The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 015 Don Greene: Winning on Stage with Peak Performance Tools

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 15. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I am so excited that my last guest for 2018 is someone who's had a tremendous impact on my performance abilities, Dr. Don Green. Dr. Green is a peak performance psychologist who's taught his comprehensive approach to peak performance mastery at the best music programs across America, including the Juilliard School, the New Old Symphony, and the Perlman Music Program,

Starting point is 00:00:57 as well as at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. During his 32-year career, he's coached more than 1,000 performers to win professional auditions and has guided countless solo performers to successful careers. Students of his have won jobs with the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, and the National Symphony, to name just a few. and the athletes he's coached have won 14 Olympic medals, including five gold. Dr. Green has authored eight books, including Audition Success, Fight Your Fear and Win, and my absolute personal favorite book on audition and performance preparation ever,

Starting point is 00:01:40 Performance Success. He co-produced a viral TED ad video titled How to Practice Effectively for Just About Anything, which received 25 million views across Facebook and YouTube. Dr. Green is the authority on performance success for musicians, and this episode might just change everything about the way you prepare for concerts and auditions. He and I discuss performance preparation, how to mentally center before a performance, and recovery strategies during the performance. This is a value-packed episode from the best of the best, and I'm sure you'll enjoy. Let's go to the show. Dr. Don Green, it's such an honor and a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thanks, Renee. I'm glad we could do this. I had the great privilege of being introduced

Starting point is 00:02:38 to you and your work and participate in your workshop back in the days when I was a fellow at New World Symphony and it completely transformed the way I prepare for concerts and auditions and the way I perform in high stress situations. And I remember my first professional audition for the San Francisco Symphony and not advancing and afterwards thinking, wait a minute, I really need to apply the stuff that I learned from Dr. Green. So I took out my notes from the workshop and I bought your book, Performance Success, and I tried to do everything in the book and I was never the same performer after that so I want to thank you for creating this content and sharing it with us and Dr. Green I know you didn't start in the music world and I'm sure glad

Starting point is 00:03:24 you found your way to us musicians and I would love for my listeners to hear about your journey in your own words so can you please tell us how you got to where you are and how your path has unfolded well sure um i've always loved music um ever since i can remember and really started coming into music just when the beatles were coming on the scene and kind of grew up with the beatles and always loved it and always loved hearing music i i tried to play guitar never did very well my path was more athletic uh my my mother was a competitive athlete and starting at age seven i started uh getting professional gymnastic lessons trampoline lessons and then at nine i switched over to diving and uh that's what i did most of my life early life is

Starting point is 00:04:23 competed in diving in high school and then in college and um i went to west point so after graduating i had five years in the army and ultimately wound up uh studying sports ecology which is what i had always wanted to do before i went to west point as a as a diver i could be either very good or embarrassingly bad i could i could hit a reverse one and a half with one and a half twists off the high board and make it look dazzling and then the next dive i could try to do a swan dive or front dive and be flat on my back or face and always wondered why i was so erratic and every coach i asked never had an answer so i eventually found sports ecology and started getting answers to my questions about my being erratic which were answers i think to a lot of

Starting point is 00:05:24 other people's questions about performing under pressure and i after after going through phd program i i was uh first with the olympic diving team and then the world championship swimming team and I got into professional golf and motor racing and I eventually wound up in Vail at the Vail Ski School teaching people not to freak out going down hills really fast on slippery surfaces and in the summertime in Vail I did golf clinics and I had just come back from Denver back to Vail I did a series of golf seminars and I got a call about somebody inquiring about my next golf clinic and it would it be in Vail and I said no I just did one he said well do you do private sessions and I said yes he said well can you see me individually I said sure

Starting point is 00:06:25 meet you at the golf course he said but by the way how much do you charge per hour and when I told him he said well I can only see you for 10 minutes so i said what do you do he says i'm a classical musician i'm a bass player uh there was a concert series bravo real bravo real bravo i i don't know it came to as a concert series with the rochester philharmonic that came through on a concert series through veil and he was the principal bass with them and he said also that he was a very good golfer but that he was struggling like with his putting so could i talk to him i said well i'll tell you i'm a frustrated musician if you trade me some bass lessons i've never tried to play bass uh i'll trade you sports

