How to Beat Performance Anxiety

“My purpose in performing is to communicate the joy I experience in living.” ~
John Denver

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.

In some of the performances 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.

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.

When we base our performances solely on how other perceive us, we can develop crushing anxiety.

I know what it’s like to suffer from performance anxiety. As a piano performance major in college, I was terrified of recitals. My hands would sweat so badly during my performances, I could barely keep my fingers on the keys. In short, I was pretty bad at performing and I thought I’d chosen the wrong major.

Until I discovered a little book called Effortless Mastery by jazz pianist Kenny Werner. The book changed my attitude toward my performance anxiety.

Here are three things I learned that can apply to all the performances of our lives:

1. Connect with the transcendent

Are you performing from a place of ego? Are you overly concerned with looking good to others? Are you primarily concerned with receiving accolades for your work?

It would seem like performance should be all about the performer, but the best performers know this is not true.

If you’re a musician, your goal as a performer is to communicate and connect with the audience through the transcendent medium of music. In his book, Werner writes

“The original purpose of music was worship, divine intelligence, and basic communication. Music intoxicated the human soul….In every way, music is our bond between the material and the eternal.”

Translation?

Performing music is not about me. It’s about the music and our communal connection to it.

Want to beat performance anxiety?

Connect your performances to a transcendent truth: God, love, connection, justice, mercy, compassion, equality, generosity, meaning, belonging.

Embrace these truths and let go the endless demands of the ego.

2. Choose process over results

Why do we focus on results over process? Because results meet the needs of the ego while process does not. But there’s a huge price to pay for our collective fixation on results – fear.

About some musical performers, Werner writes:

Some of us play as if there were a gun being held to our head, and there usually is – because we’re holding it! We assess our self-worth with every note, or with every stroke on the canvas; it doesn’t matter which art form we are talking about. Enslaved by the ego, we are encased in fear.

I was once that performer – musically, socially, spiritually.

But once I stayed connected with the transcendent, I learned to fully enjoy the process of making music. When I became present to the act of making music, my fears about the results diminished.

If you want to be the best at what you do, you must fully commit yourself to the process.

And you can lose the gun too.

3. Don’t be afraid to play some wrong notes

I used to be so obsessed with playing wrong notes that I’d hyperventilate at the mere possibility. Then, as I read Werner’s book, I was confronted by the chapter entitled “There are no wrong notes.” It felt like blasphemy at first and I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea. But that idea never left me.

Werner used the great Thelonious Monk as an example. Revered as a composer, Monk was not the best performer in the world. But, Werner writes:

“So why was Thelonious Monk so revered? The answer is that he had the depth of sound, the arrogance to play what he wanted to play. He was uninhibited by mind and fortified by spirit. Behind every note as the belief that ‘this is the truth.’ He didn’t believe in wrong notes. He believed that they were right notes because he played them.”

This passage woke me out of my obsession with wrong notes and mistakes. As I learned to focus less on wrong notes, my performances improved.

What about your performances? What wrong notes are you afraid of playing? Is that fear keeping you from performing at all?

It’s time to start playing some “wrong notes.”

Beat performance anxiety – no matter the stakes

You can beat your fear of performing.

Because at the end of the day, you can choose to relieve the pressure you feel.

And you have what it takes to go pro.

So pull yourself together and get on stage.

Your audience is waiting for you.