Performing begins long before you step before an audience. The craft of being a performer involves these five stages, yet most performers don't take full advantage of each stage. How well do you work with each stage?
The Performing Mind seminar provides details on how to best utilize these stages to achieve and maintain a high level of performance.
In this stage, many people simply recognize their desire to perform and then decide what kind of material they are going to perform. Everyone sets goals, but they usually do it unconsciously.
Taking a clue from the business world, specific goals make it easier to plan and prepare to achieve them, and specific objectives make it possible for you to more effectively evaluate your performance.
"If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else."
Lawrence J. Peter
Without writing down your goals, and without being thorough, there is usually an unconscious drift in the focus of your goals. This drift is caused, at least in part, by whatever you currently desire, which could be anything from pizza to blonds.
The seminar provides some concrete techniques on goal setting for results, and also explains how you can achieve goals that you set when you have no idea how to accomplish them.
At this stage, you get training and experience, and learn as much as you can about exercising the required skills and acquiring the qualities and resources you need in order to accomplish your goals.
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." - John Wooden, coach
Colleges and universities are great places for training and learning. Keep in mind that teachers are responsible for teaching and you are responsible for learning. Your audiences don't care how well your teachers taught you. They do, however, care how well you learned what you need to know.
The seminar focuses on the personal responsibility for learning, and the process of analyzing goals and assessing your current skills, and provides practicing techniques and information on how to practice performing.
It is this stage where inexperienced performers randomly imagine what an upcoming performance will be like. Often they have thoughts like "What if I forget the music?!" and "What if they don't like me?!" Do you ever think like that?
"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." - Mark Twain
The seminar shows you how to use guided imagery to focus on your goals and objectives, and to visualize the performance from beginning to end, accomplishing every objective. The seminar also shows how to quiet the voice in your head that nags and worries and lies to you about your ability and your potential.
It is not uncommon during a performance for inexperienced performers to be analyzing how they are doing, and even begin evaluating themselves before the performance is over. Sometimes they also go over what-if scenarios in their mind during the performance.
"I don't get nervous. I think nerves are a waste of time. It's insecurity, kind of an excuse."
The seminar shows you how to be in the moment and clear the mind of all the distracting noise. You have to either do it or don't do it; there is no in-between.
In this stage, many performers simply ask their friends "How'd I do?" For professionals, that shouldn't be good enough.
"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." - John Dewey
The seminar shows how you can measure your performance against your objectives, how to distill feedback in order to get to the facts, and how to use that information to refine your goals and set new objectives for the next performance.
See Also: Seminar Description
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