Starting point is 00:07:15 ecology lessons so he met the next day at a golf course um and he's very good golfer he if he did if he wasn't practicing his bass he was playing golf he was very good and i went out and played nine holes with him and watched him and he was really good but over putts he just stood over the putt forever overthinking and then he did a bad putt and when we came in I said you know I've got some assessments I use assessments with athletes to measure their focus measure if they are overthinking their attentional span a bunch of different things and I had him take these assessments i ran him through a computer and i met with him the next day and i said yeah you're overthinking everything and it's not gonna help so i taught him basically to change his routine

Starting point is 00:08:11 before he putted so he had less time to think and more shift shifted to right brain not thinking in words but more either imagining a good putt or feeling a good putting stroke and quieting your mine and trusting it and then we went out and played another nine holes and he putted like five strokes better which would mean a drop in 10 strokes over 18 holes and he said this this is awesome he said but everything we did pertains to how i play you know as a principal in an orchestra would you like to work with classical musicians i said yeah i'd love to i don't know if I have much to say but I'd love to and six months later he arranged for me to go to the Syracuse Symphony where I did a series of lectures and the first day I only got like backstand people

Starting point is 00:09:08 and subs and the second day I got about the half half of the orchestra and the third day I got most of the orchestra and the principals and I could only speak in in athletic terms and golf terms but they seemed to kind of meet me halfway and one of them wrote an article about me to to the census or do you know magazine I guess it's an exome publication and And a teacher at Juilliard contacted me and said that she was working with four students, horn students, who were preparing for a met audition for one section position that was two months away. And would I work with them, four ladies, to prepare them?

Starting point is 00:10:01 I said yes. And I went to New York, and I met with all four of them, and I gave them these assessments that I asked to try to convert to musical terms, not sports, and I did. I met with them and kind of mapped out a strategy over two months, and then I went back to California, and I met with each of them on the phone individually to go over their assessments and strengths and weaknesses

Starting point is 00:10:27 and map out individually what they needed to do. And 59 people played that audition at the Met, and those four ladies came in fifth fourth second and first wow yeah the woman who came in first went to the president of juilliard and told him it was my fault and the woman who came in second was a junior at juilliard she played well so well they offered her a subcontract for a hundred thousand dollars and she went to the president and told him so i met with president felici and he asked me if i could teach this you know in a classroom and i said yes and i i went back to him the next day with the juilliard schedule the semester schedule with 14 classes and how i

Starting point is 00:11:20 would teach this i'm beginning with an assessment to teach them how to focus to shift from left brain to right brain to quiet their minds and basically how to prepare for an audition and play a good audition and that's how it started uh one of one of the horn players at the new world symphony had heard about some of my success and had the dean pat not contacted had pat not the dean she contacted to me asked me if I could come down and give a presentation which was to all the fellows and basically said it would be my audition if the fellows like what I had to say then I'd be on their faculty and if not thanks for the presentation so I went down to to New World and gave an hour

Starting point is 00:12:16 presentation and said I you know I'm a sports psychologist I don't know that much about classical music i just know about competition and how to play under pressure and i gave a presentation and all the fellows were unanimous they want to be back and that's when i started with new world and the vest is more of a continuation let's say that's a great journey and i love how it really illustrates perfectly you know how everything is connected really Your background in athletics and the Army is really conducive to coach musicians because you have this discipline and facing adversity and the minutia of all the maneuvers. And, you know, this is a perfect segue because I would love to talk about your work right now. And you've mentioned some aspects of it already.

Starting point is 00:13:13 you know athletes have had sports psychology for decades and we're just starting to catch up with the game us musicians and the way i see it your work is about learning the art of doing well under pressure it's really an art to handle stress and handle competition in a healthy way and you address some of the biggest hurdles musicians have to face in the context of concert or audition preparation what do you think are the key elements in the preparation leading to an audition or a concert the musician should really pay more attention to yeah that's a great that's a great question because this is where i see people people musicians capitalizing on all their preparation and training or sabotaging it in the last week or two

Starting point is 00:14:03 before important events and it goes it sort of goes against their training as a classical musician because they are very dedicated and have great practice habits better than athletes better than olympic athletes and they can overdo it so what olympic athletes have learned to follow is a four-part training cycle to enable them to peak their energy at the right time namely at the olympic games or the world championships and they are trained to do this and for a lot of musicians this is new information but hopefully they'll find very helpful the four-part training cycle the first part is preparation and this is the vast majority of the time that musicians need to spend their time and do but this is only one part of the cycle

