The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 154 How to Get Different Results

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 154. Welcome to the Mind Over Finger Podcast, discussions on mindful music making, efficient practice, optimal performance, and building a purposeful life and fulfilling career. I'm your host, violinist and certified performance and life coach for musicians, Dr. René-Paul Gauthier. Hi, everyone. I hope you're feeling amazing as you're tuning in. Today, we continue our exploration of the self-coaching model, and we're going to look at how to get different results in the practice room, on stage, and in our lives. But before that, for those of you who are gearing

Starting point is 00:00:50 up for 2023, I have something for you. Maybe you're a professional with an audition coming up or a big recital or a world premiere in the coming months, and you're looking for a way to take your confidence to the next level. Or maybe you're a student with a final recital or grad school audition, and you want to figure out how to get rid of performance anxiety. Or maybe you're an amateur looking for an approach to practice that will help you learn faster and better. If any of these resonate for you, I want to invite you to join Practicing for Peak Performance today. And to celebrate the holiday season, I'm offering you 10% off for a limited time. Practicing for Peak Performance is my proven online program that's going to give you everything you need to go from learning a piece to performing it with absolute confidence.

Starting point is 00:01:48 you're going to get step-by-step guidance through the preparation process clear practicing methods effective conditioning exercises and powerful mindsets so you can learn faster and better than ever and experience full confidence in performance practicing for peak performance is the solution to greater mastery and to conquer performance anxiety with the mind over finger peak performance blueprint to preparing for performance, you're going to learn how to channel and use your activation to unlock magic on stage and transform what used to be performance anxiety into something that works for you. So don't wait. With the new year approaching and all the amazing opportunities coming your way in 2023, it's time to give yourself the gift of confidence and mastery.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Start practicing for peak performance today at mindoverfinger.com and use the code 10OFF, that's 1-0-O-F-F, for 10% off at checkout until December 19th. And I'll have all those links for you in the show notes. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I will invite you to check out the previous episode, number 153, where I presented the basic elements of the coaching tool that had and continues to have a profound impact on my life, the self-coaching model as developed by Brooke Castillo from the Life Coach School. Don't worry if you haven't listened to it yet. I'm still going to briefly review those basic principles before I

Starting point is 00:03:27 dive into today's topic. And if you have listened to that episode already, I hope you've explored the model a little bit over the past few days and that it was helpful in bringing you some clarity and insight. The self-coaching model or the model as we simply refer to it is based on cognitive behavioral theory and it helps us observe our mind and understand how our brain processes the world around us. The basic premise is that there are circumstances in the world. Those are the things that we cannot control and those are neutral until our brain offers us thoughts about those circumstances. Those thoughts create our feelings, then our feelings fuel all our actions and those actions create the results we have in our life. Those five elements are what our lives are made

Starting point is 00:04:18 of and having this way to organize them and observe how they interact and impact each other gives us a powerful understanding as to why we feel the way we feel, we do the things we do and get the results we get. It helps us get the answers we've been looking for. But what's crazy is that we're never taught this stuff or rarely. We're never taught to observe what we think or to question what we think when we don't feel great or we're not getting the results we want. People throw lots of tips and tricks and advice at us. 10 ways to do XYZ, try this, try that, do this, do that And don't get me wrong, we do need that information. We do need to learn methods and systems. And we do need tips and tricks and hacks. I have personally done a lot of that on this

Starting point is 00:05:12 podcast for the past four and a half seasons. And I hope all of it was helpful for you. But it only goes so far. Because without real understanding, we can't really create a profound transformation. And that's what I hope I can help with for those of you who are looking for that. We can't permanently solve a problem or create different results in our life with actions alone. It doesn't last. It's exhausting. And it causes lots of resistance. Think about your new year's resolution or how you feel at the beginning of a new orchestra season. This year, everything's going to be different. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. That's going to be awesome. Have you ever said those words before? At first, there's lots of momentum to our actions because

