The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 261 You Can Play Better Than This - Why You Don't Sound Like Yourself Under Pressure

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

You know that feeling when you walk off stage thinking, "I can play so much better than this"? In this episode, I unpack three powerful patterns I saw during the Musicians Edge Challenge with more than 300 musicians and why so many performers lose access to themselves under pressure even when they've prepared brilliantly. In this episode: • Why your best playing can feel impossible to recreate on demand • What really happens when a different version of you shows up on stage • Why many musicians keep trying to solve the wrong problem If you're ready to close the gap between how you play in the practice room and who you become under pressure, the Music Mastery Experience is open for enrollment now. Inside MME, we work on performance preparation, self trust, mindset, nervous system regulation, and the hidden patterns that shape your performances. Enrollment closes May 20 and we begin June 1. Learn more at mindoverfinger.com/mme   Book your FREE Music Mastery Experience Discovery call with Renée HERE Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. 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. This is episode 261. 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. Hello everyone. Welcome back. I'm very excited to be here with you today. I hope you're doing amazing. I am. I'm still riding the high from last week and I just had to come on here and talk about it. We just finished the Musicians Edge Challenge a few days ago and I had such an amazing time. Over 300 musicians signed up and participated over email. Over 100

joined us inside the Facebook group. And the vibe was incredible. All instruments, all levels from all over the world, five days together. And what happened over those five days was just, it was something. The conversations, the honesty, the courage, the things people were willing to share with each other and look at and admit out loud. I was moved. I was touched every single day. and I can't stop thinking about it. And I thought, I need to make a podcast episode about this because what I saw in that group is something every musician needs to hear. It wasn't just interesting. It was universal. And I think it's going to be very relevant for you. Before we dive in, I want to make sure you know that the Music Mastery Experience is open for

enrollment right now. The doors do close May 20th and we start June 1st, so don't wait. And everything you're about to hear is exactly what we work on inside. So all the details are at mindoverfinger.com slash M-M-E. And I hope I see you inside of the Music Mastery experience. Okay, back to the challenge. What struck me the most is that the same three things kept coming up again and again, across hundreds of musicians. Again, people from all over the world, all instruments, all levels, three patterns. And I want to bring those to the podcast today because I think they're going to resonate with you wherever you are in your journey. And I think that whether or not you were in the challenge, you're going to hear yourself

in what I'm about to share. And if you do, I want you to know that what you're experiencing thing is not unique to you. It's not a sign that something's wrong with you. It's what happens when talented, hardworking musicians haven't yet been given the right tools. And that's fixable. So let's talk about it. Here's the first thing I saw, the first pattern. You know you can play brilliantly. You've done it. You have proof. And you can't get there on purpose. On day one of the challenge, I asked everyone to share one moment when everything clicked. One moment when they felt completely in their element. And here's what was interesting.

At first, many people struggled to find their moment. Not because they didn't have one, but because the bar they had set for themselves was so high. They were looking for a performance that felt amazing from start to finish. And that's actually really rare. That kind of sustained flow, start to finish, even the best performers don't experience that consistently. So I asked them to zone in on not a perfect performance, but just a moment, one phrase, one passage, one instant when everything clicked. And when they did that, when they lowered the bar to something real and something human, they found it. One musician described it as feeling like they were flying.

Another one said it felt like an out-of-body experience. They started the piece and somehow finished it, and the whole thing was a blur. Another said, I felt like I could do this for the rest of my life, a moment of flow, a moment of owning the stage, a moment of feeling completely free. How amazing is this, right? You know that version of you. Maybe you've met them. You have proof that they exist. And then they disappear. And you spend months, sometimes years trying to get back there. You're wondering what you did differently that day. You're wondering why it keeps slipping away, why it's not coming back. Wondering if maybe it was just luck or the right conditions or fluke that you cannot count on. One musician in the challenge said something that

really stayed with me. They said, I don't know how this happened. It's the fleeting moments of joy and flow that I will always be chasing. And that word, chasing, that's the whole problem right there. It wasn't luck. That version of you is not a fluke. That's your edge. That's what you're capable of when you're operating at your best. And the reason you can't get there on purpose is not because it's out of reach. It's because you don't know yet specifically what creates it. You don't know what puts you in that state. So you can't call it up deliberately. you're hoping for it instead and hoping that's not a strategy and here's what changes when you stop hoping and you start knowing when you understand specifically what creates your best

