Ep #21: 4 Confidence Hacks for Performers

‍

Welcome to The Confident Performer, the only podcast that guides ambitious, driven performers and entrepreneurs to show up authentically and confidently both on and off stage. If you are ready to make an impact in your life and community and start living your most amazing, empowered life, you are in the right place. You already have what it takes to make it, you just need to see it. And I’m here to show you how. You ready? Let’s go.

Hello my confident performers and welcome to episode 21, four confidence hacks for performers. I am sharing with you some of my favorite, my most favorite things when I think about confidence and I think about the daily lives of the performer.

I’m starting out with one. Number one on my list always and forever and will be, comparison is death. Find what it is that makes you feel confident and special and powerful and decide to just be that. Does that mean that other people cannot be those things? No. Does that mean that you should take your specialness and compare it to somebody else’s specialness? No. Both of those things can be true. You can be awesome and amazing. They can be awesome and amazing. And it doesn’t discount or take away any of your specialness, any of your greatness.

Comparing any of the two things is absolute death. I talk often to my performers about this and I talk often with my daughter about this because we are in this society that breeds this culture of comparison, and it truly is the death of happiness. It’s the death of confidence. It’s the death of anything positive as far as good energy flowing on the constant or on the regular. Do not compare yourself to anyone else. Decide what you want. Decide where you want to be and decide to step into that.

If you need help getting there, listen to podcasts. Listen to all of the beautiful content that is out there for people who wish to level up. It is out there. It is accessible. You can do literally anything you want. I find myself finding inspiration every single day from multiple different people, people I know, some people I don’t know and wish I knew. All different mediums for inspiration to help you focus on up-leveling your life, that for me is so important when you get to that place where you feel so sound in who you are and what you have to offer.

And you don’t have to compare yourself to anybody or any other thing in the room. You just walk in and you have a really good time. And it’s funny because when I sit down, people will ask me often, “Oh, what do you do?” And I talk about what I do. I coach performers. I coach people who want to level up, who want to stay top notch level, who want to be the best at the thing. And so many times people will say, “Wow, that’s so cool. That’s so fun.” And it is so cool and it is so fun. Me having the job that I love and I dream about, doesn’t make me any better or any cooler than anyone else, even though I’m doing a really, really cool thing.

I talked with a friend and a client years ago and she said this beautiful thing, and I think this today, I think often about this. She said, “I try to find the glory and the honor in the small tasks, in the mundane tasks.” And it’s such a beautiful angle to look at life. And I asked her to explain and elaborate. And she said, “For example when I’m in my hostess job”, and this is before kind of when she was doing her album simultaneously.

She said, “I work on focusing on rolling the silverware. And feeling really happy that in the moment I get to do this and I get to focus just on this one thing that’s a necessity to make this entire organization and operation work. And even though it’s not the highest honor to other people, it’s so necessary.” So, she looks at the beauty and the honor of that moment. And I find that perspective to be so valuable.

And I think about that every time I go into a function or an organization or if I’m at the club or whatever I’m doing and I see someone cleaning the bathrooms. I make a moment to thank them for doing that. And I think about it because when I’m in a place, a clean bathroom is important to me and I hope that they know that that is such a big deal to people. No one wants to go to a place that has a gross, disgusting bathroom. So, people, if you have restaurants listen up, that’s the thing. For me, if your bathroom is gross, I am not going to go to your restaurant, period. It’s going to make me question your cleanliness in your kitchen, period.

Okay, so that little rant is over there. But the power of the people who clean the bathroom or keep the bathroom clean and do so in a way where they feel that kind of same energy or that honor, where you go in and the bathroom is always clean. It is very, very special. And I think that people showing up to do that job every single day, one of my favorite things is to think about, they’ve been here for 20 years or they’ve been here for 30 years doing this janitorial work or cleaning this place or keeping this place working and functioning in order. I think about that all the time. There is so much value in that support.

So, the aspect of comparison of any sort in any life, there is truly no room for it. Keep your focus on yourself. Keep your focus on building the things that you wish to build for your own life. Honor those moments where you feel like those mundane tasks are not exemplary or wonderful or magical. And find the people that show up to do the tasks that keep things in working order but do not compare yourself to anyone, stay out of the comparison lane.

In that realm, that same, I’m going to probably put it in the same area of not taking yourself too seriously. I want to make sure that each artist understands that there’s a necessary seriousness that comes with being a professional performer. But one of the things I learned is that the realm of professionalism stays there regardless of being serious or not. If you are truly a professional performer, you hold yourself to a standard of showing up, doing the thing.

