2344: How to Beat Performance Anxiety by Cylon George on Being Nervous & Getting Jitters During a Speech

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Now before we start, you might want to check out our other podcasts covering topics like personal development and minimalism, money, health, relationships, and more. So to optimize your life in other areas, just search for Optimal Living Daily in your podcast app. Now on to the show.

[00:00:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Hello everybody and welcome to our weekly bonus episode of ORD with me, your host, Greg Audino. Now as per usual, I'm just introducing the article though.

[00:00:27] [SPEAKER_01]: In our bonus episodes, we share posts that have already been read on other shows in the OLD network and would be enjoyable to you guys.

[00:00:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So this one aired on our main show where it all began, Optimal Living Daily. So you're now going to hear the voice of Justin, the main narrator over there. Kick back and enjoy this post everyone as we optimize your life.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: How to Beat Performance Anxiety by Cylon George of SpiritualLivingForBusyPeople.com

[00:00:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Quote,

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_00]: My purpose in performing is to communicate the joy I experience in living.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_00]: John Denver

[00:01:07] [SPEAKER_00]: You're under so much pressure to perform. You think you must perform flawlessly as an employee, a boss, a parent, a child, a lover, a leader, a friend.

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_00]: In some of the performance of our lives, the stakes can be high. Like the presentation that will determine whether you'll be promoted, or the important phone call that may strengthen or end a friendship, or a decision that means the difference between life or death.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_00]: But we can feel the pressure to perform when the stakes are much lower. Instead of enjoying your life, you may find yourself obsessing over your appearance, the kind of car you drive, or your reputation.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: When we base our performances solely on how others perceive us, we can develop crushing anxiety.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_00]: I know what it's like to suffer from performance anxiety. As a piano performance major in college, I was terrified of recitals.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: My hands would sweat so badly during my performances, I could barely keep my fingers on the keys.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_00]: In short, I was pretty bad at performing and I thought I'd chosen the wrong major.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Until, I discovered a little book called Effortless Mastery by jazz pianist Kenny Werner.

[00:02:20] [SPEAKER_00]: The book changed my attitude toward my performance anxiety.

[00:02:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Here are three things I learned that can apply to all the performances of our lives.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Number one, connect with the transcendent.

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you performing from a place of ego?

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you overly concerned with looking good to others?

[00:02:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Are you primarily concerned with receiving accolades for your work?

[00:02:43] [SPEAKER_00]: It would seem like performance should be all about the performer, but the best performers know this is not true.

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're a musician, your goal as a performer is to communicate and connect with the audience

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: through the transcendent medium of music.

[00:03:00] [SPEAKER_00]: In his book, Werner writes,

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_00]: The original purpose of music was worship, divine intelligence, and basic communication.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00]: Music intoxicated the human soul.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_00]: In every way, music is our bond between the material and the eternal."

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Translation,

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Performing music is not about me.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_00]: It's about the music and our communal connection to it.

[00:03:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Want to beat performance anxiety?

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Connect your performances to a transcendent truth.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: God, love, connection, justice, mercy, compassion, equality, generosity, meaning, or belonging.

[00:03:42] [SPEAKER_00]: Embrace these truths and let go of the endless demands of the ego.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Number two, choose process over results.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_00]: Why do we focus on results over process?

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Because results meet the needs of the ego while process does not.

[00:03:58] [SPEAKER_00]: But there's a huge price to pay for our collective fixation on results.

[00:04:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Fear.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_00]: About some musical performers, Werner writes,

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Some of us play as if there were a gun being held to our head.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_00]: And there usually is because we are holding it.

[00:04:14] [SPEAKER_00]: We assess our self-worth with every note or with every stroke on the canvas.

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter which art form we're talking about.

[00:04:21] [SPEAKER_00]: Enslaved by the ego, we are encased in fear."

[00:04:25] [SPEAKER_00]: End quote.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_00]: I was once that performer, musically, socially, spiritually.

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_00]: But once I stayed connected with the transcendent, I learned to fully enjoy the process of making music.

[00:04:37] [SPEAKER_00]: When I became present to the act of making music, my fears about the results diminished.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to be the best at what you do, you must fully commit yourself to the process.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_00]: And you can lose the gun too.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And number three, don't be afraid to play some wrong notes.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I used to be so obsessed with playing wrong notes that I'd hyperventilate at the mere possibility.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Then as I read Werner's book, I was confronted by the chapter entitled,

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: There Are No Wrong Notes.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00]: It felt like blasphemy at first, and I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_00]: But that idea never left me.

