How You Can Beat Stagefright

Stage fright is America’s #1 fear, greater than the fear of death. Virtually everyone who has spoken or performed in public has felt it. Many others avoid public performing—or asking a question at a lecture or in a classroom— to avoid it. Jumpiness, fidgeting, profuse sweating, gut-wrenching bouts of self-doubt, acute self-consciousness, nausea, vomiting, and nervous, botched performances are some of its symptoms. Comedian Mark Schiff describes one of his worst bouts with it (at Caesar’s Palace): “My brain went dead. I got frozen, and I started hyperventilating. . . . I almost bolted off the stage.”

Fortunately there are effective ways to beat stage fright. Foremost is the cognitive-behavioral approach to banishing anxiety problems. Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the precursor to all other cognitive- behavioral therapies, is our foundation in this chapter.

Briefly stated, stage fright is not produced by public speaking or public performing. Speaking or performing do not have the power to frighten you. Circumstances do not make you anxious. Rather, you induce stage fright in yourself with the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas in your very own head.

Stage fright-inducing self-messages have several common features:

• They almost always emanate from musts: “I must do well or I’m no good.” “The audience must like me, otherwise I’m a hopeless loser.” “I must not feel anxious; if I do feel anxious I won’t be able to stand it.” “I must not appear anxious or go blank. If I do, I’ll be a laughing stock.” “I absolutely must perform well, or my life will be ruined.” These are absolutistic, takeno- prisoners demands (and mostly self-demands). Since we’re all fallible humans who make mistakes and easily worry, musts are quite common. Yet they are a recipe for self-induced anxiety; and that anxiety contributes to poor performance.
• Musts are often coupled with awfulizing: “I must do well. It would be awful if I don’t.” “It would be terrible if the audience doesn’t like me.” “It would be horrible if I appear anxious.” In other words, it would be hellish if things don’t go as they must. This failure to see things in perspective, to exaggerate the consequences of doing poorly to infinity, lies at the core of your anxiety.
• Demanding acceptance by an audience. You tell yourself: “I must be liked by the audience. It will be awful if I’m not. If they don’t like me, it’ll prove I’m a total failure.” Notice that these thoughts make your self-worth dependent on an external factor. Equating your value as a person with your performance and/or acceptance by an audience increases pressure dramatically, thus amplifying the anxiety produced via musts and awfulizing.
• Perfectionism rubs salt in the wounds: “I must do well or even outstandingly well. In fact, I must do as well as possible—perfectly. It’ll be awful if I don’t. And if I don’t perform perfectly, I’ll be a loser.” While setting high goals—even impossibly high goals—can prove motivating, perfectionism involves setting impossibly high goals for yourself coupled with the demand that you reach them.
• Self-rating and self-downing are almost invariably the result of demands, awfulizing and, often, perfectionism: “I must do well; I must do as well as is possible; I must do perfectly. It’ll be awful, terrible, horrible, and I’ll be lower than a worm if I don’t.” Notice that these thoughts make your self-worth dependent on how well you perform.
• Anxiety about anxiety is the cherry atop the sundae. It’s what often leads to full-blown panic attacks. Performers notice that they’re anxious or that they may become anxious, and then compound their anxiety by making themselves anxious about being anxious. They tell themselves that they must not be anxious; that they’re no good for being anxious, it’s awful if they’re anxious, and they can’t stand it. This last statement is an expression of Low Frustration Tolerance (LFT), the refusal to accept, and thus tolerate, frustrating or anxiety-laden experiences.

Several of the performers interviewed in this book recognize this problem of anxiety about anxiety—and how to beat it through self-acceptance. Maya Angelou puts it beautifully:

“Accept it; don’t fight it.” My mother used to tell me, “If you’re afraid, tell yourself you’re afraid.” She said, “When a snake approaches a bird, the bird—if it knew it was afraid—could fly above the snake in a second. But the bird doesn’t say to itself, ‘I’m afraid.’ It just allows itself to be paralyzed.”