And when you’re a performer professionally, what happens is, if you’re late, you’re fined. You have to pay a fine for being late to rehearsal, and people don’t stand for it. Your company manager doesn’t stand for it. Creative team does not stand for it. If you are absolutely doing something early on in the phases or you’re a new performer, and you’re welcomed in, they do not accept lateness, tardiness, coming in not being ready, coming in not being warmed up. There’s no room for that.

So that aspect of taking yourself seriously enough to show up as a professional, there has to be that component there. But taking yourself too seriously, where everything you do in your life becomes so potentially dark and heavy and all the world's a stage and we are merely performers. All of that energy and heaviness to a group of people who, yeah, we’re professionals, we’re here to do a job, but most of the time we’re there to put on a show. And we’re there to have a good time and we’re there to enjoy one another.

So, keep that area of your mind light. Keep that space of comparison, there’s no room for the comparison, keep all of that in mind, but not too heavy and not too serious.

Okay, number two. Be present, genuinely in the moment presentness takes you outside of any nonsense. If I am gardening in my backyard and I’m just thinking about what I’m doing in the yard, that presentness in the moment allows me to be truly at peace. If I am watching a performer and I’m thinking of other things and I’m not in that room, it’s a disservice to me and it’s a disservice to them. I feel one of the most important gifts we can do and give ourselves in our life is being present in the moment that we’re in. There is no other moment like it.

There will be no repeat of that same exact moment of how the air feels, of how the air smells, of the energy in the room. There can be a replica of it or something similar to it. But when I think about it, and heck, maybe that’s why I like wine so much, that I think about that aspect of there being a true poetry to the soil never being that same way again, the air never being that same way, the humidity. Anything that adds what the layers are to the magic of a beautiful bottle of wine, nothing like it, ever repeated again. Just a moment in time captured. The same thing when you’re sharing it with people.

So, when you’re sharing that beautiful bottle of wine with people and you’re sitting there in that moment and you’re indulging in the conversation that’s happening in the moment. I don’t think about being anywhere else. I’m not going to be the person scrolling on my phone. I’m not going to be the person trying to figure out something while I’m having a different conversation with someone else. I want to be fully present in the moment. And that allows me to be really confident in that moment as well, because I’m very present. And there’s nothing else outside that’s more important than that, and I feel like that has great power and great energy.

Number three. Build a strong network. Stay connected to your strong network and you will never ever feel like you do not have support. I have spent a career building a strong network. And even where I sit today, being able to do this podcast, share this information of what I know, I am literally able to think of an idea and think, you know what? I can reach out to this person. They’re writers. They have written this or they can help me create this idea or bring this idea to life. You know what? I could partner with this performer and we could do a fun little workshop.

There’s a number of things, and I never stop thinking about those types of things. I went out actually just the other day and I was thinking I want to work with my friend on this specific project. And I said, “Hey, let’s go out. Let’s talk about something. I had an idea, I just want to talk about it.” He says, “Yeah, great, of course.” So, he’s in the midst of doing a publishing deal and a record deal and he was on The Voice. His name is Jim Ranger. He’s helped on a lot of projects that I’ve pulled him in on and we’ve worked together in the past couple of years, super great dude.

So, we are just kind of thinking of ways that we can offer things to the community and kind of fill a gap where there is an education divide on, there are some people training the thing, and then there’s some people who have done the thing. And we want to really kind of fill that gap of, hey, this is the information you need to know in order to do this. So we went out, had our conversation. He’s totally game. So, what’s going to happen is we’re going to end up creating something special from that meeting. It’s going to be great, they always are.

But building that strong network allows for you to be able to have your beautiful, brilliant ideas and then think to yourself, how do I bring this brilliant idea to life? And some of the ideas are so brilliant in concept. And then you run them and you run them through and then you build a team. And some of them come to fruition and are fantastic and some of them are not and that’s totally fun too.

And I love to think of it, I can’t even remember who said it but one of my favorites, I think it might have been Jeff Bezos. But I think he said he is just working on his next failure where some of the things you are working on can be your potential success, your great, amazing, gifted success. But most of the time you are working on your next failure. If you are planning to do big things, they can’t all be winners.

And I want that concept in your mind to really bring you peace and bring you soothing energy in the times that you feel, hey, I am not feeling ultra great about the work that I am doing or how I’m showing up. All of that can be easily adjusted. That’s not a problem. Building your strong network allows you to tune back in and realign.

