The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 187 Planning for YOUR Ideal Performance

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Everything you need to plan for a stellar performance: Dive into the secrets of dream performance planning Uncover why we sometimes fall short of our best Explore the power of crystal-clear vision and how to get it How to organize your preparation process   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   Mind Over Finger Visit MindOverFinger.com for all things peak performance – including impactful online courses and free resources on peak performance. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     Thank You Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson.

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 187. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. Hi, everyone. I'm inside the Mind Over Finger community today here on Facebook, experimenting, trying something new, and we are going to talk about planning for your ideal performance. We are going to have a Q&A session here in the Mind Over Finger community in

a few minutes, but before I'm going to share some concepts on how to plan for this ideal performance. And this allows me to marry two passions of mine, which are community and podcasting. So I'm very excited about this. I have my notes. I recommend that you get comfortable, maybe grab your favorite beverage and a notebook, perhaps. We are going to start today the series of three live sessions on planning for your ideal performance. Today, we're going to talk about planning, how to establish a reverse engineering of that preparation process. In February, we're going to talk about practicing. That's that little thing we have to do right before we hop on stage. And in March, we're going to talk about conditioning for

confidence. And if you don't know what conditioning is, well, stay tuned because you are in for a treat. So all the details on these upcoming sessions are inside the Facebook group, and you can also get them if you're on my mailing list. And if you're not, I suggest that you join. All of this is at mindoverfinger.com. So as I've said, I think you're in for a treat. I hope you enjoy. And here's how it's going to work today. I'm going to introduce some ideas and concepts about this planning of that ideal performance. I'm going to talk about why we don't perform at our best, why I call this the ideal performance and the importance of clarity of vision and how to establish clarity.

That's one of the biggest questions I get all the time from clients or from people, podcast listeners who send in questions is, I feel like I'm lacking clarity. How do I get clarity? Well, I'm going to aim to help you with that today. And then we are going to have a Q&A session. So if you're watching live, please start posting your questions. And at the end, I will dedicate some time to make sure that everyone gets answers. So if you are listening on the podcast, or maybe you're watching on youtube make sure to hop in the mind over facebook community mind over finger facebook community and that's at facebook.com slash groups slash mind over finger to get all of these answers and really join this very supportive group of musicians and again all

the details of the upcoming sessions are going to be there also in the facebook group you're they have access to a huge library of previous live sessions. Also, all the videos of the joyful practice challenges are there. So there is a lot, a lot of resources and also many amazing people. So let's begin. Let's talk about why we don't perform at our best. An obvious reason would be maybe a lack of planning, right? And we're going to fix that today. So not thinking ahead of all of the many things that we're going to have to keep in mind as we prepare for this performance. Practicing, right? And practicing could be two things. Well, more, but two basic things. Maybe not enough practicing but also perhaps even mainly not the right kind of practice maybe not

mindful enough not suited to your needs and we're going to talk about that in February and then conditioning preparing for performance is not just going in the practice room moving your arms around for a bit and then hopping on stage there's a whole area of preparation that I call conditioning that we use as transition from practice room to stage that most people skip that's very important so this we talk about in March and finally there's the mindset so not just the focus that we have in the practice room but the mindset that we have about the entire preparation process, the mindset that we have about the performance itself, and the mindset that we have about ourselves, our inner talk, the thoughts that go around in our

head, the thoughts that we let go around in our heads. So this importance of the mindset in the preparation is huge. And performance anxiety is created by how all of these different aspects come together. I also cover all of this in my two programs, Practicing for Peak Performance and the Performance Anxiety Solution. Both are at mindoverfinger.com. But hopefully with this series, this life series here, you're going to get a really great head start on these areas. So I'm here to tell you that it can be simple. It's not necessarily easy, but you don't have to overthink things. You can develop self-trust and you don't have to suffer through this preparation process. so simple is actually preferable in most things and when you you can pinpoint some very powerful basics and tweak them a little bit amazing change can happen now let's talk about why

ideal performance why do i call this your ideal performance i wanted to do my research so i went on the google and i looked for a definition of ideal and i found one that i really like a couple actually, from the Collins Dictionary, and I'm going to read them here. An ideal is a principle, idea, or standard that seems very good and worth trying to achieve. I love that, worth trying to achieve. The other sentence is your ideal of something is the person or the thing that seems to you to be the best possible example of it. And the key word in this one is you. Let me read it again. Your ideal of something is the person or thing that seems to you to be the best possible example of it. And this entire series, the entire process of performance preparation