Starting point is 00:15:01 preparation this is playing repetition arpeggios scales playing through pieces over and over stopping starting playing with a tuner playing with a metronome taking lesson playing through teacher this is preparation and this is practicing practice which needs to be done for months years weeks before an important event or addition but not the week before the week before maybe a week before people need to shift over to tapering this is backing off the intense training the pounding away at the excerpts especially for brass players it's just you need to play them over and over and over until they blow out their chops or wear out their fingers on the strings and what olympic athletes

Starting point is 00:15:59 have learned to do is is not to maintain a high plateau of intensity of marathoners running marathon runners running marathon every day or long distance swimmers swimming 20 000 meters a day but backing off the last week or two to let their body recover from that intense training and get the lactic acid out of the system so they can go in with fresh muscles with a fresh body rather than one that's depleted of energy and worn out so so it took a while for these athletes to get accustomed to not training at those levels because their confidence was tied to them you know that they had to put it in those yards and meters every day to feel confident so the first time through the first group of athletes through were very skeptical until they saw what

Starting point is 00:16:54 happened what happened was the world records dropped dramatically quantum drops in times and distances that could be measured namely the marathon times or long distance swimming times and it made believers out of the athletes and they have been believers for about 20 years now but this is what classic musicians balk at because they're so used to practicing for many many hours a day that if i tell them and i do i demand my clients the last week or so back off give your body time to rest do things you're not ordinarily used to doing take a long walk go see a movie You've been meaning to see hopefully an inspirational one or a comedy movie. Do spot playing.

Starting point is 00:17:44 Do a couple mock auditions. But then the rest, take a nap. Let your body get ready. This is called tapering. This is where classical musicians have trouble because they feel guilty, especially the week before a big event. I'm not doing eight or ten hours a day at it. But it works.

Starting point is 00:18:05 It's proven over and over again. to be the most effective way the third part of this training cycle is you execute you go in there with lots of energy fresh and rested and you kick ass that's it you dominate with that energy whereas everybody else is going they're tired wiped out overplayed mentally and physically drained they're not going to play their best takes energy to play a great event a big important concert or audition takes a lot of energy so the last few days especially you want to get more rest and sleep the most important night of sleep before a big event is two nights before not night before two nights before because there's a delay in sleep so two nights before you want to go to

Starting point is 00:18:57 either bed early or sleep in. The night before, you don't want to go to bed early. You want to go to bed about the normal time, and you just want to wind down to sleep. Don't do anything exciting, no action movies, a boring history book. Military history always works for me. It can put you to sleep in about a minute.

Starting point is 00:19:25 but but if you don't fall asleep right away the idea is to not expose your eyes to light which will just wake you up but to just later uh get your body really comfortable i suggest if you know how to center a long form of the centering go through your body from head to toe making sure each muscle group is very relaxed a lot of deep breathing and if you don't fall asleep right away don't worry hopefully because you got a good night's sleep the night before and you get 70 of the value of rest even if you're not asleep you don't have to be unconscious to get value of rest so what i suggest is just lay there and take a time of your one year of your life a happy time and go through it like a summer vacation in detail this is not the time to think

Starting point is 00:20:19 any musical thoughts whatsoever and so you don't get to think about music camp or a music festival you went to a non-musically related if there's such a thing family vacation and go through it in detail namely where you started out where you stopped to eat what you had to eat where you slept and probably in about 20 minutes you'll be sound asleep i recommend getting up early unless it's afternoon event or audition if it's before one o'clock get up much earlier than you normally do to get your body up take a walk play some warm up slowly and get to the audition site early and go there ready with lots of good energy to use the adrenaline you're going to be feeling rather than fighting it and ride that wave and kick gas that's it afterwards part four that most

Starting point is 00:21:23 musicians ignore is recovery the day after the day after two days after or more after you put yourself through the previous preparation tapering and execution burning a lot energy mentally and physically is you take a day or more off leave the instrument in the case don't step up to the piano sing and recover from it

Starting point is 00:21:52 go get a massage take some days off just be good to yourself and get ready to start playing regardless how you play the audition or concert ready to start back to improving again that's it

Starting point is 00:22:08 that's the four-part cycle and most musicians ignore step two and step four yes and you know i think that you're completely right i think for some of us it stops at the preparation you just jump from the practice room to the stage and hope for the best and then back and then back to the practice room exactly Exactly. And I love this advice that you gave about focusing on these joyful, happy moments right before, because I so agree with you that really putting yourself in this mindset really will enhance the performance. I strongly believe of the effect on this focus on joyful, happy moment affecting the stress level and the attitude that we'll have while we perform.