I have an amazing guitarist and he is so passionate, so driven and works so hard and is so diligent all the time. And he will come and he will shoot me ideas after ideas after ideas literally every single, probably every single day or every other day and he’s fantastic. And so, working with him has been such a joy because he has passion and fire all the time. Someone who is passion and fire all the time is passion and fire all the time. So there comes an intensity with someone like that.

And understanding that level of intensity allows me to accept and love him in his own ways, in his operational style and really value what he brings to our dynamic. And what we plan to do in the future, his name is Ryan, Ryan Fergon, a wonderful, amazing guitarist. Has done great things with many other bands in the past. And I feel very fortunate to have him working with me now. And we’re working on a really fun solo project coming up that I will be excited to share more of later.

I’m going to go on to four. The life of a performer is something I love to look at as a movie in a screenplay or a stage play. And I do this because I think it gives you the understanding that you’re going to have that beginning, middle and end. You are going to have those moments that are wonderful and breathtaking. And I love to imagine the audience watching and really rooting for you, whether that’s in love or whether that’s in loss, whether that’s in, you tried for something great and it didn’t fare the way that you wanted it to.

And you have a team of people watching you and you have viewers and observers and you have people who truly feel for you going through what you are going through. And that is how I look at the life of a performer because we put ourselves on display. We put our information out there. We put our life out there. Any of this information is subject to ridicule. It’s subject to judgment, subject to applause, praise, all of it.

So, when you put yourself out there and you don’t expect those things to come your way and you are surprised when they do. That can shake you up, and that can alter your confidence that can alter how you feel about yourself. And sometimes you can unnecessarily ruminate on things that people have said and in truth, those people don’t matter. They’re not your forever audience. They are passersby. They’re somebody just watching the show or tuned into the movie at that time. They’re only there for a blip in time. They’re not fully invested in you.

And I think about that. Anybody fully invested in your movie, in your life, performer, career, movie, watching that full-time, they will invest in you in a positive way. They will stay tuned into you and your journey in a way that shows love, that shows support. And those are the people that I opt to care about. If people say, “Hey, I’ve got something that really could help you expand your knowledge in this realm or expand upon this growth”, or whatever it may be, and they genuinely wish to share some insight, I am all for it. I’m open to all of it.

So, my beautiful, brilliant performers, listen to me. Your life movie will have some really crummy parts. I’m talking crummy behind the scenes, not going the way you planned it. Sometimes those crummy behind the scenes things end up taking place in public, end up being public because you end up being a public person or personality. That is all part of the journey. Every bit of you is a human person just doing life, and life is the movie. There is no dress rehearsal. Life is a movie. Show up, try your best.

Focus on what you can do to be the best in the moment and expand your whole concept of how you feel about yourself. Decide that the work that you are doing is more than enough to continue the growth for what is next for you or decide to gain more knowledge. Decide to build upon your skill. Decide to reach out to a coach. Decide to increase your connective network. Decide to build teams that you can actively call, and they can be there for you and support you.

I know each one of my friends categorically, I know each one of my friends that you know what, I might call this person for this. My beautiful friend, Sally Meeks, she’s been married to an artist and guitar player, I want to say, for 20 years now. And she understands artists in ways that I cannot explain. She is the most beautiful support, she is such a wonderful woman. And I remember I had a hard time just recently about something and I gave her a call and I said, “Hey, I need to talk to you.” I said, “I’m going to choose one friend to talk about this to, and I choose you.”

And she laughed and she said, “Okay, tell me when and where and I’ll be there.” And she was. And if she did not say the most perfect thing in the whole wide world, it was just too special and too magical, and it is every time I’m with her. Every time I’m with her, we have those moments of special spirituality, really, truly feeling seen and connecting. And that is what you get when you invest and be present in your moment, in understanding that you are just a human person enjoying and enduring this life. You are not comparing yourself to anyone.

You are showing up, just as you are and you’re honoring the good and you’re absolutely honoring and you’ve been working on the things that have opportunities for growth. And you are staying truly connected to the foundation of who you are, who you wish to be and the life that is your real movie. My beautiful performers, thank you so much for listening. Please, if you are new, listen to all of the rest of the episodes, they are super good too. Don’t be afraid to tell me what you want to hear and in the meantime, take care and be well.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to worry about missing an episode, you can follow the show wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you could share the podcast with others who you think would benefit from it and leave a rating and review to let me know what you think now. Now, it doesn’t have to be a five star rating, although I sure hope you love the show. I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome podcast that provides tons of value. Visit amyadamscoaching.com/podcastlaunch for step by step instructions on how to follow, rate and review.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode of The Confident Performer. If you want to learn more about living your truth and showing up as your most authentic, beautiful self, visit www.amyadamscoaching.com. See you next week!