must be centered around you, what you think about it, how you feel about it, what you believe about it. This is what we're going to do. I want you to step inward and find the answers there and really trust yourself and strive for the best version of you, not anyone else's idea. But that's going to be very important. So keep that in mind. Your ideal performance. This is what we're doing. Okay, let's talk about clarity because this is where performance excellence, whatever excellence means to you, this is where it begins. It begins with clarity. How do we gain it? So we must assess and understand where we are now first, before we do anything else. Then we want to figure out our why. Why do we want this performance? And then we want to establish our vision. So performing at our

best starts with clarity. I'm going to repeat it one more time. Understanding your past and how it got you to today. You are here today in the circumstances that you are in because of what you did in the past. So you want to spend some time understanding how you created this reality for yourself. You want to know where you're standing. Second, we want to understand the why. Why is this performance meaningful to you? What does it represent for you? And then what you want. And I have a bunch of exercises for you to get some clarity and create this plan. So what I want you to do is take in this information that I'm giving you right now. Perhaps listen to this live again. Listen to it on the podcast version or on YouTube. Take some notes and then sit with these

questions and really investigate deeply within what your answers to these questions are, not what you think they should be. Always trust yourself and give yourself permission to want what you want. That's very important also. So now, how do we figure out how we are, where we are, and why? Here's the first exercise I have for you. I want you to assess a recent performance. I want you to see it. I want you to feel it and really experience it.

Just go back in time. You know, as I said, grab your favorite beverage, sit on a comfortable couch, Give some space for this exercise. Think about that performance and really experience it as if it was happening right now and reflect on these questions. How did you feel? What went well? You think about what went well and then go back and think about how did you prepare that made that possible? So for example, if you feel that your intonation was really good in this performance, What is the type of work that you did on the repertoire that allowed that for you? If you feel like you felt very comfortable, what are the different things that you did?

Did you do a lot of mock performances? Did you do a lot of run-throughs? If you felt that your bow technique was very flowing, what exercises did you include in your fundamentals and your technique work? So the entirety of the process of preparation, what did you do to prepare that made that possible? Then I want you to think about what went poorly and what might have been missing in your preparation. Did you lack sleep?

Did you practice enough? Did you get enough support or maybe you were too busy? What was it that you think contributed to things not going the way you wanted? And then think about what you would do differently next time. What you could tweak. Once you have that, look at the entire context. Also, all of this contributes to how we prepare. your life circumstances, the type of food you were eating? Were you sleeping well?

Were you stressed out about other things? Were there other things happening in your life that contributed to maybe an excessive stress situation? Did you have some fun? All of these things. Did you exercise? Did you meditate? So think about your life. So we assess a recent performance. We see it, but mostly we feel it as if it were happening now. And then we take time to assess and reflect. How did we feel? What went well and why? What went poorly and why? What you would do differently next time? And think about the entirety of your life circumstances, of your context. Once we have more clarity on what we've created in the past, let's be rooted in the why. and your why is all about you, about your being. This is one thing I'm talking a lot to my clients

these days and inside the Music Master experience is that idea of being before doing, being before having. So who are you? So these are the questions I have for you. Who are you? How do you see yourself? What are your thoughts about yourself? And for this, take some time to journal some thoughts that you have about yourself that start with the words, I am. I am disciplined. I am confident. And maybe some negative ones as well. We want to be honest. So who are you? And you can also, if you're finding it difficult to come up with some sentences that start with I am, you can use this formulation. I'm someone who's learning to. I'm someone who's learning to be disciplined. I'm someone who's learning to practice more. So be rooted in your being and understanding

who you are, who you're striving to be, and all of this with a lot of self-love, a lot of self-compassion, and an extreme amount of self-respect. You gotta respect yourself. Then think about what makes this performance important to you. What does it mean to you? What will it bring you? Not only the preparation and the performance in terms of the skills you'll acquire, but in terms of what it's going to bring you at the human level. What growth is it going to allow you to go through? How will this expand you as a human? So when you're connected to the why, why you want to perform, the meaning of this performance for you, this will impact your motivation to practice, your presence in the practice room, and your entire mindset surrounding

the preparation. So we are rooted in our being. Be before do. Okay, third exercise. Let's get in clarity on our vision. And now I want you to think about the ideal performance, your ideal performance. And again, grant yourself permission to want anything that you want. You're allowed to want anything that you want. You're allowed to pursue anything that you want and you're allowed to go for it. And at this stage, we're dreaming. We're daydreaming about what it is that we want from this performance. So your ideal performance, you can close your eyes and you can see what it looks like. But even more importantly than this is what does it feel like? So when you sit down to do this exercise really have a vivid experience of what it's like. How do you feel? Do you feel joyful?