playing what mental state you're in what you're thinking what you're not thinking then you can start building toward it on purpose. Every single time. Not hoping it shows up. You're calling it up. That's a completely different experience of performing. And it is available to you. The musicians who perform consistently at their best, the ones who walk into auditions and performances and feel like themselves, they're not luckier than you. They're not more talented than you. They don't even practice more than you oftentimes. What it is, is this. They know something about themselves that maybe you haven't figured out yet. They know what state helps them play at their best and they know how to get there on purpose because they have trained themselves

to do that. It starts with knowledge and then training. And that self-knowledge is learnable. It's not a personality trait. It's not something you have or you don't have. Something you build and it changes everything. So what do you think that is for you? what state allows you to play at your best and how could you train yourself to get there here's the second pattern in the practice room you're one person under pressure someone else shows up and you don't recognize them on day three of the challenge I asked everyone to name the one thing that, if it shifted, would change everything? And the answers were, wow. So honest, so brave. Amazing. One musician said, I get in my own way.

The mind that helps me in rehearsal becomes my biggest obstacle on stage. Another one said, I go into a mode where I'm trying to prove something and then nothing is easy. Nothing flows and the mistakes start. Do you resonate with that? Another one said, I feel like a hoax that's about to be revealed. Like everyone is about to find out I can't actually play. Does any of that sound familiar? In the practice room, you're one person under pressure. In the audition room, on stage, in a masterclass, in a high stakes rehearsal, someone else shows up. Someone nervous, maybe, or over-controlled, hyper-focused. I hear that a lot. Hyper-focus of not making a mistake. You're monitoring every note. You're fighting yourself.

And you know it's happening. You can feel it, but you can't stop it. And it is a different thing because your brain and performance, you've heard me say this on the podcast before. Your brain and performance is not operating the same way it does in practice unless you train it. Under pressure, your nervous system shifts. Cortisol spikes, working memory gets complicated, the intention narrows, the musicality, the phrasing, the ease, the voice, all the things that make you good, they get crowded out because your brain has decided that surviving this moment is more important than expressing yourself. And as I said in episode 258, I think, maybe 259, maybe both, maybe both, then all of the things that make you you

are inaccessible because you're trying to survive. And then you walk off thinking, I know I can play better than that. And you're right, you can. But practicing more excerpts is not going to close that gap because the gap is not in the notes. The gap is in what happens to you specifically when the stakes go up. And until you understand that, until you've actually looked at your specific patterns under pressure and you've done something about them, you're going to keep walking into high stakes situations and hoping, here's that word again, hoping that today is one of the good days. Sometimes it's going to be, sometimes it's not going to be. And you're going to have very little control over which one is going to be. But when you understand your

specific patterns under pressure, what triggers the shift, what your nervous system does, what thoughts take over, you stop being ambushed by it. And when you stop being ambushed, you can work with it instead of against it. The gap, it does not disappear overnight, but it does start to close fast. So look into it. What do you think those patterns are for you. All right. Here's the third pattern. And it's the sneakiest one. When something goes wrong, you go back and you work harder. And the problem stays exactly where it is because you're solving the wrong problem. And you've heard me talk about this on the podcast, right? I try to pick topics that I know are relevant for you. And I think I'm proven right

here. There's a tendency to solve the wrong problem. Day four of the challenge was the one that got me the most. I asked everyone to zoom out and find the pattern connecting everything, their best moments, their strengths, their blocks. And almost everyone said some version of, I've never seen this before. I didn't know this was the pattern until now. never noticed. One musician wrote, I've realized the biggest thing getting in my way is me. When I trust myself and I let go, I'm soaring. But I've become more comfortable with insecurity than with confidence. And that is wild to admit. Another one said, I put everything into being prepared and organized. And then the expectation I create for myself crushes me at the exact moment