Starting point is 00:06:04 we're really motivated and we have a lot of hope. But when the stumbling blocks show up, and they always do, we lose steam because willpower is draining and it's not something we can sustain. At the root of all of this are our thoughts. And until we understand which thoughts have been running our lives, we're mostly going to keep getting the same results. As I said in the last episode, we're going to go deeper on the Mind Over Finger podcast in the months to come. My favorite quote is by Viktor Frankl, between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. So when we use the deep practice model in my online course, Practicing for a Peak Performance,

Starting point is 00:06:57 and my online coaching program, The Music Mastery Experience, we operate in what I call the space of maximal response. Every tool I create is to allow us to have a lot of intentionality so that we respond to all the stimuli in our life in a way that is aligned with our values, who we are, and who we want to be. The self-coaching model allows us to operate more in that space of maximal response because it shows us our mind. This type of work is called causal coaching because we go back to the real cause of the issues, which is the way we think.

Starting point is 00:07:37 The thoughts we keep thinking by default without questioning them. When we observe those thoughts, when we question them, when we process our emotions and we become very intentional about those thoughts and feelings we want to nurture in our lives, magic happens. So how do we make this magic happen, you ask me? Well, let's talk about it. The first thing we do before we do anything else is meet ourselves where we are and understand our current model. I explained how to do this in episode 153, but I will do a quick overview here again. It never hurts, believe me. And for you, I've created a companion worksheet with all the information you need. You can find this by going to mindoverfinger.com slash resources.

Starting point is 00:08:27 in a nutshell put a few minutes aside to do what we call a thought download you simply write down anything that's on your mind you empty your brain on the paper what you're thinking how you're feeling maybe you're upset about a result maybe you're wondering why you do certain things simply let the words flow on the paper as they come to you if typing is easier for you you can also do that, but personally, I prefer pen to paper. Then go back and look at what you wrote and pick out one thing you would like to investigate. It could be any of the five elements of the model, a circumstance, a thought, a feeling, some actions you're taking, or a result you're getting. Anything that sticks out that you would like to explore and understand better. There's no wrong choice

Starting point is 00:09:18 possible to pick when doing a model, but I often pick the one that's giving me the strongest emotion or the thought that seems to be coming back again and again in different ways throughout the thought download. Once you know what you want clarity on, you put it in the model. On your piece of paper, you write the letters C-T-F-A-R on the left side. You put the element you've decided to unpack in the proper line, you make sure you clearly establish the circumstance, then you fill the rest of the model in any order. Doing this alone will give you invaluable insight. And sure, I'm going to show you how you can use this as a departing point to intentionally create what you want. But by looking at what is, you're already accomplishing a lot. So after we see what's

Starting point is 00:10:16 going on in our brain with that current model, we can start to direct it intentionally towards the things we want to think, feel, do, or the results we want to get. We do this by creating what we call an intentional model. And to illustrate that, I'm going to use an example from my own life. Something that happened when I was around 14 and looking back now, I realized this was the first time I ever self-coached without even knowing what I was doing. I was backstage before the provincial round of the Canadian Music Competition, which is a competition that happens every year all around Canada. I was about to go on stage and I don't remember everything I was playing for the round, but I do remember I was going to play Introduction and

Starting point is 00:11:04 Rondo Capriccioso by Camille Saint-Saëns. And I was so nervous. I was really prepared because my teacher and my mom made sure of that. I had performed the repertoire many times, so my fear was not coming from a lack of preparation. But I remember thinking that I was afraid to mess up and embarrass myself. And I was just having the worst of times, wondering why I was doing all of and why I was putting myself through all of that, I was just a ball of stress. My hands were cold. I felt very tense physically. My heart was racing.

