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UNSHAKEABLE
FOUNDATIONS
9 Key Mindsets for Overcoming Anxiety
and Frustration in Music Performance
 CONTENTS

3
What do the top musicians
have in common?

6
The key elements of your
ideal internal state

9
Where are you now?
Where would you like to be?

14
Measure your progress and
course correct

16
Taking this further
What do the top
musicians have in
common?
Musicians operate in a huge variety of circumstances – playing different
instruments, in different musical styles, and covering everything from solo
performances up to large groups.

Great musicians themselves down the ages have been very different, too
– all sorts of different personalities can be hugely successful.

Some are outgoing while others are introverted. Some embody wild
creative flair while others showcase precise technical mastery.

There’s no single blueprint for success – exactly what you’d expect in such
a creative field.

But there IS a specific group of mindsets that the best musicians all
share1.

These key mindsets are available to you too

The good news is that they can all be learned.

1. In fact, it goes further than that – these will be shared by the top performers in just about any
arena. Feel free to apply these ideas to other areas of your life too.

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More than that, they MUST be learned. No-one is born with an innate
ability to possess these skills. This stuff is all trainable.

If you see someone who appears to do all this naturally, then know that
it’s been trained in some way that’s simply not visible to you.

Chances are that this will have been unconscious training, delivered
simply through the circumstances of their past. But it’s practice that has
developed these skills nevertheless.

The secret to consistently great performances

In order to deliver at the upper range of your talent and skill day in, day
out you need two things. Yes, you need good mechanical technique – all
the fundamentals need to be solid. But you also need good mental skills.
Ups and downs in performance are often traceable directly to
psychological ups and downs.

This group of mindsets that the great performers share forms the solid
foundation that your performances are built on.

They’re crucial to your development in the practice room, too.

The level to which you’ve developed these mindsets will set limits on what
you can achieve in performance (and with your music in general). In
areas where these mindsets are lacking, they’ll hold your performance
back.

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The best musicians are consistent (and consistently good!) in performance
because they’re consistent psychologically. Playing well is the result of
creating a particular internal state that allows your best playing to come
out.

Simply put, musicians who can consistently create this internal state for
themselves perform consistently.

This ebook can’t cover everything

you need to get to consistently
great performances, but it is going
to give you a solid roadmap so you
can see where you’re going and
start you out on this journey.

You’re going to discover:

• What the key mindsets are

• How to evaluate and develop
them
• A simple way to check that No matter how impressive the

you’re applying them in conceptual design that you put

together for your performance,
performance
and the technical skills that you

Let’s get started… use to construct it, remember that

any structure is only as solid as
the foundation it’s built on.

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The key elements of your
ideal internal state

Here are the 9 key mindsets. Don’t try to do anything specific with them
just yet. For now, just read through them carefully – we’ll talk about how
to evaluate where you are on each one in the next section.

1. Self-motivated

There’s no need for external forces to tell you where to go or to push you
to get there. The motivation and direction comes from within. You’re
making music for yourself, not to meet someone else’s expectations.

2. Positive but realistic

You always see things from the angle of success – what can happen and
what is possible rather than the opposites. In any given situation your
default is to think about how you can build things from here rather than to
complain or criticise. This is always realistic and pragmatic, though –
practical steps to take rather than far-off daydreams.

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3. Enthusiastic

You’re always capable of getting energised to play your best regardless of

how you feel that day, the music you’re performing, or the situation you’re
performing in. You can get your energy where it wants to be regardless of
fatigue, music you’re not thrilled by, or low-stakes
performances/practices.

4. Alert and focused

You’re capable of long and intensive periods of total concentration.

Further, you tune into what’s important and tune out the unimportant
stuff. And you do this regardless of the situation – whether there’s no
pressure or great pressure, your focus remains strong and targeted.

5. Self-confident

You have a healthy but unshakeable sense of confidence and belief in

yourself and your ability to play well. You don’t find that you get dragged
down by other people’s worries or negativity. On the contrary, your
confident attitude and calm demeanour tends to rub off on others.

6. Determined

Your desire to reach your goals is so strong that it’s incomprehensible to

others who don’t share your love of music. You’re relentless in pursuit of
them. You’re not thrown off-course or dissuaded by obstacles and
setbacks but continue to move forward consistently one step at a time.

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7. Responsible for your own actions

You don’t make excuses. Either you did, or you didn’t. Ultimately,
everything begins and ends with you and you’re comfortable with that.

8. In control of your emotions

Unhelpful conditions, stupid mistakes etc can be powerful triggers of

negative emotion. If you can’t control anger, frustration and fear then
they will control you. You’re able to rise above this and tap into positive
emotions instead.

9. Calm and relaxed under pressure

You don’t see being put to the test as a threat, but rather as a challenge.
You don’t seek to avoid pressure but see it as an opportunity to explore
the limits of what you’re capable of.

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Where are you now?
Where would you like
to be?
As you read through the list of different mindsets, you probably got a
sense of where you were for each one quite naturally. It’s worth taking a
short bit of time to be a bit more systematic, though, to make sure you’re
fully aware.

Having an idea of how you measure up against these mindsets and where
you want to develop is a huge step forward.

The one key thing I want you to come away from this checklist with is
increased and ACCURATE awareness.

