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I’d like to talk about psychologist Angela Duckworth’s concept of grit. She describes grit as the quality of being resilient in the face of failure, while remaining deeply committed to that activity over the long-term (Duckworth, 2016). It’s one of those concepts that very nicely sums up the combination of resilience, inner strength, passion and […]

Some of you have probably heard of the “growth mindset”, a term coined by Carol Dweck, psychologist and author of the book “Mindset: The Psychology of Success.” I want to talk about it here because in addition to having mastery goals (which I talked about in last week’s post), having a growth mindset helped me […]

Intro to Achievement Goal Theory In my post entitled “Understanding Music Performance Anxiety,” I briefly mentioned that a possible source of anxiety is performing with the desire of being better than others, or to not be worse than others. In psychology, these goal orientations are often referred to as performance-approach and performance-avoidance goals.  Performance-approach and […]

To continue from last week’s post, I’d like to share what I did to overcome performance nerves. Doing this made me feel more comfortable and confident, and helped me actually enjoy being up on stage. Here is my step-by-step guide to overcoming music performance anxiety:  Designate your Goal Performance  Maybe you have a particularly nerve-wracking […]

There are so many personal experiences that I could share with you about performances that were derailed by crippling stage fright. This wasn’t a problem in early childhood, but became quite the untameable beast in my teenage years. I would spend days, sometimes weeks before a performance filled with dread and anticipation. The few hours […]

Welcome to my blog! Here I will be sharing some ideas about performing and mental health. I hope this can be a resource that helps you all lead happier musical lives, while also building the tools to live more positively and resiliently in all aspects. Thank you for stopping by!