Energy - Emotions - Purpose
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Planning ahead for your nerves
A teacher in grad school used to say to us during studio classes “you need to work through your performance emotions in advance of the performance.”
I always wondered, how the heck does one do that? How do you process through and deal with nerves in advance of feeling nervous? It just didn’t make sense to me at the time.
My teachers wasn’t able to explain how to do this either, but now I see the wisdom of her words and here's how I interpret her advice.
Stand your sacred ground
A number of years ago I worked as an apprentice at a summer vocal program. One of my duties was playing for voice lessons every day. One of the teachers was intense and mean, to say the least. She would regularly scream at her students, all kind of profanities, and call them stupid, or fat, or anything else nasty. Sometimes she got really physical with them, yanking on their face or jaw or pushing with all her might on their abdomen.
Course Corrections
As a chronic ‘metaphor-maker’ of all things, I thought this was a great metaphor about course correcting in life:
We set out on a path with certain goals or dreams in mind, and many times, little nudges will do the trick to keep us on track. Smooth and easy. Other times we need a bigger jigjag to stay on course. And then there are times in life when something happens to make us take a new course or find a new direction or a new goal.
When FEAR strikes - a heart centered antidote
I remember performing Gershwin's Three Preludes shortly after graduating college. I love those pieces! But all I could think about during that performance was that I wore the wrong dress because my right leg was shaking so badly and surely everyone could see it and clearly that was ruining my performance.
I don't remember the dress I was wearing, but I have a visceral memory of trying my darndest to stop my leg from shaking, with no success whatsoever. It simply kept jittering away, stealing my focus from the actual music.
What you resist persists
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, her conclusion about fear, after living a very fearful childhood? Fear is boring: “because it was the same thing every day. Around the age of fifteen, I somehow figured out that my fear had no variety to it, no depth, no substance, no texture. I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was ‘STOP!’”
Reflections on the New Year
I don’t know about you, but my email inbox has been inundated with emails about setting resolutions for the New Year. I subscribe to a fair number of inner growth type blogs, and the New Year is prime territory for such work. I love the support and the ideas that all of these blogs present, but sometimes all this emphasis on "making 2016 your best year yet" can feel overwhelming and like too much pressure. And here I am, adding to the chatter.
I find that too much of New Year resolution setting comes from a place of not good enough. "If only I can fix my body weight, practice routine, eating habits, technology addiction, then life will be good."
What if, instead, there is space to notice how you are succeeding, what is working, and at the same time, notice what would truly make you happier or more satisfied or more in alignment with your values?