Is Your Definition of Success Condemning You to Unnecessary Worry and Doubt?

Have you ever given what you thought was a terrible performance only to come off the stage and have people telling you they thought you played brilliantly? That they really enjoyed it.

It left you confused.

That new material you’d spent ages working on didn’t come out right in your solo. Or maybe you’re thinking of that glaring mistake you made in a part that you should be able to play easily.

How could they not see how bad it was?

Aren’t they just less well informed?

To a certain extent, yes.

They’ll generally be less experienced musicians. They may not be aware of some of the details of what’s going on in the music. They almost certainly won’t be aware of some of the specific nuances relating to your individual instrument.

But there’s more to it than that.

There are two distinct functions at play here – creating the music and experiencing the music.

The picture you see will inevitably look different depending on which side you’re coming from

You’re working hard to create the music.

You may give some of your attention over to listening to it as well. But you’ll never be able to bring your full awareness to the listening process.

And you’ll never be able to exclude the part of your awareness which is involved in creating. Please don’t even try – a great performance needs you to focus your attention on the most important thing​.

The audience are free to come at the music from a position of pure experience.

This difference alone is bound to change their perception.

Imagine that you were able to be in two places at once. You could arrange things so that you were playing the music while, simultaneously, another version of you was sat in the audience simply listening. After the gig, these two “you”s would give very different descriptions of their experiences.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the audience was right?

You could relax after the performance and simply accept and embrace the plaudits.

No need to hang onto your own concerns about what you got wrong​. About what you should have done better.

That’s not bad for a start in itself – but it can go much deeper than that. It would free you up from the need to judge your performance as it’s happening.

There’s no point in worrying about how well you’re playing if you’re going to have to change your assessment later once you hear what the audience thinks.

It would free you up altogether from any need for self-criticism or disappointment with your playing. You could play freely without any need to judge.

Is there any way the audience could be right about this?

Actually – yes.

There’s a very natural human tendency to focus on the things which have gone wrong ​rather than the things that have gone right.

This has been extremely successful in evolutionary terms. But it doesn’t work so well when it comes to evaluating your performance. It means that you remember a lot more of the bad bits than the good bits.

You also have a tendency to play down the importance of things that are very familiar to you.

This means that you take for granted a lot of the fundamental skills on your instrument that you’ve spent hundreds or thousands of hours developing. You forget that, while these things may seem basic to you now, they can seem miraculous to our audience.

Just like they seemed miraculous to you before you learned how to do them.

Similarly, you tend to place extra emphasis on the things that are new to you.

You place a disproportionate amount of emphasis on the latest things you’ve been working on.

Almost by definition, these little areas are where you’re least consistent and in control. This is where things are most likely to diverge from how you’d like them to be.

And when they do – you mark the whole performance down as a result.

So, not only do you tend to notice the good stuff less than the bad.

You simultaneously give less importance to the good stuff that you DO notice than to the bad stuff you notice.

This means that it’s highly likely that your own assessment of your performance is skewed way too far towards the negative.

Whose judgement is more important here, anyway?

When it’s put like that, I hope you’ll agree that the aim of each performance is to give the audience ​a great experience.

And yet, how often do you find yourself lost in thoughts or desires about what YOU want to happen?

About how well YOU played?

You probably judge the success of a performance by measuring YOUR experience.

Put the audience first…

Next time you perform, see what it’s like if you change your definition of success to focus purely on the audience’s experience.

What do you have to do differently? How do you have to think differently?

Try being unselfish. Shift your aim from addressing YOUR needs to serving the AUDIENCE instead.

If you can do this, you’ll find that there are some huge bonuses that will come back your way as a result.

…and reap the benefits

If you’re truly focused on delivering maximum enjoyment to the audience then you’ll find that this crowds out your ability to do other things.

You can’t dwell on past mistakes.

You can’t worry about what’s coming up.

You can’t judge how well you think you’re performing.

You have to let that all go and concentrate on what you’re doing right now to give them the best possible experience.

This is a powerful mindset to help you get into the moment and stay there.

​Moving forward

We’ve seen how the audience will perceive your performance differently than you do.

And how their perception may be “right”.

If you let it, this realisation can free you up to stop thinking about yourself and thinking about the audience instead.

Having the mindset of putting the audience first will help free you from worry and self-criticism​. It can help you stay in the moment as well.

It shouldn’t stop when you finish playing either.

Take this same mindset into how you interact with people after the gig’s done. Accept any compliments gracefully even if you’re tempted to downplay things, or to point out bits that didn’t go so well.

Learn to entertain the idea that, just maybe, your judgement of how things went is flawed. That the audience may have a better view of the performance than you did.

Better still, aim to eventually reach a point where you don’t make any judgements at all while you’re playing.

Do you typically think about yourself or about the audience when you perform? Let me know in the comments below.