Conquer Self-Deprecation: Elevate Your Performance and Confidence

This week in Brisbane, Billie Eilish, in front of tens of thousands of fans, played a shocking bad note on her guitar. Not a soul on earth doesn’t want to beat themselves up after such an incident, but this is where she had an opportunity to sort out the sheep from the goats.

Also, this week, a client had an underwhelming experience at a pitch presentation. Like many of the people I work with, no doubt it was fine for everyone else, but she herself  had negative feelings and that is never fun.

Raise your hand if you have not had the same feelings. This is part of the journey. I certainly have. You can’t be perfect overnight, and for some, the performance growth journey has only recently begun. It takes time – baby steps.

Performance is performance is performance, no matter which genre you play in. Everyone suffers the same, and it takes strength to deal with the challenge. The same rules apply.

Here are 10 steps that will help:

1. Recognise it could have been better, and you want to go into self-flagellation.
2. Stop that thinking by saying “thank you’ to the universe for this growth experience.
3. Run through every step to identify where the negative turning points happened.
4. Recognise your response to them, be that physical, mental or verbal.
5. Now, think of how that response could have been different.
6. Devise how you would change that response next time.
7. Realise you can’t just think about it. You have to have positive actions in mind. For example, would you recite a mantra next time? Would you get up and move? Would you throw a question out to the audience? It has to be an actual ‘action’ not a thought.
8. Feel relief in having taken steps for change.
9. Give yourself a present for being so brave.
10. Smile.

So, what did Billie Eilish do? She swore, laughed and moved on. Go Billie.

Now, go you!

Love, Dr Louise Mahler