Starting point is 00:23:01 Well, exactly. Here's the thing. Leading up to an important event or audition is very stressful. And it takes people out of their normal routine. They don't follow their routine. They don't get enough rest and sleep. And they get very preoccupied with results. They tend to get negative in their thinking,

Starting point is 00:23:26 like what would be the worst thing that could happen? And it affects them emotionally. And since I spent a lot of my time on the phone and Skype with people, musicians, in the last week before their audition, I've spent the last 25 years of my life holding hands with people going through this process. I love to do it, but people get very emotionally sensitive. They get what I call prickly. And all of a sudden, you know, their spouses are walking on eggshells because they're so sensitive. and it's coming out of fear and it's not healthy and it's over seriousness it's focused too much

Starting point is 00:24:09 on results which gets in the way of process and people waste a lot of emotional energy on their own emotional sensitivity the last week before an important event and they lose your sense of humor and take things too seriously so it's it's a combination of being physically supple and keeping your body relaxed the last week because the body is going to be under a lot of tension so maybe five days before an audition a hot tub or a nice massage to get some of the lactic acid out of the body that was produced by the stress of the preparation long walks to get some of that out listening on headphones to good music to what you want to hear what you want to sound like mentally to be in a positive mindset of mentally rehearsing it seeing seeing yourself

Starting point is 00:25:05 playing it well hearing it well feeling yourself with the fingerings with your bowing that's the mental component of keep the right mindset that it's going to go well and nothing to the contrary and emotionally keeping yourself in a good frame of mood and as positive a mood state as you can. This is an opportunity. This is not the gallows. They're not going to execute you. No matter how badly you play,

Starting point is 00:25:35 you're going to come out hopefully without bleeding, without scars on you. Some of my clients, like race car drivers, It's really serious, and they cannot come back. One of them came back with a broken arm one time. He had a choice at the St. Peter's Grand Prix in his Porsche to drive. His brakes went out on this turn. and he had a choice between driving into the crowd or driving into a brick wall so he drove

Starting point is 00:26:17 into the brick wall and he broke his arm they set his arm and fortunately his left arm so he could drive the next day and we said okay he can still drive and he won the series the next day so but but he came back and i've never had a musician not come back so this is very serious but it's not life and death or another way to put it is it's too important to take too seriously this is great i'm gonna have that quote framed i think in my office you know one of the elements of your work that i use the most is centering of course and i've been the uh what i could call a centerer for about 15 years now wonderful yep it's a huge component of my preparation and i know you offer centering training to your website i strongly recommend

Starting point is 00:27:09 taking this course to anyone listening uh but dr green can you tell us in a nutshell what is centering and how it can help us sure sure and i'm glad it's working for you i still use centering it just came back uh from the cleveland institute of music where i gave two presentations well a bunch of presentations over two days and I centered before every presentation I did I still do after after four years when I learned it of being convinced because I learned it from my mentor who invented centering I was convinced I could find a better way and I'm still looking I converted it from sports to music it took me two years to do that but that's what I've done but basically centering is a strategy focusing strategy to help elite performers whether they're

Starting point is 00:28:08 athletes or musicians to control their energy under extreme pressure and to shift from left brain to right brain under pressure he was a competitive diver as well and he was always wondering why he didn't do well under pressure this is the deeper you're referring to dr robert nideffer a incredible sport psychologist who went to japan and studied the martial art of aikido the most mental of all the martial arts the martial art that teaches us how to focus how to quiet our mind to be in the present how to do things like slow motion slow time down amazing things he got his black belt in aikido and then came back to the u.s and got his phd in sports ecology and combined the two of them which resulted in this strategy called centering

