I was a singer who was teaching. I love to teach. I come from a long line of teachers. But I was not singing publicly because I couldn't. And that was the beginning of me looking for a solution. It took, it took a while. It took a while. So at the time I'm telling you about right now, I was about 25, 26, 27, 28. And then by the time I'm 34, I realize there's one competition in the classical world called the— it's the National Association of Teachers of Singing Artist Award, NATSA. And that competition has a cutoff age. Of 35. And I was 34 thinking, "I literally am aging out of this industry. I cannot compete in the top-level competitions ever unless I do it now. And if I don't do this kind of thing, if I don't get out there and sing, by the time I reach my deathbed," which I'm thinking about 108 is what I'm shooting for, "by the time I reach my deathbed, I will have this massive regret because I'm a singer inside who's not singing and I have to tackle the performance anxiety." I have to find out where it came from, and I have to get rid of it. Well, actually, I didn't know that I needed to find out where it came from. That's the shortcut I'm giving you. You need to find out the source of your issues so that you can look them in the face and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, that is not the thing that has control over my future. That is not the roadblock that is going to stop me and make me choose a different path. You can look at those things in your past, past, and make a decision about them as long as you know You're there, that they are there. Oh my gosh, language, Nancy. So in order to find the problems in my past, which I didn't know I needed to do, I went to hypnosis because I heard that hypnosis can help with performance anxiety. This hypnosis was fantastic. I'm not gonna go into details. I think every hypnotist has a different style. This was not medical hypnosis. This was more of a spiritual hypnosis, but still Absolutely fantastic thing to do for yourself, hypnosis, if you're dealing with any issues, because you get under the ego and inside, and your brain has access to knowledge and memories that it normally cannot bring to the consciousness. And that's what it did for me. And I saw these sources of my performance anxiety were unrelated to singing. It was the flute. It was the flute competition. That was no judgment on my singing. It was the sweaty hands in the piano contest. That is not a judgment on singing. There was no core to my anxiety. It was hollow. All right, all right. Now we're getting somewhere. Once I could see that I can say, "Oh, I'm nervous. No, wait, no good reason to be nervous, Nancy. Push that out of the way," and I could get past that little bit. That was one part of the pie that was the solution. Another part was, um, the immersion, full immersion. I decided I'm gonna do— I'm going to do that NATSA competition when I'm 35, last chance. And in order to prepare for that, I had to memorize and perform up to 18 classical songs and opera arias. So I started giving recitals in that type of music. And I gotta say, there are a lot of nursing homes that had full-on recitals that year, hour-long recitals. The things I wasn't willing to do when I was a senior in, in college, I wasn't willing to do that hour-long recital. I did it over and over and over again as a volunteer for different audiences, and each time it got a little better. Um, there was a big piece though that was a problem, and that was I still did not love the music I was singing. I was singing in all these languages. Yes, I had chosen the songs, so all the songs spoke to me somehow, but It wasn't what I love to sing. What I love to sing is stories that, that use lots of texture to the voice and lots of different qualities of sound, not just beautiful singing in the classical style. So singing in that competition, I still wasn't over my performance anxiety, but I got to the competition. I did it. I did poorly. I did not show up on the finalist stand, but I was there, and I overcame my performance anxiety to get there. And that That was a big win. Now I say I overcame my performance anxiety, but that was not the end of the story. That was just enough that I could actually get out there and do that kind of thing. So I realized that if I'm singing for a cause greater than myself, I'm going to be more successful. I was— had been for the classical work, I had been studying with a beautiful, wonderful voice teacher named Ute Freund, who was helping me with my classical singing. But now I was ready to tackle my performance anxiety society by singing in different genres—folk, rock, music theater, pop, that type of thing. I started studying with a fellow named Robert Edwin, and Robert, who's also appeared on this podcast, he is a top-level international voice teacher. And he believed in me, and he told me that I had a great voice. He told me that I should be up on stages singing. Now, having a mentor, somebody you respect, say, "You got it, kid. This is the thing. This is what you need to do." He called me kid 'cause he was in his 50s and I was in my 30s. But at any rate, yeah, yeah, yeah. So now I've got, I know the root of my performance anxiety and I can dismiss it. I've done the exposure therapy. So I know now the variables. Okay, at this point, if this feeling, this physical sensation, this is the variables. If someone in the