Do you feel tall? Do you feel mischievous? Do you feel ease? Do you feel excitement? How does it feel in your body? You can even go through your entire body and imagine how you feel during the performance physically. Once you've given yourself enough time to go through this visualization exercise of how you're experiencing this performance, then I want you to go back and decide how you prepared for it. So you can even imagine that you're on stage, you're performing, it's feeling incredible, it's going so well, this is the best you've ever performed, is exhilarating or attach any feelings that you want to this and then the audience goes wild it's a standing ovation you're so happy and then you're walking backstage and as you're standing

there backstage reliving those beautiful moments you're thinking about what you did and you're saying something like wow I'm so happy that I'm so glad that I did this I'm so glad that I tried these new practicing methods. I'm so glad that I planned this way. I'm so glad that I played 47 muck auditions. I'm so glad that I set so many piano rehearsals. I'm so glad that I did this score study. I'm so glad that I made the time to meditate every day. I'm so glad that I took the time to record myself. So what is it that you did to prepare for this ideal performance? And I like this exercise of imagining myself backstage and just being so thankful towards myself for having done these things for myself. What are these things for you? Think about the

entire environment. So the practice part, let's talk about this for a second. How did you practice? Did you have a practice journal? If so, how did you keep it? Did you practice slowly? How did you do it? How did you do your tempo work? How often did you record yourself? How about visualization? All of these things. How did you do them? But also the type of context that you want for yourself, the type of context you created for this ideal performance. And that means what kind of schedule did you have in the days or weeks prior? What kind of setup did you have in your life? One thing I like to talk about to my clients inside the Music Mastery Experience is the concept of nurturing the asset. And this comes from a great book by Greg McKeown

called Essentialism. And he talks about nurturing the asset. You, my friend, are the asset. You must nurture the asset. You must nurture yourself in order to produce at the highest level. So how did you do that? What kind of food did you eat? How did you sleep? What kind of exercise did you do? Did you meditate? Did you stretch? Did you rest enough between practice session? Did you respect your physical limitations? And also did you make sure that you provided opportunities for yourself to build stamina to prepare for this performance so this entire context very very important and then the entire mindset aspect of things if you don't know how to go about this well I will have some answers for you in March and inside so many podcast episodes and I actually have a list of

recommended episodes for you that you can catch at the end so these are the exercises that you can go through. And I have one more exercise for you, which is to find what I called a lighthouse thought for this. Again, we're going to talk more about mindset in March, but you can get started already with this idea of this lighthouse thought. You all know what a lighthouse is, right? So you're on your boat in the dark and there is the light that shows you where land is. So this is what we're going to find for you because as you prepare for this performance there are going to be many times where you will feel challenged when you're going to feel triggered by something when you might experience despair frustration anger in these moments while we're going to honor all

these feelings it's great to have something to anchor ourselves to so when we're in this darkness to have this lighthouse thought that brings us back to our why. So this can begin by really tuning into how you want to feel during the performance. And once you know what that is, think of a thought, a sentence that would support you throughout that preparation. I have some examples for you. So some lighthouse thoughts could be, I can do this. I'm so excited to do this. I can overcome all the stumbling blocks. It might be a lot of work and I'm ready for it. It might be a lot of work and I'm willing to do it. I'm strong and capable. I handle obstacles. I grow. I get better every minute. I can figure this out. So this gives you

a little bit of an idea of the kind of thought you can intentionally nurture in your life every day as you're getting ready for this ideal performance. As I've shared with you in episode 153, which is a really important episode, if you have not listened to episode 153 of the Mind Over Finger podcast, please do it today. In this episode, I talk about the principle that governs so many things in our lives, which is that our results are created by our actions, but these actions are fueled by our feelings. And all of our feelings are coming from a thought we're having or many thoughts. So this is why it's so important to be intentional about what we're thinking, to be mindful, to be aware of these sentences that go wild in our heads.