Olympia Dukakis puts the matter more succinctly: “I don’t fight it [the nervousness] anymore. I let it happen. If that’s who I am, that’s who I am.”

Thus far, we’ve considered stage fright as it applies to all performers. There are additional factors, especially when considering performers in ensembles.

• Anger. Performing with others is sometimes intensely frustrating. Then, along with or distinct from placing absolutistic demands on yourself, you may place them on others: “They must do well. And they must treat me well. If they don’t, it’ll be awful. They’ll be jerks who deserve punishment. And I can’t stand it.” This is a recipe for resentment, hostility, and anger directed at your fellow performers.
• Anxiety about acceptance by your fellow performers often compounds problems in ensemble performing. Similar to anxiety over audience acceptance, here you may raise the stakes by overvaluing the opinions of your fellow performers, thinking they presumably are more important judges of your performance than the audience.

Performance anxiety interferes with attaining your basic goals, and hence blocks your happiness in several ways.

• Common human goals include: survival / physical health; good social connections—with friends, lovers, co-workers, family; mastery of one’s work, a craft, or an avocation; vital absorbing interests—in one’s work, one’s art, in a cause, or in spirituality. Stage fright tends to interfere with all of these, and hence with your happiness.
• Survival/health. Anxiety has a well-documented adverse effect on both physical and mental health. The Rand Corporation states: “the impact of an anxiety disorder is roughly equivalent to that of irritable bowel syndrome, a serious chronic condition.” (www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/2006/RAND_RB9173.pdf)
• Social connections. The worse one’s stage fright, the worse its impact tends to be on one’s social connections. The more individuals are preoccupied with themselves, the less attention they have for others. Further, if they’re making absolutistic demands on others, e.g., “they must perform well,” the attention the demand-maker pays to them will be negative—impatience, resentment, anger—and will likely alienate them or completely drive them away.
• Mastery. At least one common American belief is actually true: the more effortless a performance appears, the better it will be. Those suffering from stage fright tend toward preoccupation with themselves, rather than clearly focusing on the task at hand; their attention is divided and they’re likely to also suffer physiological reactions from stage fright, such as tightness, sweating and shaking, that detract from their performance.
• Vital, absorbing interests. When individuals are focused on themselves, their energies are divided and they cannot pay full attention to their interests.

• Hard work. In the course of conducting the interviews for this book, we heard, over and over, “practice,” “prepare,” “perform.” Many, probably most, performers have made gains in overcoming anxiety through simple hard work and repetition: practicing/performing incessantly until their performance- confidence increases. Yet other very accomplished performers— including famous ones who have been in the spotlight for decades—still suffer from stage fright, some to the point of vomiting before every performance.

  Why? The difference lies in what they’re telling themselves. Those who gain confidence are telling themselves positive messages, such as, “I know my material. I’ve done this a thousand times. I’ll be fine,” and “I should do fine, but even if I don’t it’s not the end of the world.”

  In contrast, established, accomplished performers who suffer stage fright are still giving themselves the negative, irrational messages they gave themselves at the beginnings of their careers: “What if I bomb? That’ll be awful.” “I must do well.” “It’ll be awful if the audience hates me. I’ll be a total failure.” Etc., etc., etc.

  So, while practice, preparation, and performing all tend to decrease stage fright, they only do so if a performer’s self-messages change from the negative ones to the positive ones. In most cases, this change is unconscious. But if a performer consciously changes his or her self-messages from the untrue, irrational ones to the rational/positive ones, progress in overcoming stage fright will likely be greatly accelerated.

• Distraction. The classic example of this is attempting to picture one’s audience naked or in their underwear. The problems with the use of distraction are: 1) the performer is dividing his or her attention between the task at hand and the distraction; 2) the performer can become aware that he’s simply playing mental games with himself and lose confidence in those games at any time; 3) it fails to undermine the core of the anxiety: the performer’s irrational philosophy (expressed in self-defeating self-talk).
• Deep, slow breathing. The usual recommendation is taking in ten or twelve slow, deep breaths. Some also recommend the combination of deep breaths with a form of mini-meditation: closing one’s eyes and blanking one’s mind during the deep breathing. This can be temporarily calming, but it’s a type of distraction and leaves the anxiety-creating thinking intact.