Starting point is 00:11:43 You know how it is. But at some point, and I don't remember why it happened exactly, I just clearly saw my thinking and how it was that thought, I'm afraid to mess up and embarrass myself, that was making me freak out. And it struck me how silly it was to just focus on that and get so nervous by spinning that thought over and over in my mind. I'm afraid to mess up and embarrass myself. I might mess up and embarrass myself. The absurdity of it almost made me laugh. And I remember thinking and telling myself, but Renee, you're so ready. Like, of course, it's possible that you're going to mess

Starting point is 00:12:30 up. But you're not going to embarrass yourself because you're really ready. The only thing making things worse for you is when you think that. So just go out there and do what you know. Go out there and do what you know. And I understood, really understood in a way that I've never had before, that the only way I could play poorly was if I continued to make myself freak out with my own thoughts and that all I had to do was to trust my preparation. And this new thought just lifted that weight off my shoulders. So all of this thinking process only took about a minute, but I'm telling you all of my stress, or at least most of it, because there's always going to be a little bit of excitement when we perform, right? But all of that unnecessary stress just melted

Starting point is 00:13:25 and the performance ended up going really well. This is how we can completely change our state. How you can change how you're feeling in one instant with just one thought that you believe. And in that example, by believing this one thought, it completely changed how I felt, how I played, and the results I got. Let me put this in the context of the model so you can see even better. Let's start with the unintentional model, the one that was created with the thoughts that just came to me without me questioning them. The circumstance, let's remember circumstances are always factual and measurable. So the circumstance is I'm backstage about to play introduction in Rondo Capriccioso. My thought is I might mess up and embarrass myself.

Starting point is 00:14:22 That made me feel scared. So scared goes in the F line. Because I was scared, in my A line, I would write that. Thoughts were spiraling, my heart was racing, I was tensing my body, and my hands were cold from the blood rushing to help my poor little heart. now the R line of this model had I had the opportunity to find out would most likely have been that I would not have played as well as I could have I might have messed up and embarrassed myself but thankfully I was able to create an intentional model for myself on the spot I still don't know how I did that and here's how that one would look like so the circumstance is always the same between the unintentional or current model and the intentional model. I'm backstage about

Starting point is 00:15:12 to play Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso. My thought was, you can trust your preparation. That thought made me feel empowered. And from feeling empowered, I played in a way that did justice to my preparation, and I played well. So this is how we create an intentional model. From your unintentional model or your current model, identify what you would like to be different and put it in a new model using the same circumstance. Ask yourself, do I like this thought I'm having? Is it serving me? How do I want to feel? What would I need to think and believe to feel this way?

Starting point is 00:16:02 What are the things I want to do? How would I need to feel to do them? What result do I want to create in my life? What do I need to do, feel, and think to create this? And trust me, once you see it on paper, it will feel possible for you. That said, it's also a process. Letting go of a thought or adopting a new one can go really quickly sometimes, but it's not always instant and it often requires practice. And it's really important to choose thoughts you can believe. False positive thinking is not at all what I'm proposing here. If you're not convinced, if you don't believe the thought, it will create actually more resistance because you cannot fool yourself even if you try your best.

Starting point is 00:16:59 Now, there's already enough information in this episode, so I will stop here. But I will have an episode on believing your thoughts in the new year. So don't worry if you have some questions about that. So for now, start to play around with these intentional models and try them on for size. Let me give you one more example. And I'm going to go back with the model about procrastinating from the previous episode. So if you notice that you're procrastinating and you're aware that self-coaching exists and that a model could help you, here's the model you could build.

Starting point is 00:17:34 I'll remind you that the circumstance is that you scheduled time to practice X piece. Let's make that even more specific for the C line. The more specific, the better, almost always. let's say you had scheduled one hour to practice x piece and your thought is there's too much to do which makes you feel overwhelmed and because you're human and feeling overwhelmed is not something that is very enjoyable you try to avoid that feeling by procrastinating which creates the result of your work not getting done and piling up now let's say that looking at this model, you find solace in the fact that it makes so much sense. You're able to feel a lot of