[00:05:14] [SPEAKER_00]: Werner used the great Thelonious Monk as an example.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Revered as a composer, Monk was not the best performer in the world.

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: But Werner writes, quote,

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_00]: So why was Thelonious Monk so revered?

[00:05:25] [SPEAKER_00]: The answer is that he had the depth of sound, the arrogance to play what he wanted to play.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_00]: He was uninhibited by mind and fortified by spirit.

[00:05:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Behind every note is the belief that this is the truth.

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't believe in wrong notes.

[00:05:42] [SPEAKER_00]: He believed that they were right notes because he played them, end quote.

[00:05:47] [SPEAKER_00]: This passage woke me out of my obsession with wrong notes and mistakes.

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_00]: As I learned to focus less on wrong notes, my performances improved.

[00:05:56] [SPEAKER_00]: What about your performances?

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_00]: What wrong notes are you afraid of playing?

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00]: Is that fear keeping you from performing at all?

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_00]: It's time to start playing some wrong notes.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Beat performance anxiety, no matter the stakes.

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You can beat your fear of performing because at the end of the day,

[00:06:15] [SPEAKER_00]: you can choose to relieve the pressure you feel.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_00]: And you have what it takes to go pro.

[00:06:21] [SPEAKER_00]: So pull yourself together and get on stage.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Your audience is waiting for you.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_00]: You just listened to the post titled,

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_00]: How to Beat Performance Anxiety by Ceylon George of SpiritualLivingForBusyPeople.com.

[00:06:39] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you to Ceylon.

[00:06:40] [SPEAKER_00]: I might have to pick up that book he recommended,

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: Effortless Mastery by Kenny Werner, a jazz pianist.

[00:06:46] [SPEAKER_00]: And coincidentally, I started performing music in sixth grade,

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_00]: so somewhere around 11 or 12 years old.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And I was always nervous.

[00:06:55] [SPEAKER_00]: With music specifically, it definitely got easier the more I did it.

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_00]: I had to do it a lot.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_00]: That's basically exposure therapy.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_00]: But for speaking and presenting, that's been a more difficult one for me

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_00]: because I've always been very aware of mistakes when speaking and afraid to make them.

[00:07:11] [SPEAKER_00]: I had a public speaking teacher back in college.

[00:07:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I was forced to take that class as much as I didn't want to.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It was required to be a business major.

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember him talking about not being afraid to make mistakes

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_00]: because making mistakes is being human.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00]: And when speaking, generally the audience wants you to succeed and won't mind mistakes.

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_00]: They want to see the human being and the audience is usually encouraging.

[00:07:37] [SPEAKER_00]: To help us get over this fear of ridicule, in a way,

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_00]: the very first thing that professor made us do is stand on his desk one at a time.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: It's this big table, which is a really odd thing to do to stand up on top of it.

[00:07:50] [SPEAKER_00]: And then he'd ask us random questions about ourselves in front of the entire class,

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_00]: kind of joking around, not too serious,

[00:07:58] [SPEAKER_00]: but allowing us to stutter and make mistakes while we're on top of this desk,

[00:08:02] [SPEAKER_00]: embarrassed in front of the entire class.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And we were totally unprepared.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_00]: And I share all of that to say that it worked quite well.

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: It worked to sort of prepare us for the worst in a way,

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: and it made each assignment a bit easier.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the big takeaway for me for this episode.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're able to really let that sink in,

[00:08:21] [SPEAKER_00]: that it's okay to make mistakes,

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: it can definitely help with situations like these.

[00:08:25] [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and if you're a public speaking teacher or something along those lines

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and want to recreate what my teacher did,

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_00]: be very careful with the idea of standing on a desk.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Make sure it's incredibly safe,

[00:08:36] [SPEAKER_00]: because I did hear of an instance where the table tipped

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_00]: and the student almost got injured.

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: So stay safe out there,

[00:08:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and in the case of a fall or something embarrassing,

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: just in life in general, try to laugh along with the crowd,

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_00]: and know that others usually aren't out to get you.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Have a great day, full of mistakes and being human.

[00:08:55] [SPEAKER_00]: These are mistakes that we all make and can learn to be okay with.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for listening, and we'll be back tomorrow as usual,

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: where your optimal life awaits.