Beating Stage Fright—More Effective Strategies

• Abolish your musts. Identify your self-demands, then rip them up. Replace musts with preferences: not “I must do well,” but, “I prefer to do well.” This goes hand in hand with developing anxiety tolerance. Not “I can’t stand feeling anxious,” but rather “I don’t like feeling anxious, but I can stand what I don’t like.” The first statement is self-destructive and unrealistic; the second is helpful and realistic.
• Uproot your awfulizing. Not “I must do well and it’ll be awful if I don’t,” but rather “I prefer to do well, but it’s not the end of the world if I don’t.” Put things into a realistic perspective. If you don’t speak or perform well, your family will probably continue to love you (or hate you) and the sun will most likely come up tomorrow. The way that David Brenner puts this is “No one’s coming out of the alley with a baseball bat playing ‘Let’s get a Jew.’ So what’s the big deal? What am I nervous about?”
• Abandon self-rating. Self-valuing based on one’s performance or on the approval of others is a recipe for hopelessness, depression, and giving up. Self-damning performers rarely live up to their unrealistic self-expectations, and even when they do, they often compare themselves with others who perform better than they do. Self-rating based on audience or other-performer acceptance is equally self-defeating. It has the added disadvantage of removing the locus of control from oneself to external entities. Self-rating can lead to grandiosity—“I’m the greatest thing since Charlie Chaplin!”— after an especially good performance or reception by an audience. More often, it will lead to self-downing and depression after an imperfect performance or audience rejection. Additionally, self-rating usually creates anxiety about the next performance or audience reaction.

  Jason Alexander describes the benefits of getting away from selfabsorption: “When I began to make the story the most important thing, I became much less the focus of my concerns.” The lesson here is that the more you abandon self-absorption/self-rating, the more your nervousness will diminish.

• Develop unconditional self-acceptance rather than self-esteem. It’s more reasonable and effective to focus on self-acceptance than on selfesteem. We’re all fallible human beings who screw up fairly often. But we’re alive, and life can be quite enjoyable, even thrilling in peak moments. Instead of rating yourself based on your performance or audience acceptance (which produces self-esteem, be it high or low), it’s more realistic (and self-helpful) to accept yourself as a fallible human who screws up regularly and yet has an innate capacity for enjoying life. Further, even if rating yourself were rational—which it isn’t—a rating based on performance cannot equal the rating of your being, your totality. To put this in other words, your performance is one thing. You are another. It can be helpful to rate how well you do, but it’s not helpful to rate yourself.

  Moreover, you can strive to unconditionally accept your fellow performers as error-prone, fallible humans who are probably trying to do their best, rather than to rate them based on their performance or treatment of you. As mentioned above, intolerance of others triggers anger: “They must not perform badly or mistreat me! They’re worse than useless if they do!” This over-critical attitude tends to worsen ensemble performances and to produce conflict with your fellow performers.

• Develop unconditional life-acceptance. As life is spelled h-a-s-s-l-e for just about everyone, it’s essential to accept this harsh reality in all its adverse aspects. Make the best of it. Don’t dogmatically rebel against it: “It should not be this way, I can’t stand it! It’s not fair!” Acceptance doesn’t mean liking it. Rather, it means acknowledging that it is what it is, while attempting to change what you can, and remembering that you can bear what you don’t like. If you’re on stage and the lighting, sound system, your fellow performers, etc., aren’t up to snuff, that’s tough! Accept it and do the best you can. Then try to improve whatever’s wrong after the performance, without whining about it.