Starting point is 00:18:22 self-compassion for yourself, but you would still very much like to figure out a way to practice and get some of that work done. So let's see what an intentional model could look like. When you look at this thought that there's too much to do and the model that comes with that, it's easy to see that this thought is not serving you. So you might as well be looking for a different thought, right? But there is actually so much to do that changing it to something like I can do it might not resonate with you. I know that this type of positive quote unquote thinking does not work for me. To me, it feels impossible to go from there's too much to do to I can do it all. It feels fake. If it doesn't feel true and doable, you're not going to believe it. So it's

Starting point is 00:19:14 not going to work. So let's look for something a little lower on the ladder, something you can grasp and believe and an alternative that resonates as also true. So you can't get everything done. But I think it's fair to say that you could believe that you could get some things done and that those few things getting done would make you feel so much better. So a thought that you could believe might be, I can get many things done in one hour. Now, when you think that, how do you feel? I'll venture a guess and say that when you think you can get some or many things done in one hour,

Starting point is 00:19:58 you'll feel more encouraged. And from feeling encouraged, you're more likely to pick up your instrument and start practicing. And by taking those actions, you will create the result that will confirm your thought. You will get some things done. Does that make sense? Can you see how this slight shift in perspective transforms your state, how you feel, how you act, and the results you get? that's the power of self-coaching and that's the power of the model now there are a few important caveats that I want to mention the first one is that by using the

Starting point is 00:20:43 model you start to step into a different level of responsibility in your life you start to see how you're not at the mercy of your circumstances but you are creating your results with your thoughts but don't use it to blame or shame yourself. I'll come back to this one often in the coming months because that's a really important one. Caveat number two is that the model does not justify victim blaming or oppression. Abuse and oppression are real in the world. They need proper attention and proper healing, and they should not be tolerated. Caveat number three is don't try to bypass unprocessed negative emotions by rushing to an intentional model. Oftentimes, we want to get to the intentional model quickly so that we can start to feel better right away. But avoiding

Starting point is 00:21:43 negative emotions creates a lot of resistance. It doesn't make the negative emotions go away. you're only postponing the moment where you're going to have to face them. As they say, what you resist persists. And I have found that to be true every time. So make sure you spend time with your current model, process your negative emotions, offer yourself a lot of self-compassion and support, and move to the intentional model once you've reached a certain level of peace and understanding of what is, and you've really met yourself where you are. All right, this is what I have for you this week. I think it's enough. I hope all of this makes sense. And as I mentioned earlier, I do have a free worksheet available at mindoverfinger.com slash resources, where I'm

Starting point is 00:22:38 going to put these notions and also put those model examples for you. If you'd like help working through this process, join me Monday at 1 p.m. Central live in the Mind Over Finger Facebook community, and I will happily walk you through this. You're going to find the community at facebook.com slash groups slash Mind Over Finger, and I really hope to see you then. And lastly, don't forget to visit mindoverfinger.com to join Practicing for Peak Performance today and take advantage of 10% off on the program by using the code 10OFF at checkout. You're going to be on your way to performing with confidence in no time. Have a great week.

Starting point is 00:23:27 Much love going your way and à bientôt. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Mind Over Finger podcast. If this content was helpful for you, please share with everyone you think could benefit from it. Take a screenshot, share on social media and tag me. I'm Mind Over Finger everywhere. So reach out, send me a DM and let me know how this content helped you.

Starting point is 00:24:03 Let's keep the conversation going. As always, I have all the information related to this episode in the show notes. You can find them via your podcast app or by visiting mindoverfinger.com, where you can also find more free resources on efficient practice and performance preparation, links to sign up to my free workshops, and information on how to work with me. don't forget to sign up for my newsletter to receive your free guide to a productive mindful practice transcripts from the mind over finger podcast episodes delivered to your inbox every week and more also join the mind over finger facebook community my private group for access to my live videos and to exchange with a community of like-minded musicians so make sure you're subscribe to the podcast, and if you have specific questions for me or my guests that you would like

Starting point is 00:24:59 answered in an episode, share them with me using the link in the show notes or send me a DM on Instagram or Facebook. That's it for today. Again, thank you and à bientôt!

The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 154 How to Get Different Results

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.