Have you ever felt like you just didn’t know how to do something very well, like get up in front of an audience and perform or play lead and this uncertainty
prevented you from doing it well or doing it at all?
Of course, all the best performers are at peak performance when its second nature and they are relaxed so how can we get to this point without having to play a thousand or even a hundred live shows? Well, research from Amy Cuddy proves that simply faking something enough times will eventually rewire your brain to make an act like playing lead or getting up on stage natural and second nature.
First, lets not get carried away with the faking thing. You don’t want to get up on stage without practicing and start playing some horrible out of tune notes that make people screech. The goal is to practice enough to the point where you feel pretty comfortable at home or in the studio then get out there and begin faking like you’ve been up there in front of people a thousand times until eventually you feel comfortable.
Case study
For many years I played in a band and I overloaded myself with work as not only the band leader, writer and arranger, but the manager with marketing and booking duties. At one point I decided to take a break and just do a solo acoustic tour and began booking locally and regionally. Some of the places were high end hotels and restaurants that wanted me to play for 3 or 4 hours. Some just wanted original and some wanted top 100, which meant I needed to bone up on my repertoire and learn a lot of material. My first gig was in like 1 week and I simply wasn’t prepared, I only had like 20 songs.
So what did I do? I faked it for a good hour and a half and low and low and behold I made it out of there without any complaints. Of course the next gig I prepared for, but I still had to fake a lot of stuff like the lyrics when I forgot them, but I just kept believing that if I acted like I knew what I was doing then no one would know. After about 5 of these gigs and some extra practice, I had it dialed in and the faking became real, relaxed second nature performance.
Watch the video below to really understand how this works and then apply it to not only your performance, but to everyday things, like smiling when you feel like crap. Its one of the biggest secrets to advancing quickly, check it out and feel free to leave any comments below regarding your challenges and breakthroughs.