• Rational coping statements are simple self-statements that tend to calm anxiety. Use them when you notice you’re suffering stage fright and recognize your negative self-messages. Examples of rational coping statements include: “If I don’t do well, it’s not the end of the world”; “What’s the worst that can happen if I don’t do well? The audience won’t like me? Tough!”; and “Even if they think I’m a total fool, their thoughts can’t magically turn me into one.”
• ABCDEF is a highly effective REBT tool for addressing negative emotions such as stage fright. Its components are:

  A—Activating event you recently experienced about which you felt upset or disturbed,

  B—Irrational Belief about or irrational evaluation of this activating event,

  C—Emotional and behavioral Consequence of your irrational belief, resulting from A x B,

  D—Disputing or questioning your irrational Belief,

  E—Effective new thinking or answer resulting from Disputing your irrational Belief,

  F—New Feeling or behavior resulting from Disputing your irrational Belief.

A—Activating event: I’m about to go on stage. Suppose I blow it?

B—Irrational Belief: I must perform well! Life won’t be worth living if I do poorly!

C—Emotional and behavioral Consequence: Nervousness, sweating, shaking, vomiting. Divided attention between self and the task at hand. Poor performance.

D—Disputing: Why must I perform well? Where is the evidence life won’t be worth living?

E—Effective new thinking: It’s preferable I perform well, but not a dire necessity. I won’t like it if I perform poorly, but I can stand what I don’t like. It certainly may have disadvantages, but I’ll still be alive and the world won’t end. I’ve done poorly before and I’ve survived, and I’ll survive this time. Having failed does not prove I’ll always fail; rather it proves I did not succeed as I would have liked this time. Doing poorly only proves, at the very worst, that I’m an imperfect human. It’s not the possibility of a bad performance that causes my symptoms, but rather it’s my self-destructive thinking about blowing it that makes me nervous. With practice I can change my thinking and unconditionally accept myself with my imperfect performing —and if I practice, practice, practice, my performing will almost certainly improve. But I can still have a happy life if I blow it, although I would be happier if I do terrifically. The more I pressure myself to do well, the worse I’ll tend to feel and perform. The more I accept myself with my mistakemaking, the better I’ll tend to do.

F—New Feeling or behavior: Diminished stage fright and lessened physical symptoms.

Write out this exercise a few times daily, the more frequently the better. (Use your own words—don’t word-for-word copy the above example.) The further in advance of a performance you begin this discipline, the deeper the results will tend to be. Remember, reinforcement is the royal road to learning.

With practice, it’s possible to write the ABCDEF in as little as three to five minutes. It’s usually better to do the exercise in written form, although with experience you’ll be able to supplement the writing by also using the process mentally. To combat spur-of-the-moment stage fright, in situations where it’s not possible to write out one’s ABCs, rational coping statements (see above) are a good alternative.

• Embracing the E is a significant step in changing your feelings. If you eventually don’t deeply buy into E, your feelings rarely will improve.
• Some people conclude that the ABCDEF exercise doesn’t work because it often doesn’t yield immediate results. This may be because at A you failed to identify the most meaningful must; at E you weakly reinforced the new thinking; you were demanding that you not disturb yourself in the first place; or demanding that you must feel instantaneously better (creating secondary disturbance—disturbance over being disturbed).

There are ways to deal with these problems:

To properly identify the must, it’s often easiest to begin the ABC exercise with C—Emotional and behavioral Consequences. (Contrary to much pop psychology, people tend to be quite in touch with their feelings. They just don’t know what to do about them.)

A

B

C—I feel anxious.

You can then fill in A—Activating event:

A— I’ve got a very important performance coming up.

B

C—I feel anxious.

This often makes it easier to find B (the irrational Belief), which you can then fill in. Remember, the irrational Belief is a should, a must, a demand. Look for it. It’s there. As we’ve found with ourselves over years of practicing REBT, when there’s emotional disturbance (anxiety, depression, anger), there is a demand.

Then identify B, your irrational Belief, your demand:

A—I’ve got a very important performance coming up.

B—I must perform well. If I don’t, it will be horrible, utterly awful, the worst thing in the world.

C—I feel anxious.

At D, question the idiotic thoughts at B. (Yes, irrational thoughts are idiotic.) Simply place the word “why” in front of B’s irrational thought and a “?” after it.

A—I’ve got a very important performance coming up.