Starting point is 00:29:06 it's a seven step process it's very sophisticated all the steps are different it takes a little while to learn and it takes about a minute and a half minute 45 as you first start doing it and after you practice for a week or so then you move to intermediate centering which goes to five steps you know another several days of practice and you move to advanced centering which can be done in three steps in 10 seconds or less and help you shift in right before you go on stage or even between excerpts at an audition between excerpts from the normal left brain of worrying about the previous expert excerpt or criticizing it or or worrying about the high notes at the end of the next excerpt taking yourself out of the moment and in the

Starting point is 00:29:59 same time you can can quickly shift get back out of left brain back in the right brain back into the moment hear the phrase the way intended to sound and then play it in right brain without overthinking that gets in the way of playing and that's what centering does and i've used it with world-class olympic athletes race car drivers before they got in the car or between at pit stops before they went back out on the track instead of instead of analyzing their turns or break points or shifting points they closed their eyes and and centered get that focus back got back into a quiet right brain state where they could react in the moment effectively and then went back out on the track so in graduate school i use centering with police

Starting point is 00:30:56 SWAT officers and i taught some SWAT officers how to center and the others i didn't and the officers that learned how to center and centered before they went into a move and shoot course where they had targets popping up and pairs. One part of the pair was a guy with a machine gun pointing out that the other was a woman holding a baby. The whole idea was to shoot the bad guy, not the woman. But under stress, some of these trained officers shot a bunch of women. And unfortunately, those things continue to happen. But my dissertation proved that centering was effective in teaching trained SWAT officers how to perform significantly better under pressure than SWAT officers that were untrained in centering. so this is what I teach and I haven't found a better way I've just made it more accessible by by doing this centering course which is a workbook videos and audios teaching

Starting point is 00:32:02 centering and not just centering down but centering up because once you get used to controlling the energy and controlling performance anxiety and become a fan of adrenaline you'll want to learn how to center up so if you're not feeling up for a performance or audition you can get up quickly and that's centering it's such a great way to bring us to the present moment which is what we so often lose in the stress of the performance exactly and then we're thinking either in the past or the future or what's my teacher gonna say you know another thing i love and apply from your work is the recovery strategy when we make a mistake can you speak to us a little bit about that oh sure i'd love to um i'm not a fan of

Starting point is 00:32:55 perfectionism it just doesn't work in elite sports nor in classical music the idea like my website says our motto is striving for excellence that's the concept striving for excellence not perfectionism that will drive you nuts and it doesn't work so i'm a extreme optimist but mistakes happen in classical music it's too challenging a skill and there's too many moving parts and things like humidity and temperature that can throw a stringed instrument off not to mention the stand partner distractions people in the front row with candy wrappers and angry conductors can all cause mistakes. Not to mention going to concerts without enough sleep,

Starting point is 00:33:49 which leads to mistakes. Again, if you don't go in there tapered, you're setting yourself up for a mistake. Anyway, mistakes are inevitable. So rather than hoping that they don't happen or try to preclude them at all costs, if we can just accept that occasionally they happen so it's not whether they happen it's what you do immediately after they happen and whether and whether it's an isolated event in time that

Starting point is 00:34:17 happened like happens to everybody and just move on get back on note next note or that causes the following note to be affected with analysis criticism blaming not being in the moment setting up another mistake and if that happens then you can analyze two mistakes and worry about it and it sets up a train wreck so the idea is to have a strategy in place that you rehearse when you're at home practicing practice or practicing performing when mistakes happen and that is a five-point strategy here we go step number one the goal of this is not to preclude mistakes but to have it be just one one note not the crescendo after that so first step is most classical musicians have to make a mistake going to a state of denial it sounds like i can't

Starting point is 00:35:17 believe i missed that note i never missed that note i haven't missed that note since high school well you're just delaying it inevitably and you're just delaying it you're not you're already not the moment so the idea is to immediately accept it you don't have to be happy about it you just have to accept it you missed the damn note it is what it is it is what it is number two when most classical musicians make mistake they cringe their muscles tightening because they went oh geez and they tighten up and if they take that tightness into the following

Starting point is 00:36:03 notes they're setting up more mistakes so the first thing is to identify where you as a musician tighten up when you do make a mistake for most of them it would be shoulders, penis in their hands violinists

Starting point is 00:36:18 arm, shoulders, jaws etc just to identify individually where you tighten up when you do make a mistake because you have and you will and I'm very

Starting point is 00:36:35 positive, I'm an optimist it happens number three bring your mind back into the present because it was in the past maybe jump to the future without worrying bring it back into the present

