Have You Ever Said This After a Show?

Shut up, and sit down. Welcome to Being On Stage, the only podcast that gives you motivation, inspiration, and confidence to be better on stage. No matter how you entertain, sing, dance, band, comedian, public speaking, MC, drag, burlesque, performance art, or street performer, this is the show for you. Hey Rockstars, Reggie Dawson here. Welcome back to the Being On Stage podcast. Let me throw some things at you, okay? I want to take a poll here. I'm going to throw some phrases at you, and you just raise your hand wherever you are, whatever you're doing, if you've ever said or thought these phrases. I did better than I thought I was going to do. I expected to do worse. I didn't think I was going to do that good. I did better than I expected. All of these phrases have one thing in common. You have underestimated yourself, and your talent, and your capabilities as an artist and as a performer. Now, full disclosure, this episode is actually brought to you on behalf of my daughter's math work. My daughter's homeschooled, so we work on math every day together. I spend about five minutes giving her the easy, short analogy version of math, and then she goes into her whole lesson with a video. Her workbook. But we did a couple problems together probably about a week ago now, and I left her to do her own thing, and I came back, and I graded them, checking them off and everything. And I said, well, you know, you had 20 problems, and you got five wrong. And her exact words were, it's better than I thought. And I looked at her, and I said this to her, and this is what I want to say to you, too, as a performer. So these phrases, these sentences. And to you, you know, it's a little exciting because, wow, I did better than I thought I was going to do. I didn't expect to do that well. You have outshone what you thought you were going to be able to do. And there's a problem with that. So this is what I hit her with, and I swear to God, this is 100% Reggie original. You may have heard it somewhere else. Hell, I probably heard it somewhere else, but I'm taking credit for it because this is what I hit her with. I didn't actually hit my kid, but this is what I said right back to her. when she said it's better than I expected. I said, if you expect yourself to do worse, you need to prepare yourself to be better. Oh, Reggie just got deep. Yeah. Yeah. That's real stuff right there. If you have expected yourself to do worse, if you didn't expect yourself to do well, if you have expected so much less of yourself, then you have not prepared yourself in the right way to be the performer that you're supposed to be. You have failed on the preparation side of things. If you expected worse, if anything, if anything, well, first of all, let me tell you a little bit about expectations. Having any sort of expectation on yourself or your performance will one hundred percent kill your dreams every single time. You need to remove any expectations. Be grateful for what you get. Be thankful for what you have. Prepare yourself to be the best you can possibly be, but don't ever expect yourself to be anything. Things will happen. Things will come up. A meteor could fall from the sky and crash into the stage. I mean, anything could happen, really. But why are we expecting so much less of ourselves, than we truly are capable of? And I have this fight with my teenager every week. It's usually around school. But the things that we say to the kids, the things that we say to kids, we need to say to ourselves. I see it every time. Believe in yourself. You can do anything that you want to do if you put your mind to it. You can be whatever you want to be when you grow up. Work hard. Eat your vegetables. You grow up big and strong. Do we say this to ourselves still anymore? I know there are times, and I'm putting my hand up in the air right now, there are times when I forget. I forget how awesome I am. I forget how awesome and amazing I have the capability of being. And I think you do too. As a matter of fact, I know you do too. And I'm pointing at you, like I'm pointing at the computer screen, like you're sitting right in front of me. I know that you do too. You underestimate yourself. You expect less from yourself. You underprepare so that you don't get disappointed once you finally get out there. And I got news for you. You are deserving your talent. Not deserving. Dis-serving. You were given this talent. Whether you have worked at it and perfected it and built it up from nothing, or if you were naturally talented and have this amazing thing that you do that you were born with. You are disserving your talent if you were expecting less of yourself. If you have any expectations at all. If you're preparing yourself to be worse, then you're not deserving your talent. You're not deserving your talent. You're capable of being. You are not doing it right. You must prepare yourself to be the best you can possibly be on that stage. Not just for yourself, because believe it or not, when you're on that stage, it's not about you. It's about your audience. It's about the connection that you share with your audience while sharing your talent. That's what it's about. That's what performing on stage is about. Performing on stage is not about you. It