So you're going to go listen to episode 153 and you're going to take some time to decide how you want to feel in this performance and then maybe make a short list of a few sentences, a few thoughts that will be with you and will drive positive feelings for you throughout this preparation. And I would love to know what you come up with. So if you're here in the live session and something comes up, please share it in the comments. I'm going to get to it in a moment. And if you're listening to this on the podcast, please share on social media or send me an email. and if you're on YouTube, below here in the comments. Okay, we got all this clarity, hopefully,

and now we're going to move on to planning. What I like to use for myself and what I also teach my clients is to think about it as a backward process, a reverse engineering. And if you have my courses, Practicing for Peak Performance or the Performance Anxiety Solution,

you know what I'm talking about here. I talk about this in detail. And of course, inside the Music Mastery experience, we go deep in the reverse engineering. So here though, I want you to keep it simple. Do not overthink. Do not think there's a better way to do it. Just believe me when I tell you this, whatever you come up with will be great. Don't overthink it and mostly trust yourself to come up with a great plan. by simply believing that you will come up with a great plan by trusting yourself that you're going to come up with a great plan. The plan will work for you. I swear. So take the date, the performance date, and then start reverse engineering what that's going to look like for

you. What are you going to do the morning of? What are you going to do the day before or the few days before? What are you going to do the week before, two weeks before, three weeks before? And then you keep going backwards and you think about all of the different things you need to do to get ready for this performance. The type of practicing you're going to do, but also all of the logistics in your life. When are you going to change your strings? When are you going to get a re-hair? Do you need to get your flute mechanism checked out? So all of these things. How are you going to sleep? What kind of food are you going to eat? When and how are you going to exercise? All of these things. All of this can go in your reverse engineering plan. And there's no best way to do

it. The way that you come up with will be great. Just take a blank sheet of paper and go at it. I know you will come up with something amazing. Okay, so let's revise. And before, I want to say that I really promise that this will set you up on the path to an amazing performance. But I want to warn you, what's really difficult is once we have a plan is implementing. So I have a lot of resources on the podcast about this, on motivation, on how to take action, all of that stuff. But you want to keep in mind that all of this is coming from your thoughts. So what are the thoughts that you're going to nurture throughout the preparation process? And don't forget that community is a big aspect of things. So I'm going to take a minute here actually to talk about the fact that the

Music Mastery Experience is coming. And inside the Music Mastery Experience, we start in June, but early enrollment is open now. We cover all of this, the performance preparation, the conditioning, the mind management at length and deeply. But mostly what we provide inside the program is that context that support is everything that's going to keep you strong the guidance to keep you going so i'm going to invite you to go visit mindoverfinger.com slash mme right now for all of the details on the music master experience you're going to hear me talk a lot about this in the coming few months because i really do think it is the best coaching program for musicians out there. I am not kidding. So I'm going to invite you to go check out all of these details because

if you're looking for guidance, if you're looking for support, if you have so much information already on how to prepare but for some reason it's never coming together for you, this might be what you're looking for. The guidance, the support, the environment, the context inside the music mastery experience where you have all of the information and beyond everything else that will ensure your success moving forward. So there's going to be more on that, but let's revise. So looking back at our reflection exercises, we want to assess what worked, what didn't work in the past. We connect to our why. We establish the vision of our ideal performance. We come up with a lighthouse thought, and then you plan the unfolding of your life between now and the

performance, your life and your practicing in reverse with that reverse engineering. So knowing this, what next? Well, I would love for you to stay in touch with me over the coming few weeks and tell me what you came up with. And here's some podcast episode that can support you in this process. We have episode 186, which is the most recent one, where we geared up for 2024. So I gave you an entire blueprint to plan for a spectacular 2024. So that could be very insightful and helpful for you as you're trying to plan and reverse engineer for this ideal performance. There's also episode 183, and this one is about the three mistakes you make. And in there, I talk about planning, I talk about practicing, and mind management.

Episode 153, as I told you, is why you feel the way you feel and do the things you do. This is the one where the entire mindset is explained. I highly recommend it. And another one that could be helpful is 136, where I talk about how to set goals. But again, do not overthink, do not overcomplicate. You don't always need more information. Actually, sometimes what you need is more insight from within. And now this is where we're going to end in the podcast and YouTube.

So I'm going to stop this recording. And if you're listening on the podcast, I invite you to join us here in the Mind Over Finger community. The answers to the Q&A are going to be there. This recording is going to continue inside the community and all of the links are going to be in the show notes to join us here on Facebook. So I hope this was helpful for you. And until next time, as always, I send you much love and I say à bientôt.