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It might not have been so bad if she hadn’t had that underlying belief about her own singing, that—not to put too fine a point on it—she sucked. Sophia, as I’ll call her, met with me shortly after a dress rehearsal for an upcoming concert.
During the rehearsal, “I was blown away by how extraordinary all the other soloists were, especially Jana. The conductor said a couple of the notes I was singing were out of tune. I leapt into an internal dither: I’d done a lot of preparation, thought the tuning issues had been resolved, and hate it when I can’t be right at the rehearsal. And then I felt embarrassed: here I was, singing out of tune with all these fabulous people, wasting everyone’s time while we fixed quarter tones here and there.”
An uncomfortable situation, for sure. But it might not have been so difficult if Sophia had thought to herself, “Hey, I’ve been invited to sing with all these other great singers. Guess I must be pretty good, too.”
But she was raised in a large family where she was the younger sister to a musical star. That role was already taken. (The fact that Marcia, the prodigy, ultimately blew up doesn’t change Sophia’s underlying belief.)
“The thing is, my baseline feeling about my own singing is that I suck. It just isn’t good enough, ever (or very rarely). If Marcia couldn’t have a career in music, then what would make me think I could?”
I knew enough about Sophia and her singing career to appreciate that these inward thoughts and beliefs didn’t manifest once she was on stage. I also knew enough about her to see that she was agonizing…and the concert was barreling down on her in three days.
The best way to get through this moment, I decided, was to give Sophia a very simple-to-remember and concrete distillation of the essence of performance. I refer to it as the A-B-C Edge, where:
A=Awareness
B=Breath
AWARENESS represents a cue to be aware of what she is thinking or feeling at this particular moment.
BREATH means taking a few diaphragmatic breaths (and here I knew that Sophia, as a singer, knew how to breathe diaphragmatically. If she hadn’t, or I hadn’t been sure of her knowledge and use of this technique, I would have taught it to her.) (If you're not sure what I'm talking about or want more information, please check my earlier blogs:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-edge-peak-performance-psychology/201001/the-breathing-edge-part-i
CONCENTRATION refers to making a deliberate choice at that moment about what she is going to focus on.
Sophia commented that the combination of having a non-judgmental place to talk about her despairing thoughts and then learning a useful technique to cope was the just right thing that day: “When I was in the rehearsal that provoked all my anxiety and despair at my perceived lack of talent, there was just no place to put any of those feelings and of course it would have been inappropriate to voice them in any way. Having a place to talk those hard things out was priceless. Our conversation stabilized me and stopped me from jumping off an emotional ledge. And then it gave me a roadmap for dealing with my inner judge and keeping me in the moment during the performance.”
And the performance itself? Sophia was on top of her game:
“The awareness piece had me acknowledging that the fear was present, but I was also focusing on my breathing in the minutes preceding my [vocal] entrance. The entrance is exposed and is an echo of Jana’s first phrase. It is a daunting moment: through the rehearsals I was comparing my phrase with the beautiful one that she sings prior to me.
“Actually, I don’t remember what Jana sounded like at that moment during the concert. I was concentrating on my own part and the breath preceding it. The moment my intentional breathing started, my inner judge just shut up. ‘She’ didn’t poke through again, and I was able to concentrate on the music I was singing. I was able to respond to Jana’s voice and to work with her.”
Consultants who work with performers suggest various acronyms and mnemonic devices for a reason: At the moment of performance, your focus is narrow; having specific and directed instructions keeps us grounded, whether the performance is music, dance, baseball, or cross-examining a witness. A-B-C is a great way to direct your mind:
· What’s going on inside me right now?
· Let me employ a method that calms and re-directs me so that
· I can focus on the thing that I need to focus on to get this job—right now—done.
