The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 131 Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier & Davina Shum: Dealing with Performance Anxiety - from The Strad Podcast

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 131. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, and building a purposeful career. And now, your host, violinist, teacher, and high performance coach for musicians, Dr. Renée Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're doing great. Today is a special episode. I'm bringing you a conversation I had with Davina Shum on the Strad podcast back in September 2021. Born in Auckland, New Zealand, and now based in London, Davina is a cellist performing in many acclaimed venues, including

Starting point is 00:00:53 the Royal Opera House, the Southbank Centre, and Royal Albert Hall. She was a contributor for BBC Radio 3, and she's currently the online editor of The Strad and also the creator and host of the podcast, As It Comes, Life from a Musician's View, which explores the weird and wonderful lives of those who keep music making alive. Especially for those of you listeners who are string players, I hope you've checked out and followed The Strad Podcast. The show brings you exclusive insights into the world of string playing, teaching, and instrument making from The Strad Magazine. But if you're not a string player, don't let that stop you because Davina has amazing guests talking about all topics music-related, so it's definitely worth a listen regardless of what your instrument is. And I have a special offer for all of you.

Starting point is 00:01:46 The Strad Magazine is generously offering 20% of digital subscriptions for you, my listeners, when you use the code MOFP20 at checkout. A digital subscription allows unlimited digital access to thestrat.com, including archival content from January 2010 onwards. A subscription removes the paywall from all the latest news, articles, and reviews on all things to do with string playing. And if you're not sure you're ready to subscribe, you can take out a free 70 trial subscription. I will have that information and the link in the show notes. Personally, I've been a loyal subscriber of The Stride Magazine, both online and in paper, and I've been devouring it for years. So it was a huge honor for me to sit down and speak with Davina.

Starting point is 00:02:36 We had a great time talking about performance anxiety and nerves, self-compassion, assessment versus judgment when playing, and dealing with inner battles when the stakes are so high. Those are some of my favorite topics, and I hope you're going to enjoy and find value in the concepts I share in this conversation. And before I turn the hosting gig to Davina, if you're hearing this near its release date in May of 2022, it means that enrollment for the Music Mastery Experience is officially open, but you're running out of time because we're starting very soon and the program is filling up. The Music Mastery Experience is my groundbreaking, highly personalized group coaching program that promises you not only an amazing transformation over a short amount of time, but coaching and mentorship for life. That's right. The Music Mastery Experience is going to give you all of the techniques, systems, and methods you need to elevate your playing and performing to new heights and the ongoing support to grow your career and tackle and reach big goals month after month. If you're ready to crack the code to start performing at your best and to experience fulfillment in your music career, the Music Mastery Experience is for you.

Starting point is 00:03:57 We cover everything from practice methods that work to performance preparation strategies that have you perform with confidence consistently and powerful life coaching and mind management techniques that will remove the obstacles and self-limiting beliefs that hold you back in your career and your life. If you're done with not seeing results for the endless amount of work, of time and energy that you put in the practice room, go to mindoverfinger.com right now to book your free conversation with me and let's plan on how we're going to change all of that for you. No more indecision, band-aids or short-term solutions. The Music Mastery Experience is unlike any other program out there because we go beyond the strategies and methods. You're going to get an entire foolproof system to performing at your best, but we're not going to stop there. We're going to get to the root cause of all of the issues. We're going to unlock everything that's keeping you stuck and you're going to

Starting point is 00:04:59 start experiencing amazing results, not only on stage, but at every level of your music making experience and your life. So if you're wanting to win that job, to rock the stage, to grow your career, to make more money, go to mindoverfinger.com right now to book your free success planning conversation with me and get your transformation started today. And if you're listening to this after June 1st, 2022, no worries. Visit mindoverfinger.com and join the waitlist to stay informed of when the next Music Mastery Experience will open. As always, I'll have all the information related to this episode in the show notes and at mindoverfinger.com slash podcast. So without further ado, here's today's conversation. Thank you to Davina Shum and

