Trust Your Work!

We're talking about auditions this fall - since there are a LOT of them being posted!  Tucson, Boston, Nashville, San Francisco,Navy Band,  and the Air Force… to name a few!  The last week or so, we shared lots of lessons learned, from funny stories to pitfalls to be aware of, and this week, 150 of us are getting charged up with the Audition Reboot! 

All of this is great information, and we know the most studious among you will take all of it to heart, but it all doesn't matter if you don't do one thing.  What is that?  One of the most difficult things to do, it's how to…

TRUST YOUR WORK!

The technical woodshedding, the listening,  score study, recording yourself, visualizations, the mocks you play - all that training you’ve done for weeks and months…

You’ve got to trust it! Your preparation is the one thing that doesn’t leave you.

Because we don’t trust, we feel enormous doubt in our abilities to perform well and end up going into control-freak mode!  Our brain starts issuing commands:  “don’t forget to use left pinky here”, "make a shift to third position there", or my favorite, ordering ourselves to just “r-e-l-a-x”.

Not only that, but we're on hyper alert. There’s a fan whirring behind me, or the stage is creaky, or I hear a committee member unwrapping a candy. Super critical voices emerge, and suddenly you're playing small and “safe”, you're in the dreaded box. 

How do we trust ourselves,  in the moment we need to most?

GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY  

1. Don't think.  Shift your focus to hearing the music, and feeling the keys under your fingers, the breath being drawn over the phrases. Really hear, feel and taste how you're going to deliver that first line or opening note. 

2. Do the opposite of play it safe.  Feed nervous energy into playing with freedom and generosity. The German word aufgeregt, translates to both the English words: nervous and excited. Turn that doubt into the energy that gives you a little extra spark in your playing! 

3. Create a launch routine. The worlds leading performance coaches all teach some form of this flow: release - breathe - positive cue - center - direct, and go! 

Funny thing is, all of these ideas help your mental game by taking you out of your left-brained thinking mind and into the right-brain feeling-visualizing mind. What are some tried-and-true tactics you have to trust your work?  

Experiment with what yours is, optimally. The only way to find out is to do it, and then make it automatic! 

Ready to TAKE ACTION?! What are some ways you're going to just do it?