I need to perform. These are not beginner musicians. These are serious, dedicated, hardworking players that have been at it for years. And they had never seen this pattern clearly before because nobody had ever asked them to look. When something goes wrong in a performance or an audition, what do you do? You go back to the practice room, you work harder, more repetitions, more lessons, more mock auditions, more pressure on yourself. And then you tell yourself when it's perfect, I'll be ready. I've talked about this here on the podcast before. And I understand that completely. It makes total sense. If it didn't go well, you probably were not prepared enough. Or so you tell yourself. So you go back and you get better. That's logical. But here's

what I see from the outside. Musicians like you have done everything right on paper, who have prepared the excerpts, who have logged in the hours, who have done the mock auditions, and they still walk off performances feeling like they left everything on the table. They didn't show up at their best. And when I ask them what they think the problem is, they go straight to the notes, the technique, the preparation, every time. And I have to gently redirect because what I see from the outside is something else entirely. The problem is almost never the notes. Or at least not always. Sometimes it's the notes. But more often than not, it's not. So what if you're already good enough, technically? What if you have the goods?

You've got the excerpts, the technique, the musicality, the intonation, the rhythm, all of it. But what you don't have yet is self-knowledge. What if you don't know what's running the show underneath? The thought patterns, the expectations, the stories you're telling yourself. Good Lord, the stories. The stories about what it means if this doesn't go well. And those things are showing up in the room. Whether you know it or not.

Definitely whether you want it or not. And you cannot practice your way out of a self-knowledge problem. You have to stop and look and ask different questions. These are the questions most musicians often don't think to ask, maybe never ask, I should say. And when you do, when you finally see what's actually been getting in the way, things shift fast. not because you suddenly play better but because you stop fighting yourself and when you stop fighting yourself there's finally space for the music for your voice for the version of you that you know exists and that you've been trying to get back to for years and that version of you

they're not gone they've been there the whole time they just need you to stop fighting and start looking inward, asking the questions, waiting for the answers. That's when everything changes. So here's where I want this to land. If any of what I described sounds familiar, if you recognize yourself in any of these three patterns, I want you to know two things. One, you're not alone. Not even close. This is the work. This is what it means to be a serious musician navigating the gap between your potential and your results. I've seen it in the challenge. 300 people sharing those patterns, experiencing something similar. You are not alone. the second thing is that there is a way through and it's not about working harder it's about

working differently with the right tools and the right framework and the right support and this is definitely what I had in mind when I designed the music master experience and I want to tell you about it right now because this is the kind of support that can help you achieve this it's a full year of working with me and a group of musicians who are done playing small and they're ready to do something about it such an awesome group we work on how you practice how you prepare for performance and most importantly how you manage your mind all three because all three have to work together for the transformation to stick and the coaching is where everything changes. Because you can't see your own blind spots alone. I know this because I live it too.

Even I need a coach when I'm preparing for auditions. I love having a life coach to help me with life situations. Coaching yourself is not the same thing. Having someone in your corner who can see what you cannot see from the inside, that is what accelerates everything. Someone who can diagnose and identify the pain points. And here's what that looks like on the other side. One of the musicians inside MME said this after winning her audition. I walked into the room and I wasn't 100% fixed. My brain still felt like it was kind of a bomb, but I was able to under pressure and even not on a great day, rely on my level of preparation. I was able to trust myself and I was able to walk out of the room feeling like I know the person

who played that audition round. Instead of walking out going, I have no idea who the hell that was or what happened to me. And she won. That's the transformation. That's what's possible. So if that sounds good to you, join us. Doors close May 20th. We start June 1st. And you can find all of the details at mindoverfinger.com slash MME. Look at the page. Look at the details.

Book your clarity call with me. We're going to sit down. We're going to talk about where you are, where you want to go. And if this is the right fit, we're going to get you started right away. and before I go I just want to say thank you to everyone who was in the challenge over 300 of you gave five days of your time and your honesty and your insight to this process and the things that you shared the things you were willing to look at and the way you showed up for each other. It was beautiful. Always is in these challenges. That's why I love doing them.

But this one felt especially special. And I'm carrying everything I saw and heard with me and it's going to stay with me for a long time. So thank you for that. All right, everyone. I hope to see you inside the Music Mastery Experience. I'm there for you inside. And this is what I have for you today. I send you much love and I say à bientôt.