B—I must perform well. If I don’t, it will be horrible, utterly terrible, the worst thing in the world.

C—I feel anxious.

D—Why must I perform well? Why would it be horrible, utterly awful, the worst thing in the world if I don’t? You are then free to answer the questions posed at D (Remember, the more thoroughly you tear apart your irrational, unrealistic, idiotic thinking, the more viscerally you will drum out your well-practiced, decadesentrenched, self-defeating irrationalities.)

A—I’ve got a very important performance coming up.

B—I must perform well. If I don’t, it will be horrible, utterly awful, the worst thing in the world.

C—I feel anxious.

D—Why must I perform well? Why would it be horrible, utterly awful, the worst thing in the world if I don’t?

E—Nothing says I must perform well, except the ideas in my own nutty head. To hell with it! I can accept myself as a fallible human who foolishly makes himself upset. I also accept myself as a fallible human who might not always perform well. It’d be nice if I were superhuman, but I’m not and never will be. I can stop insisting that I perform well. I don’t have to! I just don’t! That’s a dumb idea that gets in my way and I am determined to give it up.

Just you watch: it will not be horrible if I don’t perform well. Performing badly is not the worst thing in the world. There are infinitely worse things—starvation, torture, terminal illness. Staking all of my happiness on my performance is senseless. I can stand it—I’ve stood bad performances in the past and am still here. It won’t kill me. I will not explode. All of life will not be worthless. Even if I foolishly stake all of my existence on this performance, others really don’t care that much. However upset I make myself, most people on the planet don’t know me or care about me. And I don’t need them to. As Ralph Terry told Jim Bouton, “Kid, just remember one thing: No matter what happens, win or lose, five hundred million Chinese Communists don’t give a shit.”

Once you’ve internalized these beliefs at E, your anxious feelings will change, which can be stated at F.

The entire ABC exercise, then, will resemble this:

A—I’ve got a very important performance coming up.

B—I must perform well. If I don’t, it will be horrible, utterly awful, the worst thing in the world.

C—I feel anxious.

D—Why must I perform well? Why would it be horrible, utterly terrible, the worst thing in the world if I don’t?

E—Nothing says I must perform well, except the ideas in my own nutty head. To hell with it! I can accept myself as a fallible human who foolishly makes himself upset. I also accept myself as a fallible human who might not always perform well. It’d be nice if I were superhuman, but I’m not and never will be. I can stop insisting that I perform well. I don’t have to! I just don’t! That’s a dumb idea that gets in my way and I am determined to give it up.

Just you watch: it will not be horrible if I don’t perform well. Performing badly is not the worst thing in the world. There are infinitely worse things—starvation, torture, terminal illness. Staking all of my happiness on my performance is senseless. I can stand it—I’ve stood bad performances in the past and am still here. It won’t kill me. I will not explode. All of life will not be worthless. Even if I foolishly stake all of my existence on this performance, others really don’t care that much. However upset I make myself, most people on the planet don’t know me or care about me. And I don’t need them to. As Ralph Terry told Jim Bouton: “Kid, just remember one thing: No matter what happens, win or lose, five hundred million Chinese Communists don’t give a shit.”

F—Less anxiety (or just possibly no anxiety).

Be honest with yourself at F. If there is no change of feeling, don’t kid yourself about it. There are other exercises to fully hammer out your selfdefeating thinking. Here’s one:

No matter how conscientiously you complete the ABC exercise, anxiety may still linger. Your long-held irrational beliefs may be quite stubborn. You may (irrationally) talk back to them: “I know intellectually nothing must be the way I want it.” What you may really mean by this is that you don’t deeply believe the must is false. Try zeroing in on your irrational beliefs by directly arguing against them using this rigorous format: Begin by answering the questions posed at D.

D—Why must I perform well?

E—Nothing says I must perform well. That’s just my own stupid idea.

