Performance

I had a chat about this last night, plus I received a comment on here that relates to this topic. The topic is performance.

There are a lot of people out there who have fears of performing. Some studies have showing more people fear public speaking (or any kind of performing in front of people) than fear death.

I've always been under the impression that the fear isn't really the performance. The fear is that they won't be able to make the correct decisions if things go bad. Often times in public speaking things go terribly wrong; you stumble of the words, you don't speak loud enough and they don't hear you, you bore them to death, etc etc. Every performer has suffered from it numerous times, but what separates the ones who are comfortable from the uncomfortable is that they have a preplanned response, or they're good at making decisions on their feet.

Most people are pretty good at acting--they do it every day of their life. It's not that people are bad at "acting" and need more practice, it's that they need to be more comfortable and confident. Most of the acting problems I've worked out with people have been problems in which they worry more about how they look than actually doing the acting. The thought processes kind of block off part of their acting abilities and limit them. One of the easiest fixes a director can do is to assure the actor that they're doing a good job.

In any case, when an actor or other performer understands the big picture (that their job is to entertain, and that even when they mess up they are still entertaining**[follow the stars down to the bottom where I talk about this more]), they become 10x better at performing. Performing is more about confidence than acting.

You can apply this truth to a whole bunch of other things, like dating. Try being conscientious and worried about whether or not your date will like you. Now try to build a relationship in which that is ALL you do. --see, understanding that there is a bigger picture than just impressing the other person can help them get what they really want: a relationship. (they don't care if you're the shiz, they care if they can have a good relationship with you)


Apply it to sales. When you worry whether or not they will buy the product or not, you limit yourself from discovering what the customer really wants and how you can fulfill that need with your product. (they don't care whether or not the product is awesome and has a lot of features, they care about how it can help them)

----
**Take a look at why people go to theaters: a) they want to be entertained for a couple hours because regular life is boring b) they want to experience humanity in a way that can only be observed c) they want to exert their mind d) they want to critic the story/actor/whatever.
When you recognize that even if you goof up here and there you're still fulfilling SOMEONE's need for watching the show, you also realize that you have nothing to fear about acting.