Starting point is 00:05:53 The Stride Magazine for letting me share this episode from The Stride Podcast with you. Let's go to the show. Hello and welcome to The Strad Podcast. I'm Davina Shum, I'm a cellist and I'm the online editor at The Strad. Today's episode is all about performance anxiety. Every musician has experienced this in some shape or form. In this episode, you'll hear my conversation with violinist and high performance coach for musicians, Dr. René Paul Gaultier. Originally from Canada, she's now based in Chicago, where alongside her busy performing

Starting point is 00:06:39 career, she works to help musicians use self-compassion to gain clarity, unleash their full potential and reach their desired outcome in their careers and lives. So naturally, we spoke about performance anxiety and nerves, as well as strategies musicians can employ to face these challenges. Here it is. Renee, thank you so much for joining me today on The Stradge Podcast. so we're here today to talk about self-compassion and how musicians can use that to deal with performance anxiety so tell me a little bit first of all what is self-compassion well first of all

Starting point is 00:07:15 thank you so much for having me to talk about this very important topic self-compassion is a topic that thankfully we're talking more and more about in the classical music world but used to have some sort of stigma attached to it. Because I think people associate self-compassion with self-indulgence, which is not the same thing. And I personally really see self-compassion as utmost self-respect, alignment with self, and also taking some time to ponder what do I want most and how can I create an environment for myself to operate at my best. And that really comes with paying attention to the needs to fulfill the human beings, making sure that as a functioning human, I attend to all of my needs. That includes resting, that includes having fulfilling

Starting point is 00:08:12 relationships with friends and family and spouses and children, you know, filling all of these creativity buckets with activities that we love, but really paying attention also to our inner dialogue and creating an environment where as humans first and artists, we can operate at our best. You talk a lot about assessment versus judgment. So tell me a little bit more about the differences between the two. I really feel that when we start to pay attention to the way we talk to ourselves, we can become more objective. I like to compare judgment to creating a sandstorm in our head. So as humans, when we are attack, our reflex is to defend ourself, our flea. So when we use negative language, negative tones, and we harbor all these negative feelings towards

Starting point is 00:09:07 ourselves, as we're trying to work, we're trying to solve problems, we're trying to acquire skills, and we're having all of these negative thoughts, words, and feelings towards ourselves, we're actively attacking ourself and the brain is not really good at differentiating if it's a real attack or something that is perfectly something we can handle and it's also not very good at knowing if it's coming from the outside or the inside it just perceives an attack so then it starts to defend itself that creates a lot of mental chaos mental clutter a lot of tension both mentally and physically and when we're tense and we have this mental clutter we have these spiraling thoughts we're physically tense we're defending ourselves our heart rate accelerates

Starting point is 00:09:57 right like the human body is amazing at trying to stay alive so if it feels attacked it's going to do everything it can to keep us safe and we're trying to do work in there but we're having this inner battle between our inner bully and our, you know, sense of self who's trying to stay safe. So when we're trying to get some really great work done, what we really need is go back to a place of bare awareness, which is one of the tenets of what I teach in my system, the deep practice model. We need to be assessing. When we're judging, we lose all objectivity. So obstacles feel overwhelming. Again, we get this mental clutter because we're busy trying to defend ourselves and attacking ourselves at the same time. How can anyone get anything done? So assessing

Starting point is 00:10:46 what is means to go with the information because we can tackle information. So if I know F sharp is too sharp, I can fix that. If I tell myself you have no intonation, I'm already fighting a losing battle. It's changing your approach. It's changing the way that you assess what it is that you do. So, I mean, you could look at that F sharp and be like, that F sharp's a little bit out of tune. And then you do whatever's necessary to fix it. But then if judgment kicks in, it's more like, oh, my F sharps are never in tune. My intonation's terrible. And then it spirals out of control. We go quickly from this is out of tune to I'm the worst human being on the planet. oh it's a slippery slope isn't it but i can see how that that happens because it's this sort of