is not about showing off this thing that you can do. Yeah, you're talented. That's what Instagram and YouTube is for. If you want to just get a whole bunch of people to give you little hearts and, you know, validate the fact that you're talented, then go post a video and that's that. But if you want to share a connection and you want to truly share something with people and you want people to have an experience when they see you on stage, then you need to better prepare yourself. You need to spend the time to rehearse. You need to spend the time choosing what you're going to do on stage, choosing the moves you're going to make, the steps you're going to go, the steps you're going to take. You have to choose all this and do it with intention. And then and only then will you be grateful for the performance that you have shared with your audience. And only then will you get off that stage and say, I rocked the hell out of it. No more will you come off stage going, wow, that was that was a lot better than I thought it was going to be. Why? Why was that better than you thought you could do? There's only one reason. And that's because you don't believe in yourself the way the audience believes in you. You don't believe in yourself the way that I believe in you. Why is that? Why does your audience and me? What? I'm a stranger. Like, I don't know you. Let's be real. I don't know you, but I believe in you. I believe in your talent that you possess. I believe that when you get out on that stage, you are going to execute that show and be the performer that you're supposed to be. But you don't believe it because that was better than you thought. You did much better than expected. You thought it was going to go over worse. Why? Why do you do that to you? That's a mind game that we play with ourselves. I know it's a mind game because I play it with myself, too. We all do it. But where does it stop? Where am I going to underestimate my talent? No more. Am I going to underprepare myself for the stage? No more. Am I going to go out there and just go for it? Because, hey, it can't get any worse. Well, it can actually. But these are the thoughts that we have. These are these are honest thoughts that people have based on conversations I've had with other performers and based on conversations, just people in general. You know, let's let's remove the performance aspect altogether. I mean, we could be talking about doing a presentation in a boardroom. We could be talking about getting up and going in the gym in the morning. We could be talking about filing a report to your boss. You know, we could remove remove. We could talk about serving tables. It doesn't matter what it is. If you expect less of yourself and you have not adequately prepared yourself and you have not worked, you're worked on yourself in a way that shows you're you want to grow and you want to keep moving forward. If you go out there on that stage and you expect less than you're capable of, you expect it to be worse. You do better than you thought you were going to do. Then you need to look on what you do before your shows, because if that thought crosses your mind, I implore you and I listen. Big words. I use them sometimes. I implore you to go back and think and reflect on what you did leading up. To getting on that stage. Did you prepare yourself? Did you rehearse? Did you take the time to think about and plan and practice what you're actually going to do on stage in front of the audience? Yes, you practice the songs, but did you practice the moves? Did you practice the attitudes? Did you everything? Did you do it all? Or did you just throw a couple of things together and go out there? Because, hey, if I'm great, I'm great. But if I'm not great, hey, it's okay because I'm not prepared to be great. Think about that. Let that sink in. You're not prepared to be great. That's what this reads out to. That's what this comes out to. That's what the Bottom line is, is if you expect worse, if you don't expect yourself to do well, you expect less of yourself. Not only are you not prepared, you have not prepared yourself for the greatness that you actually have inside. With that, I want to invite you once again to jump on my calendar and let's talk about how we can prepare you for greatness. I'm a performance coach. I help performers of all calibers and all levels take that next step, whether it's moving their talents, their performance, their performance to pay, or just looking for something new to experiment and try it and push yourself to the next level. Jump on my calendar, guys. We talk for about a half hour. It's completely no charge. I mean, of course, we're going to talk about how we can continue this and that could incur a charge. But this half hour session is all about you, all about what you want to do, all about getting you prepared and planning for your next step. So hit me up on my calendar. Go to beingonstage.com slash calendar. Put in your name, phone number, and email. Pick a date and time. I will call you from my real live cell phone and we'll chat it up and we will get you formulating that plan to help you explode into the performer and into the talented person that you truly are. So I believe in you. You need to believe in you too. So expect better. and keep on shining.