Starting point is 00:36:53 the beauty of music is it's moving the note is moving problem with golf is the ball just continues to sit there and you can think about it all day long and the longer you think the worse it's going to get but with music it's moving get back on the note that's it no must no father worry about correcting the mistake later in fact most musicians they've made mistakes probably in summer festivals 10 years ago they still remember you won't forget after in the meantime get back on the note the current note in the now get in the now

Starting point is 00:37:35 number four if you need an emergency process cue emergency word or phrase uh i would prefer simple musical process cues basic things that your music teacher would remind you if you're the middle of a train wreck like smooth bowing good fingering we don't want amazing information this is not the time to process new concepts go back to old boring concepts like good bowing or breathe or breathe yeah there's another good one that's a great one breathe or the emergency cue it could be wake up yes and are these process cues that you think one should establish before the performance that's what i'm saying this is this is what you need to learn and practice this strategy way before in the in the privacy of your practice room and then in front of your teacher

Starting point is 00:38:34 and the fifth is is is not trying to make up for mistake in the rest of the piece by playing the remainder of the piece better than you ever have your whole life to show them that this was a mistake that never happens this is the wrong time to bring out the fireworks or new fingering let's play good and get the train back on the track no no heroics let's just get back to solid play i like that no heroics it's true because that i think that's what we tend to want to do is launch into these uh i mean i love the term heroic playing which does not help ultimately exactly yes dr green i was seeing that you are embarking on the great new project with winning on stage would you like to tell us a little bit about that oh i'd love to do it

Starting point is 00:39:30 This is a project that recently came out that was supposed to come out two years ago. So I've been working on it for three years, and it's strictly for performing artists who simply want to understand how to either accelerate the learning process or how to perform their best under pressure. Besides the centering, we have other courses coming, a performance mastery course. and eventually an audition prep course and a foundations course for accelerating the learnings. So we're having these. In addition to that,

Starting point is 00:40:12 I've got a number of new assessments. I started out at Juilliard converting the sports assessments of how athletes need to learn or can they learn to learn faster or how to perform better under pressure. And it took me two years at Juilliard going to voice lessons, piano lessons, oboe lessons, all kinds of lessons and working with teachers to really understand musicians versus athletes. and then with the help of a composer, conductor, opera coach, pianist,

Starting point is 00:40:49 converted the athlete's assessments into musicians' assessments that pertain to how musicians learn and how they perform under pressure and at auditions. And over the years and work with New World Symphony, I've upgraded these several times, so I have a number of different versions Some of them are tied to my books, Performance, Success, and Fight Your Fear and Win, which have assessments in. But these give the same assessments online and computer grade the scores and give out printouts and explanations what the scores mean. but but some of the assessments are tied to workbooks like sharpening your performance

Starting point is 00:41:32 skills is tied to a workbook that that covers based upon the assessment and identifying strengths and weaknesses different chapters that pertain to the weaknesses identified by the assessments like playing for music teachers that you play and then they tell you strengths and weaknesses this is my way of test musicians to see mentally or in learning what they're strong at they don't need to do that they don't need to strengthen their strengths they need to identify what their areas of improvement are specifically especially in relationship to other musicians where they can make the most improvement and go to those chapters in in one of these workbooks and learn on their own skills like controlling energy,

Starting point is 00:42:22 improving confidence, building courage, recovering from mistakes, like I just covered. That's one of the chapters. Memorizing music, dealing with adversity, building mental toughness. Other assessments are tied to this performance mastery course. That's performance mastery assessment. but all these assessments are on the website and the last one is i i have the performance

Starting point is 00:42:51 mastery assessment and and a half hour consultation with me so folks can take this assessment get their profile online i'll see the profile and do a consultation with the folks like i used to do at new world symphony this is basically what i did new world symphony is one by well give the fellows the assessment and then one by one have a half hour session with them cover their assessments their strengths and weaknesses on their profile answer their questions and then map out a course of of improvement for them over the next several months and this is what i'm offering now on the website on winning on stage is the performance assessment and the half hour consultation with me that's that's what that's what i've been working on for three years and now

