Mental Key Changes #1

Mental Key Changes #1

Welcome to The Land of Make-Believe

The smallest changes can often make the biggest difference. Sometimes the difference between a sub-standard performance and an amazing performance is simply a change in mindset. This post is going to share some techniques and concepts about how to adjust your thinking to help improve your performance. These concepts are simple and when implemented are often incredibly effective. The best part is, they don’t require hours of practice to be able to do.  Just by changing the way you are thinking you can dramatically affect the quality of your performance.

Act as if its easy

This first technique can be used both in practice and performance. In performance it will help you to keep your attitude positive and resourceful, and in practice it will help to show you which areas still need work.

This technique is incredibly simple but can be incredibly effective. All you have to do is act as if it’s easy. That’s it…perform it as if you have total control over the performance and especially any difficult sections. You want to play as if what you are performing is the easiest thing in the world, with the same technical freedom and emotional freedom that you would have if you had totally mastered it and had no fear in the world.

The trick is that you actually have to embody the idea. What you want to do is think of the last time you did something that was real easy. Something that you had an absolute certainty that you could perform correctly. It doesn’t have to be music related. Maybe its playing Mary had a little lamb on your instrument, or simply using a fork.

Chances are you have a certain feeling in your body that feels like the equivalent of someone saying, “I got this, no problem” and it may be even a bit cocky about it (just to be more fun).  That is the feeling and mindset you want to keep while performing.

For this to be effective you have to feel as if your skills are way above this task, and you need to maintain that mindset throughout the performance.

That is all there is to it, often the change from struggling to mastery is simply a mindset shift, and this is the easiest one to make. So just play as if it was absolutely nothing, and you will find that many of the more difficult sections actually do become easy.

This works on a number of levels. By acting as if  its easy you send a signal to your body and mind to relax and to allow the performance to happen. This is directly in opposition to what you would normally do. As a difficult section approaches your mind would be sending the message to your body, “Here it comes, here it comes, the hard part is coming up, “ so your body gets ready for the hard part and probably tenses up, it has no choice if that is the message coming from your mind. With this case sometimes you force your way through, and play it correctly, other times you are less successful.

Another way of describing this phenomenon is summed up in the difference between these two phrases:

I am trying hard to do this…

Vs

This is the way it goes…

The difference is that the first phrase puts the situation out of your control and you are struggling to do something.  The second phrase automatically assumes control and puts you squarely in the drivers seat. Now you are in total control and the crazy part is that even if you haven’t fully mastered the section, you will be much more successful in performing as a whole. Your body and mind are linked so what one says the other obeys.

Now this technique won’t work miracles, if you don’t already know the material, but it could still dramatically change your performance for the better

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