audience coughs, Ignore it. If somebody in the audience rolls their eyes, gets up and leaves, ignore it. It's okay. It's not about you. If the room is too hot, if the room is too cold, if the stage is above the people or below the people and you're looking up at them, you can handle all these different variables. And so nothing throws you off in the moment. So you can relax a little bit more, a lot a bit more actually. And then that third piece of having somebody else really believe in me, that was enough to boost me forward to giving Fundraising performances. I had a student named Sarah Steele. She has since passed away, dear soul. Had a terrible disease called FOP, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. And this terrible, terrible genetic disorder, extremely rare thankfully, turns your exoskeletal muscle into bone when it gets damaged. So if a person with FOP gets a bruise, that muscle does not heal as muscle. That muscle heals as bone. And you can imagine, after a decade or so of being a kid with FOP, you've gotten enough bruises over your body that you are frozen in an exoskeleton. And that was the case for Sarah Steele and for hundreds of other kids on the planet who have FOP. If you're right now wondering, how do I know if I have FOP or if my kid has FOP? Well, If you look at a baby's toe joints, that is, um, an indicator. There's something different, I think, about the big toe joint. So if you have somebody in your family who's an infant who has a big toe joint issue, look up FOP. Odds are it is nothing, nothing, nothing to do with FOP, but there you go. Um, so fundraising for FOP. Rare diseases don't get funded well because there isn't enough payoff in finding a solution. So FOP does a whole lot of fundraising on their own, and I found that if I gave fundraising performances, invited all my friends, family, and strangers to these fundraising performances. They pay $10, $20 a ticket, thousands of dollars go to the cause, and I just have to show up and sing. This is fabulous. I think I did that 2 or 3 times, and that really helped. On top of that, I didn't— I may be saying in an hour performance, I may be saying 1 or 2 classical songs. Everything else I sang, um, Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take this broken wing and learn to fly. All your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird fly.

And I sang, um, the way you wear your hat, the way you sip your tea. I can't remember the words. And I sang songs that were really storytelling from my heart. Yes, that's it. That's it. That's it. Being sincere about your message, truly believing in what you're giving to the people. That was the missing piece, is that it's not about me, it's about the story, it's about the music, it's about the message that I'm putting out of there. So number 1, I'm excited, not nervous. Number 2, those root traumas in my past are irrelevant. Number 3, I am good enough to be on this stage because Robert told me. And number 4, I am not the point. The music and the audience is the point. Those were the 4 pieces that came together for me to eliminate, smash my performance anxiety. Absolutely. And since then, I have been able to do some amazing things. I have sung in cathedrals in South America and Europe. I've given concerts and performances in lots of different places. I've sung in musical theater productions, and I I love it. I can now get on the stage and speak in front of thousands and thousands of people and nothing holds me back because I have a message and a purpose for what I'm doing. And I am getting outta my way and letting that message channel through me. Mm. That is the power of knowing personal narrative. I never could have gotten to where I am today if I hadn't started at age 34 in finding out the what the heck, the why, where did this start, why am I saddled with this. Those personal narratives are key to unlocking the things that are holding you back. They are key to you moving forward with freedom and power, intention confidence, and all of your heart and soul. I'm going to leave you today with the music that I recorded of a song called Seattle When It's Raining, written by Robert Edwin and his song partner. And yeah, I am, without any reservation or anxiety, excited to share my music with you, and I'm excited to hear from you about how you are looking at your personal narratives to get out of your own way or to overcome the obstacles that are stopping you from living that full life. I want to hear about it. I want you to message me, private, uh, direct message me on Facebook or LinkedIn and Tell me your story. I wanna know. This is Nancy Bos, the host of Every Sing Podcast, saying thank you for being here with me today. Bye-bye for now.

I love Seattle when it's raining. It seems to be always raining. I know it isn't true, although Nancy Bosky's look gray, not blue. So I carry my umbrella, it has room enough for two. We're sheltered in our world when our umbrella is totally unfurled. I love Seattle when it's raining. It's my favorite time to be close to you. When our umbrellas open wide, safely closing us inside. A wild, unfurled, under an umbrella sky, a private canopy. Just for you and me. I love Seattle when it's raining. It seems to be always raining just for you and me. So it's very true, I carry my umbrella. I carry my umbrella. I carry my umbrella. Just to be so very Stay close to you.