Starting point is 00:11:33 avalanche effect isn't it and then that classic thing of if you start telling yourself that you start to believe it as well yes you basically tie your own hands with your judgment yeah so is this something that you found in your own personal experience i've always been extremely judgmental with myself, very harsh with myself. And as I elevated my levels of awareness and grew as a person and, you know, had to overcome adversity and some traumatic experiences, I really realized that self-judgment is destructive. And then as I started to teach more and more and had to deal with students' trauma and help them work through it and see that I can get the best out of them and myself, when I am supportive, when I use positive language, when together we look at the

Starting point is 00:12:28 data, at the information, at what's happening, and we brainstorm on how to fix it rather than just create a negative environment. So I want that for both myself and all of my students and my clients. I really just feel like the best way to operate at the highest level is to create an inner environment of self-respect. Because if you look after yourself first, then you have that mental energy and physical energy to be able to look after people around you. And like I said, self-respect means in no way to lower your standard, to expect less of yourself. It's not the same as self-indulgence because actually self-indulgence is not self-compassion. It's not compassionate to not take action that could serve us. It's not compassionate to give up on ourselves or

Starting point is 00:13:17 to cope with not practicing, not signing up for concerts. So self-indulgence is not the most compassionate way to go about things. Self-compassion means to look at what serves me best, what allows me to operate optimally. That reminds me of something really interesting I saw recently. And there's that classic saying, do as you would to others as you would want others to do to you something along those lines but it's also very important to think do to yourself as you would other people absolutely yeah because i think people forget to look after themselves and they're quite often addressing the needs and expectations of other people that they tend to neglect their own personal dilemmas so when you catch yourself in the act

Starting point is 00:14:03 of being your own self aggressor one of the easiest way to come around this first of all noticing it is already winning the battle. But then, if you have a hard time being compassionate to yourself, separate yourself and see yourself as both your own teacher, your wise, loving, supportive, yet demanding guide, and the way you would treat a student that you respect, you know, that you are interested and invested in guiding them in growth. So how would you talk to that person, it usually ends up being very different than the way we talk to ourselves. That's so true, isn't it? Treat yourself as if you were talking to your own student. So I wanted to talk a little bit about high pressure, peak performance anxiety. There's

Starting point is 00:14:51 been a lot of coverage in the news because of recent events in the Tokyo Olympics, you know, high performing athletes who are taking time out to tend to their mental health, you know, not only athletes such as Simone Biles, the gymnast, but also the French Open and Wimbledon with Naomi Osaka, deciding not to do press conferences because they were damaging to herself. So, you know, what do you do when you have these anxious thoughts, you know, these inner battles when the stakes are so high? I compare this to, you know, for example, children who may not have this feeling of fear or concept of threat but then once you get more experience the bar is raised how do you deal with thoughts then under so much pressure that's really

Starting point is 00:15:39 interesting and it's a big part of my life coaching work is this anxiety is created by thoughts that we're having so the difference between the adult and the child is what has change in what we're thinking. So the athletes that you just mentioned, and you know, us as musicians, we're highly trained. And we do a lot of performance work. I mean, I have coaching programs where that's what I do with my clients, I train them to perform. But then there's the thinking that comes into play. So we can be 100% prepared. And we can have done visualization and adversity training and all of these things but then how can we start to turn around what we're thinking again I'm going to bring it back to self-compassion self-alignment and a very great

Starting point is 00:16:30 sense of self in general and if we can turn the experience into something that is highly personal we need to detach ourselves from the outer judgment actually we never have any control on what other people are going to think even when we play at our best because people who want to do us well will be happy but people who want us to to lose that medal will be upset so regardless of what you do someone will be happy and someone will be upset yes and you can't change that can you i think that's that classic thing where you're you're so worried about what other people think but you forget that all of those people you're worried about are just worried about what you think? And they're having their own inner battles. They're not thinking about you.

