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Overcoming Performance Anxiety

I never get a solo in The Chorus
Because my fear of making a mistake
Is louder than my voice.
All you hear is what I'm feeling
Not the song I'm trying to sing.
 
Performance anxiety.
I'm a sufferer
In its myriad forms.
 
Nothing I tried seemed to work.
No cure for anxiety.
As soon as you look at it,
It settles in disrupts everything.
 
Today,
I discovered quite by accident,
Emancipation.
 
I'd been invited to do a small solo.
Just one line really.
I studied it hard,
Still worried I'd mess it up.
 
The director suggested,
I sing it out louder
And then it happened.
 
I wasn't singing the song any more.
The song was singing me.
 
Now I get it!
Become curious about the song.
Get to know it as a living thing
A thing with a spirit
Not a performance to perfect.
 
When you and the song
Know each other as friends,
There is no fear.
Hand in hand
You and the song sing each other.



27 August 2015

by Bill Cattey