Early 2012.
Back at Cabaret Live, the thing that strikes me is how much we have all improved.
I know I've improved - a lot - and I had a lot of improving to do. But so has everyone else.
Even Sidonie, who sang wonderfully well when I first heard her two years earlier, has really lifted her game and is now singing spectacularly. She has developed her skills of jazz improvization and presents exquisite and unexpected interpretations. It is wonderful to see such progress amongst the group.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" maintains that to achieve mastery requires 10,000 hours of practice. I'm getting three minutes per month of performance time. But, as my singing teacher points out, it's not just those thee minutes - it's also the time you spend in lessons and practising and preparing and thinking about it, plus the post-mortem after the show.
And during this year I come across another book that revolutionizes my approach and completely changes my outlook on life. It is "Mindset - How you can achieve your potential" by Stanford University psychologist Dr Carol Dweck.
In this book she identifies two contrasting mindsets:
I begin to be more philosophical about each performance. Even if I don't sing as well as I hoped, I try to learn something from the experience. If I produced any bad sounds, I analyze why that happened, and how I can prevent that from happening again. I start focusing less on "Did I look and sound good?" and more on "What did I learn?"
This new philosophy starts to permeate my entire life. In my business I become less self-conscious about my presentations and my marketing efforts. I just ask myself "What did I learn today?" At the gym, I start to challenge myself harder in my Body Balance class. You can either balance well and look beautiful, or challenge yourself to the point where you fall over. If you don't wobble at all you are not pushing yourself.
A friend has looked at some of my videos on YouTube. She advises me to take down the videos of my practice sessions at Cabaret Summer School because some of the sounds are "unpleasant", and these videos might "harm my case". I decide to leave them there, because they form a record of my journey.
I'm discovering that playing it safe doesn't bring improvement:
Commit to the song;
Take the risk of it coming out wrong;
because it just might
come out wonderfully right.
The thing is to learn what you need to do to produce a good sound. And inevitably this involves some trial and error.
Every time you get up, you'll be better next time. When you look back you'll sometimes feel mortified about how bad you were, what you subjected your audiences to.
But this is how you grow.
Back at Cabaret Live, the thing that strikes me is how much we have all improved.
I know I've improved - a lot - and I had a lot of improving to do. But so has everyone else.
Even Sidonie, who sang wonderfully well when I first heard her two years earlier, has really lifted her game and is now singing spectacularly. She has developed her skills of jazz improvization and presents exquisite and unexpected interpretations. It is wonderful to see such progress amongst the group.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" maintains that to achieve mastery requires 10,000 hours of practice. I'm getting three minutes per month of performance time. But, as my singing teacher points out, it's not just those thee minutes - it's also the time you spend in lessons and practising and preparing and thinking about it, plus the post-mortem after the show.
And during this year I come across another book that revolutionizes my approach and completely changes my outlook on life. It is "Mindset - How you can achieve your potential" by Stanford University psychologist Dr Carol Dweck.
In this book she identifies two contrasting mindsets:
• People with a "fixed mindset" believe believe that everyone is born
with a fixed amount of talent, intelligence or other qualities. If they succeed at
something, they attribute their success to being smart and talented. If they fail, they
blame their lack of ability.
• Conversely, people with a "growth mindset" believe that talent, intelligence and
other qualities can be cultivated and developed. If they succeed at something, they
attribute their success to the amount of effort they put in. If they fail, they blame
their lack of effort and decide to try harder.
It's easy to fall into the trap of labeling ourselves, and I've fallen into this very trap.
Although I regard myself as a high achiever and life-long learner, I found while
reading Dweck's book, that I recognized some of the fixed-mindset traits in myself.
For example, when I was at school, I had a bad experience in Drama class. One of my classmates ridiculed my efforts on stage. Based on this single incident, I decided that I had no acting talent. I labeled myself "a terrible actor". For years I told myself (and anyone else who would listen) "I am hopeless at acting"; "I can't act to save myself". For
years I refused to get onto a stage or to do any public speaking. Then I discovered a
Toastmasters Club, where you can learn the skills of public speaking in an orderly
way and practise your skills in a supportive environment. Gradually I built my skills
and confidence. I discovered that if you haven't got "it", you can develop "it".
If you regard yourself as a smart, successful person, you have an image to preserve,
and this might hold you back from doing things that could tarnish that image or
make you look foolish.
When you perform, if you are focused on looking good, you will not take risks that could lift your performance to the next level. I start to take some of those risks instead of playing it safe. I stop labelling others as talented and myself as a pretender. I start to correlate effort with improvement.
I begin to be more philosophical about each performance. Even if I don't sing as well as I hoped, I try to learn something from the experience. If I produced any bad sounds, I analyze why that happened, and how I can prevent that from happening again. I start focusing less on "Did I look and sound good?" and more on "What did I learn?"
This new philosophy starts to permeate my entire life. In my business I become less self-conscious about my presentations and my marketing efforts. I just ask myself "What did I learn today?" At the gym, I start to challenge myself harder in my Body Balance class. You can either balance well and look beautiful, or challenge yourself to the point where you fall over. If you don't wobble at all you are not pushing yourself.
A friend has looked at some of my videos on YouTube. She advises me to take down the videos of my practice sessions at Cabaret Summer School because some of the sounds are "unpleasant", and these videos might "harm my case". I decide to leave them there, because they form a record of my journey.
I'm discovering that playing it safe doesn't bring improvement:
Commit to the song;
Take the risk of it coming out wrong;
because it just might
come out wonderfully right.
The thing is to learn what you need to do to produce a good sound. And inevitably this involves some trial and error.
Every time you get up, you'll be better next time. When you look back you'll sometimes feel mortified about how bad you were, what you subjected your audiences to.
But this is how you grow.
No comments:
Post a Comment