Ep #1: Confidence Is a Choice

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.

Hi, I’m Amy Adams. Welcome to The Confident Performer. This episode is my first episode on my very first podcast and I am so excited. Confidence is a choice is what we’re talking about today. And I want to turn performers who are dreamers into doers. And I have spent 20 years of my life in this entertainment industry and found a way and navigated a number of different ways to kind of turn angles and change directions and build and create a career where I’m actively still a part of the entertainment industry, but I’m not always at the forefront of being seen.

And it’s so important that I share this information with so many dreamers out there who I really, truly want to inspire to become doers. Some people may remember me as the girl with pink hair on American Idol. And sometimes when people say, “Oh my gosh, I remember you from American Idol”, it’s kind of sweet and flattering but it literally feels like that was 1876 for me, so it feels so, so long ago. So I do kind of make a joke about that. And every now and again it is just funny to kind of come across the idea.

I remember going out from American Idol and I remember part of the work that I’m in today actually started from my audition in season two. I auditioned for American Idol season two and I made it to the executive producers, and they gave me some of the best information I’ve ever had or heard in my entire life. And they said, “You’re a pretty girl with a pretty voice but there’s nothing quite special that stands out about you.”

And you can imagine, as any person hearing that information from somebody that you want to reach a goal with, you heard it first. It was something that jolted me where I was like, “What? There’s nothing special about me.” And at that time, American Idol had a cut off age as far as where you could audition. So the age limit was 24. I was 23 at the time. And I heard that information, I drove back to my little hometown, and I thought, you know what, pretty girl, pretty voice, nothing special about me. What do I do about this?

And then I was determined that very next year to do something with that information. I went to American Idol like it was a fancy job interview and that was not who I was. And so I committed myself to becoming in one year, and sharing and showing confidently, you know what, this is who I am, more or less, take me or leave me. And then really learned how to play the game in the meantime.

So I wanted to create this podcast so that people who are out there who want to learn to be a performer, who is confident and just shows up and realizes if they don’t get the job, that is totally fine, that job is not for them. And realize if they get criticism or they get feedback, that this information is for you. This is happening for you. This is not happening to you. And I want to guide and just pull people along this journey, that you can truly create a life you love. You can create a life that you wake up every single day and you’re so excited to live.

And I started as a little kid, truly with just big dreams and having zero idea of how I was going to reach them, zero idea. And through this journey of now being a performer for 20 plus years and doing so professionally, I started when I was 16. And we’ll talk a lot about that on the show and that’s the fun part. We’ll have some people who are my friends in the industry, and we’ll talk about just different sides of the industry that you can be a part of that sometimes people don’t even know exist and that’s the really fun part.

But I want to talk today about confidence being a choice. Now, there’s something in this world where we get so bought into kind of getting caught up in what’s going on around us. And there’s so much negativity online or there’s so much negativity in the news or whatever it may be. And I actually don’t watch the news. And some people if there’s really big things they can tell me what’s going on. I’ll be fine, happy to hear it if it’s something I need to know, but if not, I usually don’t pay attention to it.

I stopped kind of letting the bad news kind of drown me out, and I remembered actively deciding, you know what? I’m not going to think about those things that make me feel unhappy. I’m not going to think about things that make me sad. And as a performer early on, I decided, you know what? I’m going to move to LA. I don’t know how I’m going to get set up. I don’t know who’s going to help me. I might have to be a waitress. At the time, I was actually a makeup artist simultaneously.

And I remember going out to LA and trying to figure out what am I going to do to make ends meet. And it wasn’t until I really just kind of actively decided in this industry that who I am and how I show up, I have to be really, really confident in. I have to be fine saying whatever I did was more than enough, whether I got the job, whether I didn’t get the job. Obviously any performer knows when you go and audition and you work for something, you want to get the job.

And if you don’t get the job, and sometimes if it’s, you’re stacked against a number of auditions or callbacks or whatever it may be, that you don’t get the job, you do not feel super great about yourself. And that’s totally normal, it’s all part of it. But this confidence being a choice, I didn’t even know that a mind could be managed.

And it wasn’t until I was on American Idol, and I had a dear friend and actually someone who ended up joining me in my career a little bit and saved me from a lot of just really, really challenging life decisions and stuff. His name is Jess Mercado, he was my friend. He’s an attorney and he was my entertainment attorney after American Idol and just a super, super dude. But he actually kind of helped me realize that I needed to kind of manage my mind and he would walk me through a lot of scenarios.

I would have panic attacks sometimes on American Idol and I didn’t even know what a panic attack was. I didn’t know that that was even a thing. I had stress induced asthma. And I mean, I’m not trying to really just excite every listener and talk about how cool I am with those things. But I want it to be a very common understanding, especially amongst performers, that these things are normal when you induce stress or you do things outside of your comfort zone, but that’s what this podcast is about.

I want to walk individuals through this journey of some of these things are going to happen anyway. But that confidence being a choice is what do you do when you are faced with these moments and these things that are happening to you or happening to your body? And how do you turn them into this is happening for me, this experience is happening for me, this opportunity is happening for me as opposed to something that you just cannot control?

I love the thought that I’m in control of this is the best news ever. When someone says you are in control of how you feel, which I absolutely live by the law of. I study under a coach who studied under Brooke Castillo, her name is Kym Showers, and she uses Brooke’s model which is circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results. That the only neutral in this scenario is the circumstance.