If this does not hit home, or you don’t know what to say next, argue with your irrational, self-defeating thought. Irrational thought: If I don’t perform well, I won’t get this job, making my life quite hard. I must not have a hard life!
Rational thought: It’s true I would profit from performing well. But nothing says my life can’t be hard. I want to work as hard as I can to make things easy. But no matter how much I work, I cannot have a guarantee of success.
Irrational thought: I keep failing. This proves I can’t succeed, as I must.
Rational thought: I am able to succeed. But being able to succeed and demanding I succeed are two different things. And previous failure does not ensure future failure. I’m not clairvoyant.
Irrational thought: But others have it so much easier! Life should not be so unfair to me!
Rational thought: It is unfair that some people have an easier life than me. It’s also unfair that many other people have a harder life than me. If I would like my life to be better, good! I can still work as hard as I know how to make my life better, including performing well.
Irrational thought: Life is such a pain in the butt! It should not be this tough!
Rational thought: Since I don’t run the universe, what’s the evidence that life should not be tough for me?
(no longer) Irrational thought: I guess I really don’t have any evidence.
Rational thought: Right! There’s no reason life should not be a pain in the butt. But this doesn’t mean it’s awful, devoid of any possible pleasure. Even if I don’t get what I want, it’s not horrible. I can work as hard as I know how, as intelligently as I know how. I am committed to doing just that. If I do, eventually things are much more likely to go the way I would like them to. But there are no guarantees. What is virtually guaranteed is that if I hold onto my demands I am going to feel lousy. So, to hell with my demands! I am going to give them up, and if they return I will give them up again and again and again. I can continually work against my human tendency to make myself upset. The bottom line is: even though I want many things, I don’t have to have them! And that’s the way it is. I can accept that or whine about it. It’s my choice, and I choose not to whine!

By continually challenging your irrational thoughts with rational ones, you’ll eventually break down your demand that you must perform well. It’s a matter of persistence in finding the should, the demand, the must, and repeatedly uprooting it until you begin to believe the truth: no matter how much you fail, it’s not the end of the world; nothing says you must succeed; but if you prefer to succeed and work hard, you’ll have a better chance of success than if you burden yourself with anxiety-inducing demands.

Internalizing such rational thoughts is your goal. This book provides the theory and techniques that will help you toward that goal. At the end of the day, though, it’s the rational thoughts you profoundly believe, feel, and act on that will make you better.

Step I: Vividly visualize your worst performing fear come to life. For example, if you’re a comedian, visualize bombing like you’ve never bombed before—at an important gig in front of your most respected peers.

Step II: While picturing this scene, get in touch with your feelings of anxiety, dread, and panic, as strongly as you can. Really feel them.

Do Step II for just a few seconds.

Step III: Now, while still clearly imagining the scene from Step I, make yourself feel keenly concerned, deeply displeased, and profoundly disappointed, rather than anxious, dread-filled, and panicky.

Do this by making rational statements to yourself, such as: “I’ve survived this before and I’ll survive it again. I really don’t like bombing, but it’s not the end of the universe. I will live through it, no matter how panicky I feel at the time. I can stand what I don’t like.” Also, “It’s not bombing, or the possibility of bombing, that makes me anxious; rather, my self-defeating thinking about bombing causes my dread. With practice I can change my thinking and accept bombing—although I’ll never like it. Looking at bombing this way will benefit me for the rest of my performing life.”

Do Step III for three to five minutes, three times daily.

Bonnie Hayes describes her use of this technique very clearly (although she doesn’t identify it as REI):

Picture the worst thing that could possibly happen. And then imagine yourself living through that. And what is the worst thing that could happen? You’re not gonna die. You’re not gonna get hurt.

Ben Sidran notes: “Nothing is as bad as your fear of it. There’s nothing in life, and probably even death, that is as bad as your fear of it.” This visualization technique is a powerful help in achieving that realization— and in defanging your fears.

Here’s how it works: Take the E section of the ABC and get right to the point: your rational, self-helping thoughts. Argue for your self-helping thoughts in a firm, sensible, and personally compelling manner. Here’s a somewhat compressed example, citing our hopes for this book:

“Nothing says this book must succeed! It would be nice if it hit the big time. We would love to have great success and all it would bring, including riches and the opportunity to teach these self-help techniques to throngs of people. But nothing says it has to happen.