Starting point is 00:17:17 Exactly. Sometimes an example I use is, you know, you listen to Hilary Hahn or Gil Shahan. How do you pick? People will have different opinions. And that takes away nothing from Hilary or Gil, regardless of what people think. So how can you really turn the experience inward? The only thing we can do is prepare. We can practice the music. Yes, there are ways to strengthen our self-confidence to get mentally prepared and to get in an optimal state for performance but also how do we then start to have this awareness of our thoughts because the anxiety the feelings are created by the thought but what we're thinking and then from this anxiety we take actions or we don't take actions so what is the thought at the root of this anxiety and how can

Starting point is 00:18:09 you maybe turn this around into something that serves you? Because that's the beauty about thoughts is we can actually look at them and decide that we don't want to believe them anymore. What would be the most helpful thing for you to think about an upcoming performance? And how can you turn this into a highly personal experience, into giving you so much grace for this act of courage of stepping on stage and performing for people into an act of growth. All the work that we put to prepare for our performance, this is enriching the human that we are. So if we can really look at the thought that's creating the anxiety, observe it, and then decide, is there something else that I'd rather think and believe and see how those feelings of anxiety maybe morph

Starting point is 00:19:00 into something that serves you better yeah one one thing I wanted to ask really quickly is how would you tell the difference between these negative thoughts and also that really physical feeling of you know butterflies in your tummy you know that's the adrenaline and like quite often I think it can be distracting and you think it can be sort of the same thing yes but people quite often say that the butterflies in the stomach that's a good thing because the adrenaline will get you through what do you say to people who have that feeling like they're going to throw up before they go on stage. Oh, it's so tricky. And the approach, of course, would be different from people to people. I do feel that what works well for me, what works well for my clients and the

Starting point is 00:19:39 students that I guide through performance preparation is getting familiar with this feeling. So yes, we can do anxiety management techniques, we can visualize, we can channel positive emotions, all of these things are fantastic. But we want to get acquainted with those sensations of butterflies. We want to get acquainted with this sphere. We want to perform and perform and perform. And I'm saying this because I don't want to use the word mock performance anymore. I can decide to perform for myself in my practice room and call that a performance. So I feel like performing a lot and really understanding that we can perform at our best while experiencing butterflies so to get very comfortable with those sensations and yes on

Starting point is 00:20:29 performance day to know that well okay the butterflies are here that was to be expected and i can play my best and i can enjoy this performance and the thing is when we stop to fear the butterflies they start to lose their grip on us so we feel them we acknowledge their presence and then we hop on stage and you know at times they actually go away yep butterflies can help us propel into fantastic performances that we wouldn't expect it's true what you said also about there are ways that we can think differently about the butterflies so in thinking this is a sign that i'm excited even just understanding the physical mechanisms while the butterflies are coming from my elevated heart rate. And I'm having all of this influx of hormones. This is

Starting point is 00:21:19 what the body does. This is normal. This is my body doing its job. And then of course, to that, you could add breathing exercises and ways to get some leverage over these physical sensations, lower your heart rate, hormone production, things like this. So it's such a fascinating topic. There's so much into it. And it all seems to be about the way that we talk to ourselves. well renee thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your thoughts on self-compassion and performance anxiety thank you so much for having me i really appreciate it that was dr renee paul gautier if you're wanting to find out more about how to deal with performance anxiety and nerves check the show notes for renee's website and her podcast on the topic

Starting point is 00:22:02 the mind over finger podcast and don't forget to check out thestrad.com for the latest news and articles on all things to do with string playing and if you like what you see register and subscribe to access exclusive archival content from 2010 onward remember we've got 50% off an online subscription for students check the show notes for the link thanks for listening and tune in again soon for another episode bye Thank you.

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 131 Dr. Renée-Paule Gauthier & Davina Shum: Dealing with Performance Anxiety - from The Strad Podcast

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