So you can say I tried out for American Idol. They told me that I was a pretty girl, pretty voice, but there was nothing special and nothing really stood out about me. Now, I can choose to go home and choose to make that be something that defeats me. Or I can choose to go home, and I can choose to turn it around and make that work for me and that’s what I did. And so what I did was I studied every single book that had ever been written by the judges at that time. It was Simon, Paula, and Randy. And read every single book. I watched every single episode.

I wrote every single comment that every single judge said. And then I realized that it’s not just a talent show, this is a game. And it’s all about entertainment. And it’s all about the exciting components of, what are you doing that is interesting? Are you being funny? Are you incredibly good at singing? And I’m a good singer. And so it’s one of those things I wasn’t too worried about if my talent could carry me through. I knew that was not going to be a problem.

But I was also really, really open to having fun all the time. And I remember and you’ll hear, and you’ll learn, I’ve been, previous to my American Idol career, had been pretty much fired from every job I’d ever had because I have trouble following directions. When I reference, I have trouble, that means I just don’t.

And so sometimes when I’m giving advice and I’m listening to people or kind of coaching through hard scenarios, I really think about, what is that magic inside of them? What is inside of them, that hidden gold inside of them that I can begin to showcase to share to them, you need to focus on what it is inside of you that you have. And this level of fear that you can have as a performer showing up, that can be there to serve you. It can be there to kind of guide you, it can be there as a pressurized component.

And a lot of people actually love that part of performing. They love that kind of fear based thought processes. And loving that process, some people can then say, “Okay, well, I don’t know what to do. I get super nervous. I actually physically shake when I get super nervous.” Deciding to say, “You know what? Yeah, my body might shake. Yeah, I might get uncomfortable, but I’m going to go into that room and whatever happens in that room, I’m going to be fine with, I’m going to be happy with.”

I had an audition one time and I sing the song and I crack. What happens? Can I just keep going? Do I make a scene? Do I stop? Do I just start crying? What do I do? And I always obviously recommend in that moment, confidence is a choice, choosing to say, “You know what? I’m just going to be who I am. I’m going to be 100% who I am so that when I receive criticism, I’m going to be fine receiving that information. I’m going to be fine taking constructive criticism. I’m going to be fine taking criticism, period.”

I’m going to be fine ignoring the noise that’s associated, that comes along with doing anything where you step into the arena. Brené Brown talks a ton about the man in the arena kind of being the most inspirational thing for her and that concept that was shared. And it was so interesting because that’s the same way I think. I only take advice from happy people. I only take advice from positive people. I only take advice from people who are focused on solving a problem.

I don’t take advice from people who are focused on being a problem or being negative or being focused on negative things going on within their life and them having no control. Every single thing we do, based upon that model that I shared, that Brooke Castillo model, that circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. Every single thing we do can determine the quality of our life. And that to me, is the best news ever. I can decide to take this information and decide to make my world be whatever I need it to be.

And so in my practiced last years of actually learning that model, probably about five years now, that model changed my life. That concept changed my life. And even kind of changing and adjusting my life to those things, my life has come in great abundance. And so don’t get me wrong, in my early years of performing, I had the toughest time dealing with the waiting game. I’ve had the toughest time not getting called back. I’ve had the toughest time getting put on hold and then you just never get seen for the show again.

I’ve had the toughest time when you think you’re going to get a contract and then they tell you you’re going to get it and then they offer you and you’re in another contract and you cannot take that contract in good faith. There’s just a lot of different things that you can run up into strategically, but if your mindset is right and you’re able to manage your emotions and you are able to choose and go and operate from a place of confidence, you know you are making the right choice for yourself. You know you’re making the right choice for your career.

So confidence is something that I look at as an empowering mindset that you are truly fine with where you are in your life, in your training. And you’re truly fine understanding from people who want to share wisdom or part wisdom or insight, you’re really fine getting information for growth and growth for potential growth. That is the most important thing for me. When I think about that, that is what I want performers to know is that you can walk into a room confidently, you can be your beautiful self.

And one of my favorite things to do is work with young artists and work with people now who are in the industry, whether that’s on an influencer level, but encouraging them to truly be who they are and not hide who they are from the world. And we all have those muddy parts of us. We all have those kind of gross things that we attach to in our brain, and we make mean something about us.

And honestly, once we can let some of those go and once we can free ourself and then realize no, that is so very human of me. That is so very a part of this whole human experience. And once we realize we can step into that goodness, step into that strength, step into that glory, we can truly show up in whatever stage we’re on as confidently as we can. And that really is what life is about and not only just as a performer on stage, but that’s throughout life. Don’t you want to walk around feeling confident?

Don’t you want to walk around focused on yourself in that place of pure contentment? I’m not comparing myself to anyone because I’m not in competition with anyone. So feeling that you have to compare yourself or feeling that, oh, well, I’m better than her at this or I’m better than him at that or whatever it may be. If you are truly in a place of confidence and you operate from your own unique understanding of individuality, you get to show up as your best self. You get to show up as the best version of you.

That’s what this podcast is about. That’s why I created The Confident Performer. I hope that every single person that listens to this can decide that they get to choose confidence for themselves. And that is what I hope to share and impart on every single person as they keep listening to The Confident Performer. Thank you so much.

To celebrate the launch of the show, I'm going to be giving away three singer’s essentials baskets. That’s right, count them three, to three lucky listeners who follow, rate, and review the show. It doesn’t have to be a 5-star review, although I sure hope you love the show. And if you don’t, I’ll absolutely haunt your dreams, I mean in a fun way. I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that provides tons of value.

Visit amyadamscoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. Be quick! You don’t have long. I'll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode.

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!

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