Be Positive!

Are you a glass half-full or glass half-empty person? Does being positive come easily to you, or do you find it difficult to look on the sunnier side of life? 🌞

I know I go through patches of both, generally revolving around how much sleep I get, or whether the effects of my coffee have already kicked in! 😴☕️

But being positive and optimistic has proven to be an important trait of top performers in every field. Whilst these are great qualities to develop, this doesn’t mean that you have to be upbeat and bouncing off the walls 100% of the time. If you can strike a healthy and realistic balance of where you’re at as a performer, a lot of our worry and anxiety can dissolve when you recognise what you can and can’t do. Accepting your shortcomings whilst acknowledging your strengths can keep you in a much more productive and balanced frame of mind.

Musicians naturally have the tendency to think much more critically of themselves and their own playing. This starts in the practice room and leads to a negative mindset on stage. This is partly due to the industry we are in – with the constant judgement and evaluation of our playing, the role of the recording industry churning out note-perfect, auto-tuned, blemish-free albums, and the pressure this all brings on the individual to keep producing top-notch quality night after night.

This is compounded by human beings’ natural tendency to view the world around us as a threatening place, creating a “negativity bias” – something that has kept our species alive and kicking for millennia. Without viewing the world around us with some sort of threat evaluation, humans would have all been eaten up or fallen off a cliff a very long time ago! So knowing that you’re wired this way can kinda give you permission to be a “negative-Nelly” from time to time! 😉

Forming a more balanced perspective is something that is critical to ensure you maintain your motivation, confidence and self-esteem (and your sanity too!) But this has to start in the practice room, which will find its way out onto the stage in the process. Just “being positive” is not quite as simple as one would expect, so here’s a few ideas to shift that negativity dial a few notches in the other direction:

• Become more aware of when you start thinking negatively, and the circumstances in which this happens. Often negative thinking is tied in with certain situations that trigger an automatic negative response. Learning what these situations are and when they arise can help you react differently in the future.

• Visualise yourself performing in a positive and successful way. Notice what your posture is like. Are you smiling and enjoying the music? What emotions are you feeling? What kinds of emotions are you evoking from the audience? Imagine the audience going crazy at the end of the show! 👨‍🎤

• Believe that you are capable of producing such music. Say to yourself “I can do this! I have done the work, so I’ve given myself the best chance to perform my best. I am going to play a great concert tonight! I’m going to have so much fun! I am excited!”

If you find this hard to do (I know I do too!), say it out loud every morning and night 10 times, or even 100 times. Soon you will start to believe what you are saying through sheer will alone! It’s not “Fake it till you make it”, but “Fake it till you BELIEVE it!”