If you’ve played music live, you’ve experienced stage fright. Your mouth goes dry, a sick feeling sinks into the pit of your stomach. Your heart pounds. Your hands get shaky.
It’s not just you. Even if they’ve been on the road for decades, many seasoned performers feel stage fright in the minutes leading up to every performance. Once they get out on the stage, though, the fear begins to fade away after the first or second song.
Watching that performer from the audience, you’d probably never know how nervous they feel inside – veteran performers have performed so many times that they can look cool and confident… even when their hearts are in their throats.
Stage fright, then, is unpleasant but temporary. If you prepared well for your performance, you can step onto the stage, trust your training, and do your thing – soon enough, your knees stop knocking together, you relax into the limelight, and you nail your performance.
Stage Fright Happens at Home, Too
Stage fright is a very noticeable form of anxiety, even though it is temporary. Any kind of anxiety, stage fright or otherwise, can act as a poison that can slowly wreck a person up, but it is also treatable. Many people tend to use kratom strains (that could be bought from Kona Kratom or the like) or practice yoga and meditation to manage the symptoms of anxiety. However, you must understand that anxiety is not just dangerous when it is severe. There are many other forms of it that are subtler and sneakier -and they can trip you up even when you’re at home in your practice room.
To cope with these subtle anxieties, most people find themselves procrastinating. And to get out of such habits, it could be essential to understand what anxiety and stress are and how you can manage them. So that, when you are anxious, you can self-analyze the situation to find an effective solution for it. You may also consult a mental health expert to get medical assistance. In severe cases, if anxiety is left unchecked, it can lead to physical issues like migraines or even erectile dysfunction. While these can be managed and kept under control by taking a migraine pill or sildenafil (for ED), it can be tough to permanently dispose of issues that arose from the mind without therapy or talking.
As for procrastination, people mostly practice it unknowingly.
When you’ve got all the learning materials you need, when you know what you need to work on, and you still find yourself putting off practice sessions, you’re actually doing a very natural thing that we all do from time to time.
Here’s a play-by-play of how procrastination works: First, there’s something about the task of practicing that you’re feeling anxious about. Practice requires that we spend time doing things that we’re not very good at yet – so of course that’s going to be a little stressful.
When you think about doing something that you’re dreading, it’s going to cause some unpleasant feelings. Not quite as bad as stage fright, but still unpleasant. To shake off that discomfort, we often find ourselves turning our attention to cheaper, easier rewards: web surfing; checking email or social networks; playing video games; watching TV.
Soon enough, distracting yourself from practice this way becomes a habit. The problem is that your discomfort with the task ahead doesn’t really get resolved or confronted – just delayed. If you develop a serious procrastination habit, it can even lead to feeling self-doubt and despair over being unable to accomplish your goals.
The Good News
The good news is that you can break patterns of procrastination. Like stage fright, anxiety about practicing evaporates just minutes after you actually begin work on whatever you’ve been putting off.
The key is to recognize signs of procrastination in yourself and plan around them. Recognize your own fears, both large and small, and address those fears. If you need help, consult professionals at Citron Hennessey (https://www.privatetherapy.com/about/online-therapy/) or similar clinics for better success.
The real trick of overcoming procrastination is to just get started in some small way, and then reward yourself. It’s a bit like diving into chilly water in the late summertime – you shiver for about a minute, but then you relax and get used to the water. Soon enough, you’re floating happily on your back, bobbing on the waves.
As unpleasant as the symptoms of stage fright can be, you can still take the stage and perform well. And as daunting as practice can seem, you can still show up and do the work.