To get this I’m afraid you’re going to have to do some work.

Not a lot, though, and I promise you it will be well worth it.

Measure where you are objectively

Go back and read through the list of key mindsets again. As you do this,
just spend a minute or two of reflection on each one. How strong do you
reckon you are in each area?

Be honest with yourself – you’re the one who loses out if you pretend
things are better than they really are.
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And ground this in reality
as much as possible.
Don’t just make a
judgement on how you
feel generally about each
mindset. Think back to
specific examples where
the mindset was relevant
When improving in any area, simply being
and remember exactly
aware is half the battle. It’s only once
how you felt and thought
you’re aware of the situation that you can
in those situations. consciously act to change it.

As you go through the list of key mindsets you’ll notice that, as well as
relating directly to how you cope in the heat of performance, they all also
have aspects that relate to the bigger picture too.

Both angles are important so make sure you take everything into account.

Are you assessing your mindset based on how you are in practice as well
as in performance?

Sometimes, looking at the practice angle gives you more data and, hence,
a deeper insight into your mindset overall.

Sometimes you might notice significant differences in your mindset

between practice and performance – that’s useful information as well.

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Plan where you’re going

If you’ve taken the time to assess where you currently stand then your
increased awareness has put you light-years ahead of most other
musicians. By investing time in thinking through this, you’ve ALREADY
made significant progress.

But there’s more – remember that you CAN develop these skills further if
you choose.

If there are areas where you think you’re lacking, then you have the
ability to change that.

And if there are areas where you’re pretty strong already then you can
strengthen them still further if you want.

Just one word of caution. Trying to improve everything at once is a recipe

for overwhelm and failure. Working on just one area at a time is much
more manageable – and you’re much more likely to see lasting success.

Have a look across the whole list of mindsets and pick just one that’s most
important for you to work on.

This could be because it’s the one thing that’s most clearly holding you
back, so improving it would make the single biggest difference to your
performance. Or it could be because you reckon it’s the area where it will
be easiest to make significant progress.

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Don’t fret too much about whether you’ve made the “perfect” choice. Just
pick one and get on with it.

When you’ve moved forward significantly in your first choice, you can
always come back and pick a new one to work on.

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How to develop these mindsets

This is not the place for a comprehensive strategy and list of exercises for
how to improve all these different mindsets. That would need much more
detail. But I do want to give you a couple of simple but effective
approaches that you can use to get started.

1. Yet more awareness…

Simply being aware of the mindset that you want to develop and
concentrating on that in your practice and performance can go a long way.
There are specific exercises out there, but you don’t necessarily need
them to make basic progress.

2. Go wider than music

Think about where you are with these mindsets in other areas of your life.
Most people tend to find that these are not fixed quantities that apply
everywhere, but that they change depending on the context. For example,
you might be totally self-confident giving a talk in front of an audience but
lacking in confidence when it comes to performing music in front of a
similar audience. Or vice versa.

If you can think of another area where the mindset you want to work on is
better developed than it is in music, then use that. Connect with how you
feel when the mindset is where you want it, and then try and transfer that
mindset across to music.

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Measure your progress
and course correct

Finally, it’s important to have a way to check where you are on a regular
basis. This will help your motivation as it allows you to recognise the
progress you make. It will also help you to continue to stay realistic – if
something’s not moving forward (or going in the wrong direction) then
you’ll notice it rather than potentially just taking for granted that
everything’s ok.

And, of course, this is yet more awareness (have you got the picture that
I’m big on awareness yet?) so it will act as a method for improvement
itself. Every time you make yourself aware of how things stand, you
provide an opportunity for things to improve naturally without you having
to work on them consciously.

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Make a simple assessment after performances

There are much more detailed ways of doing this available. For now,
though, a really basic approach will make a great start and is much better
than nothing.

Just ask yourself 3 simple questions after every performance. If you can
answer “yes” to all 3 of these then you’ve won the most important battle.

1. “I gave 100%. I gave my best

effort and my full attention in
every moment.”

2. “I maintained a predominantly
positive, healthy and optimistic
attitude with myself”
Good intentions for intangible actions
3. “I accepted full responsibility for often slip away in the heat of the
moment. Using a checklist can help
me, for what I did and didn’t ensure that those important things
actually happen.
do” (e.g. didn’t blame
equipment, venue conditions,
other musicians, or anything
else)

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TAKING THIS FURTHER
This is not something you’ll sort out overnight.

And it’s not a case of “once and done”.

Keep working on this stuff alongside your other music practice, and
keep assessing how your performances go in terms of your mindset
as well as just in terms of the direct outcomes. As you pay attention
to these general ideas over a long period of time, you’ll find that
being aware of these issues gradually starts to become automatic.

Hold onto this ebook as you’ll probably want to keep coming back to
the ideas in here occasionally over a long period of time.

It can sometimes be challenging to adopt these mindsets in the real

world – even when you know they make logical sense. To help with
this, you’ll find plenty of exercises setting out simple, practical steps
to take at playinthezone.com and especially in the email tips which
accompany this ebook (make sure you check your inbox and junk
mail folder if you haven’t received the first email yet).

If you get stuck then drop me an email at mark@playinthezone.com

Or just get in touch to tell me what you thought of this ebook – I’d
love to know!

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