These books are in my home library, and I heartily recommend them.

You can find more books about the process and problems of being a performer by searching Amazon for "stage fright" or "mental discipline."

Daniel J. Levitin is not only a Grammy-winning rock musician and music producer, he is also a respected neuroscientist and wonderful writer. His passion for both music and science is infectious.

He explains why practice is 10,000 times more important than talent, and how music is probably more fundamental to our species than is language. He also argues that listening to music and performing music are activities that fully engage and integrate more areas of the brain than almost any other activity.

In this book, Daniel J. Levitin takes us on a tour through the six musical song forms that brought about the evolution of human culture and how they are still in use today's popular songs.

He explains why the great pyramids of Egypt probably could not have been built if humans had not first developed music and dance, and why one of the best cures for depression might just be listening to some sad songs.

John Medina is a molecular biologist who specializes in how the brain works, and in this book, he gives us twelve rules that can make performers smarter, more successful, and more mentally flexible.

Medina shows how memories are shredded into tiny pieces and scattered around the brain. He also shows that recalling the memory of an experience, reassembles all, or almost all, of those pieces into an inexact replay of the original memory. He shows how memory and creative imagination are identical functions within the brain!

Don Greene is a former Green Beret soldier with a Ph.D. in sports psychology who has trained performers at Juliard and in major orchestras in techniques for performing under stressful conditions.

Training and learning are similar but different processes in the brain, and this book outlines the skills and exercises for training the performer to successfully perform in spite of the stress.

James Lipton is not only the erudite host of Inside the Actor's Studio on the Bravo network, but is also an actor, script writer, former ballet dancer, Broadway choreographer, Parisian pimp, theatrical and television producer, and pilot. (Pimp?!)

This book gives not only a gripping account of an extraordinary career, but provides a fascinating look into the world and mind of a producer.

W. Timothy Gallwey thinks he teaches tennis, but he's really teaching a Zen approach to learning to perform.

You have been told to "think about what you are doing!" But as a performer, thinking can seriously get in the way. This book gives you a look into the serene mind of a competitive athlete, and it is not that different from the mind of a performer.

Richard Brodie is, like me, both a Microsoft alumnus and a thinker about thinking.

This book delves into the science of the meme, which can be described as an idea that hangs around your mind, changing your behavior, and passing from person to person like a virus. Performers often persist memes that inhibit their ability to perform at their best. Memes like "Black people can't sing opera," or "Married women can't have successful performing careers" are not true, but more importantly, they are harmful and there are much better memes to keep in your head.

Back in the early 1900's, a French doctor, Emile Coué, discovered that his patients consistently healed faster if he frequently reminded them that they were getting better every day.

This little book provides the foundation for the practice of repeating affirmations, or autosuggestion. Two of my favorite quotes that have guided me for thirty years: "Our actions spring not from our will, but from our imagination." And "If the imagination and the will are ever in conflict, the imagination will always win." (My paraphrase)

Joey Berlin has collected thousands of quotes from artists and celebrities in music, theatre, television, and film that together paint a quite startling vision of what it is really like to be famous.

If one of your primary goals in being a performer is to become famous, you should spend some time with this book. If you are prepared, it can be easier, but you have to find out what being prepared means for your situation.

Rock singer Belinda Carlisle said this about getting her first hit and becoming instantly famous, "No one wanted to go out with me because it was such a pain in the ass to go out... Then you go through the whole thing, 'Do I deserve this fame? Do I deserve all this success?' And you sabotage it. From that moment on – and for the next five years of my life after that – it was a downhill spiral. It was horrible."

Jason Alexander of the Seinfeld TV show said, "I love fantasy, but I don't like living in one. I think that fame is a fantasy."