Starting point is 00:43:40 it's up and running and that is so crucial because you know you you can address what you assess you know it's when you know yourself that you can figure out where you need to grow some of these things are hard to to figure out it just took me about 20 years and a phd and years studying with my mattress to understand how to really ask these questions with a meaningful result in other words if i sit down with the musician i say what's the problem they say well i'm having trouble concentrating and i say well why they say i don't know that's what you're supposed to tell me and i say well i don't know why you can't that's why you take the assessment because these assessments break down concentration into six different quantities to six different variables

Starting point is 00:44:33 like attention span like whether able to keep in the present the types of distraction whether they're externally or internally distraction distracted can they get mentally quiet or they more left brain dominant overthinking then it's like looking in x-ray when i see their their scores on these six different but related categories i can say okay the reason why you're having trouble focusing is not because of external distractions. It's more internal and et cetera, et cetera. It's like people having a broken bone and having it set without taking an extract. It doesn't make sense to me.

Starting point is 00:45:15 That's what these assessments do. And that's why I have built my career on, on these and different ones with different people. I have different ones for musicians, different than executives, different ones for athletes so we can get right to the heart of the matter in their in their specialty and say this is the reason you're having problems and this is how you solve them it gets right to the heart of it rather than spend three months trying to figure out why they can't concentrate dr green that's fantastic and i wish we could keep going all day but i know you have

Starting point is 00:45:50 to be on your way so would you please give us a quick actionable tip that you think listeners could start to implement today in their musical lives yes sure for most of these folks they've spent the vast majority of their lives and careers working on improving their physical and technical skills which is what you need to do but for most of them this is what i talked about about the cleveland institute of music is that now they're ready for the third step in their development which is developing their mental skills namely how they perform well under pressure because you don't get paid very well for practicing well or doing it well in relaxed settings it doesn't bring a lot of money it's for performing under pressure and for most of them

Starting point is 00:46:39 this is their next step in in their development in their progression to a professional career or a better orchestra or better or principal position is working on their mental skills, their mental game. And this is what the website's all about is teaching musicians how to strive for excellence in their mental games, in their performing. Dr. Green, I always tell everyone, and especially my students, that if they are serious about a career in music, they must own a copy of Performance Success. And I hope that if you're a musician listening to this episode today, you're either already have a copy or get one ASAP. I also have two other books that you wrote and I love them, Fight Your Fear and Win and Audition Success. And they're great resources.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And there's, as you mentioned, really incredible content on your website, winningonstage.com. there's also a really great TED talk where you discuss learning and I'm going to put a link in the show notes for all of this and I strongly recommend everyone to really check it out yeah it's called

Starting point is 00:47:50 how to practice effectively and it applies definitely to classical musicians in their lives and I think they'll find it very helpful Dr. Green I can't tell you how much I appreciate this gift of your time and your knowledge today and you and your work have had such a big impact on my

Starting point is 00:48:10 own musical journey and how i teach my students now and i'm so grateful to have been lucky enough to cross paths with you as such an early stage of my career thank you so much for being here today thank you so much renee you enjoyed it all the best thank you guys so much for listening if you enjoyed this conversation with dr green please screenshot this episode on your phone today tag me on instagram at mind over finger and let me know a couple of things you really loved about this episode because i want to dive in this topic even deeper with you guys and keep this conversation going. This is our last show for 2018, but I'm beyond excited about the guests that we have lined up for you for the new year,

Starting point is 00:49:01 starting with a great conversation with solo violinist Chloe Trevor, which will be released on January 18th, 2019. Tune in to hear us talk about all things mindful practice and performance. In the coming months, you'll also hear from Nick Platoff of the San Francisco Symphony, Anthony McGill from the New York Phil Amy Beth Horman from the Beyond the Triangle podcast and many more mindful musicians as always you can find the show notes for this episode at mindoverfinger.com

Starting point is 00:49:30 and if you're looking for a community of mindful practice enthusiasts join the Mind Over Finger tribe at facebook.com slash groups slash mindoverfingertribe there you'll find inspiration, motivation and support as well as information and discussions on how to take your practice and performance to the next level and enjoy the process. If you have the chance, please take a minute to head over to iTunes to subscribe and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. I hope you have a wonderful

Starting point is 00:50:04 holiday season and I send you all my best wishes for the new year. Again, thank you and à bientôt! ¶¶ you you you you you you

Starting point is 00:53:46 you you you you Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 015 Don Greene: Winning on Stage with Peak Performance Tools

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