Overwhelmed?

After working with clients, some of you have told me outright that you're overwhelmed by all the new information. With others, you don't have to tell me -- it's written all over your faces. And some of you take it all in stride, especially if you've already performed a lot.

For the overwhelmed, the worry is that you'll be overly critical of yourself the next time you're on stage. For your next performance or two, being coached may work against you rather than help you. I'll be the first to agree that this could happen. So here are some ways around it:

1. Give yourself time to absorb what you've heard. Decide what applies to you and what doesn't. Decide what you agree with and what you don't. (There are some things about performing styles that are subjective, like the way you deliver a song line or a story between songs. Other things, like slouching or mumbling incoherently or boring people with poor pacing, are simply not acceptable.)
I recently heard a fabulous guitar player and entertainer talk about how he watched himself on video tape and discovered that he had a "hand wringing" compulsion, a habit he practised during the patter between songs. So, the next few times he performed he focused on changing that. Next on his list, he said, would be to work on how he regularly pushed his glasses up on his nose, sometimes even in the middle of a song. (Something else to keep in mind: These kinds of small mannerisms become exaggerated by the proximity of the camera, so if you expect to end up on YouTube it's a good idea to rehearse a lot on videotape to eliminate any peculiar habits.)
2. Make a list of what you want to improve, and develop a plan over time and over a number of upcoming gigs. You can't change everything at once, so make your peace with that now. For each rehearsal period and the resulting concert, focus only on one or two elements of change until you're comfortable with them. Then work on another couple.
3. Visualize yourself as you'll look and act once you've integrated these improvements into your performing.
4. Accept that everyone is overwhelmed by new situations and new information and that the only way to get past this stage is to allow time, and the repetition of new patterns, to work on your brain.
5. Finally, performing is a process, even for those who've done it forever. Professional performers are in a perpetual state of self-assessment, taking each audience as a new challenge and trying to pull off a show that feels just as fresh the thirtieth time as it did the first time. If you look at this stage of development -- the "overwhelmed" stage -- as a short term consequence of getting to where you really want to be, presenting better shows will be the natural outcome.