Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
Nearly two years ago now I decided to start noodling around on ukulele and enlisted the assistance of my friend Ralph Shaw to help me pick out an instrument that would stay in tune and be a good place to get started… He suggested the Flea Soprano Ukulele put out by Flea Market Music and upon visiting their website and checking out the various styles I opted for the Pineapple model… Just seamed to suit my personality.
I spend months noodling on my new Uke before I ever ventured out for a public performance and was lucky to have the Vancouver Ukulele Circle as my first audience. The Ukulele Circle has a policy to give you a standing ovation for your first public performance which was really a wonderful boost given how nervous I was when I stepped up on stage.
I couldn’t believe how scared I was to attempt a song on my ukulele in front of an audience. I rarely ever feel nervous about stepping on stage to do my comedy juggling show, but there was just something nerve-racking about being on stage with a prop that I had no history with. Thankfully I survived the performance, received a standing ovation and continue to plug away on other songs that I may be able to work up enough to perform.
I’ve just returned home from a contract aboard the GRAND Princess and am pleased to report that I summoned the courage to try putting a couple of songs into my performance while aboard ship and the audience really seemed to enjoy my musical performances which was both remarkable and a huge relief…
I read something once that suggested that the chemical reaction that happens in your body when you get scared and the one that happens when you get excited are virtually the same… It’s one thing to intellectualize this, but it’s another thing completely to get over a case of the nerves when you try something new out on stage. Going with what you know is by far the easiest thing to do, but my experience with pushing myself beyond my comfort-zone was that it made me feel somehow more alive and this was where my fear turned into excitement.
It’s often not easy to take this sort of leap of faith, but I highly recommend it when ever you get the chance.
Awesome, what a great thing to notice, that anxiety and excitement are physiologically the same. Yes, I’ve been called a juggling geek, but I’m nearly more so a psychology geek for those who know me best.
And kudos to you for appealing to your audience in a whole new way.
If I may be so bold as to add to this conversation.
The key question to ask is this?
How do you know when to be anxious and when to be excited? The obvious answer is ‘I’ve done the comedy juggling performance more often than the ukelele performance’. Frequency does build belief and therefore comfort/confidence, however I also think something more subtle is going on.
Think of something comfortable like a juggling show, get a good picture of it in your head. Notice how the picture makes you feel, probably fairly relaxed. It may even be so comfortable that you find you need to ‘get excited or pumped up’ for the show.
Now picture the Ukelele performance, or something that makes you nervous. It could be the same cruise ship crowd. Even though the crowd is the same, the thought of performing the new thing causes nervousness or anxiety fear.
You’ll probably notice that something is different about the picture. It’s perhaps brighter, there’s tinge of yellow or red or some other colour to it, it’s more vivid, closer to you, not so grey, perhaps it’s faster, and you may even picture things going wrong, even more nervousness, the picture might appear closer (so as to really get your attention). There are a number of ways you can ‘see’ it as being different than the easy peasy non-fear inducing juggling performance.
It’s the picture that lets you know to be afraid. You then say something like, “what if I screw up.” You picture that happening, even more nervousness results. And this can become a habit of nervousness.
Even though you might be unaware of it, you have a ‘strategy’ for getting nervous, a strategy for getting excited, and a strategy for being relaxed, and a big part of it is the picture, or likely motion picture video complete with cool transitions and titles in Dave’s case.
Try to get the ukelele playing picture/internal video to match the juggling picture in distance, location, tone, and most of all how it makes you feel (excited/like having fun), and of course picture it going well and getting a standing O. (Ovation). Ha! Those Uke players are pretty smart.
Hopefully this makes the leap into a new and bigger comfort zone easier for those about to try something new.
Pedantically yours,
Robnut
I also deliberately picked very short Ukulele Songs just in case things went completely sideways…
Thankfully they didn’t but ya know… Baby steps… Baby steps…