“If we want to help others, nothing says they have to be helped. If they aren’t, it would be a shame. But that’s the way it goes. The human race has suffered many tragedies, and not receiving the information in this book would hardly qualify as the worst. There’s no guarantee things will go the way we’d like them to. Tough! That’s reality and we can handle it!

“We never have to give up if we don’t want to. This book is simply a tool for teaching people self-help techniques. But if this book doesn’t do the trick, we can come up with another one. It would be great to have this book get the word out. But it does not have to happen. Nothing ever has to happen. What’s the point in telling ourselves that this book must succeed? There are going to be people who don’t think that what we’ve offered is valuable. There’s no way that everybody who comes in contact with our book is going to buy into its ideas. We can accept this reality or whine about it. Great success, no matter how true our ideas, no matter how beneficial it would be to ourselves and others, does not have to happen.

“Nothing ever has to happen any particular way. It would be ridiculous to try to put ourselves above that reality. We are simply two humans who have something we believe can be helpful to almost everyone. And one of the most irrational ideas we can have is demanding success. So we refuse to demand that our book succeed. It doesn’t have to. That’s reality. Rebel against it and feel lousy. Or accept it, feel motivated, and be productive.”

When practiced over and over, these exercises will take less and less time, helping you knock out your shoulds more easily. Occasionally a major should may surface, and it may take more work to get rid of it. But, by and large, the more you practice, the more effective these techniques become. Eventually, shoulds won’t have nearly the power they once did. And you’ll rid yourself to a great extent of the needless burden of self-demands.

• Meaningfulness. Make everything you write in your exercises your true thinking at the time. Avoid including anything simply because it seems like the “right” or the “rational” thing to say. For example, in the ABCs, at B, don’t write “I absolutely must have the audience’s approval” if this does not ring true. And at E, don’t write “it’s not the end of the world” if you really believe the end is near.
• Vigor. Question, confront, challenge, and contradict your unreasonable notions passionately, strongly, and enthusiastically.
• Persistence. Practice, practice, practice. Then practice some more. Refuse to give up.

  Armed with the anti-anxiety techniques in this chapter, put yourself in performing situations as often as you can. By doing this, and through the repeated use of even the simplest technique in this chapter—rational coping statements: “I can stand it”; “It’s not the end of the world if I do badly”; “I’m rehearsed; I know my material”; “The audience is here for a good time; they want to like me”—you’ll find that your performance anxiety will decrease, probably quite rapidly.

  A Final Word

  There is another consideration in effectively employing all of these techniques. Having found them effective, many performers erroneously conclude that their problem is solved. This would be quite nice, and in some cases it may be true. But usually, as fallible human beings, we easily fall back into old, self-defeating thoughts. Fully conquering one’s irrational beliefs often requires a lifelong commitment to identifying them and doing the work required to eradicate them.

  With practice, practice, and more practice, your use of these self-help techniques will tend to become easier and more efficient. Depending on your level of dedication to eradicating your stage fright, you may eventually perform virtually anxiety free. (Remember, demanding that you eradicate your stage fright will only exacerbate the problem.) However, you will most likely not improve without making the effort.

  Commit to getting rid of your stage fright with the same level of work you devote to other aspects of your performing career. Any top performer will say that it took them years to become a master of their craft. Using these techniques to eliminate anxiety is no different. However, when you practice these self-help techniques meaningfully, vigorously, and persistently, the relief and joy you’ll achieve can be rapid and ultimately life changing.

  So there ya go! Practice, practice, practice. Get rid of your demands, and you’ll feel better, better, and better, while increasing your chances of achieving your goals, leading to a happier and more fulfilling life. And better performances.

  Go get ‘em!
  P.S. To derive additional benefit from this book, while reading the interviews identify those statements by the stars tacitly reinforcing the above ideas and techniques, for example, avoiding demands, contradicting them, using rational coping statements, and refusing to be nervous about being nervous.