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I do not normally read articles in law websites, but recently I saw a link to an interesting recent article on the website of the ABA Journal, a publication of the American Bar Association. What made it especially interesting to me was how it looks at the topic of anxiety from a bit different angle than the sports competition angle we usually encounter in music.
Performance anxiety is, of course, a topic that is not limited to music or sports. Poor performance has different consequences in different situations. In sports, you lose the game or match. In music, you have a less good performance. In legal contexts, people can end up in jail or losing lots of money! There is pressure on lawyers to perform well in court, to give their best service to clients.
The article I found is “No magical cure for anxiety, but with persistence, you can train your mind to relax” by Jeena Cho. Within the article there are three main points:
- Anxiety is subjective
- Anxiety is a set of thoughts and physiological responses
- Change the focus to let go of anxiety
Working backwards in the points, a primary suggestion for changing focus was to do a grounding exercise. Several are presented, but it occurs to me in music that is one of the reasons focusing on breathing when you perform is a great idea. It ends up being a type of grounding exercise, taking your focus away from thinking about the performance situation.
As to the physiological responses, one prime tactic is to focus on relaxing the body, this will impact your thoughts and the anxiety situation.
The first point of the article is the most interesting to me, that anxiety is subjective, and specifically this point, “the mind is hardwired toward imagining the worst-case scenario, the so-called negativity bias.” Negativity bias is an interesting concept, there are many resources online related to this topic and it certainly colors our anxiety as horn performers. Continuing in the article,
The next time you are feeling anxious, take a step back and look at the thoughts that are triggering the anxiety. Chances are, you are only rehearsing the direst outcome, overlooking the best-case scenario or even more neutral outcomes.
It’s helpful to see that someone else in your exact situation may experience a different level of anxiety or even no anxiety. It’s subjective. In fact, you could also be experiencing this dreaded event with a different level of anxiety under a different set of circumstances. Perhaps you are more anxious because you recently received an unfavorable review at work or because you’re sleep-deprived.
The reason why this is important to recognize is that it puts the feelings of anxiety more within your control. You may have little or no control over the outcome of the event, but you can begin to see that you do have control over your own response. Rather than focus on trying to fix the uncontrollable or the unknowable, you can take a gentler stance toward yourself and focus on changing your response by relaxing the anxious mind.
It is our nature, due to negativity bias, for our thoughts to focus on the worst possible outcomes. This is of course not where our thoughts should be.
Sometimes you do actually get that worst piece of news, but speaking generally nothing we do as horn players is actually life and death. Still, it is easy for thoughts to turn to the worst outcomes. Those thoughts might potentially push you to practice harder, but training your mind to relax is essential to overcoming negative thoughts in performance. If more traditional sources such as The Inner Game of Tennis are not working for you, there are many resources out there in unexpected places, such as a law website, to consider.
