Your Time to Move Forward

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, hey there, rock stars. Reggie Dawson, your host of the Being On Stage podcast. Welcome back, and thank you. Humbly, humbly thank you for tuning in to the show. Whether it's your first time or whether you've been listening for a while, thank you. Been a couple days. I know I'm on this podcast every day kick, and I'm loving it. I really am. It's been a couple of days since I recorded a podcast. Got a little down on myself, you know. Had a little bit of a rough weekend. Got really tired. Didn't have a great day on Saturday. And, you know, it got me thinking, you know, how long, how long are we allowed to, you know, be down on ourselves after, you know, say you have a performance. You know, you get on stage. It doesn't go the way you want it to go. At all. At all. Maybe the energy's just not there. Maybe you're just not having a good night. Maybe it's not, you know, maybe it's just not your thing anymore, but maybe it's just not your thing right then and there. Uh, and, or sometimes you just, for some unknown reason, something happens, something goes wrong, God forbid you slip and fall on stage, um, technical errors, equipment failures, costume malfunctions, uh, whatever it is, you know, I think we all, well, I know, actually, I know we all have nights where after the show and even, even into the next day, we're just like, oh, man, that was just, that was not what it was. Yeah. What it was supposed to be. And I gotta tell you, you know, that's, I've been there. I've been there more than once. It's not like a one-time deal. You know, uh, we're, we're human beings. Our emotions are a roller coaster. And, you know, as, as performers, we, we're, we have a bit of a streak of, um, perfectionism. And so when things don't go quite the way we envision it, or if they go terribly, terribly wrong, uh, we have a habit of kind of like, you know, we feel bad. And it affects us mainly because what we put out on, on, on our, on stage is a piece of ourselves. So when we put out a piece of ourselves, we put out something we've created our baby, if you will, our performance is like, it's, it is you, it's your personality and your talent coming together to share an experience with the audience. Ooh, that's good. I think I just defined a performance is your personality and your talent coming together to give an experience to the audience. Bam. Uh, sometimes these things just come to me, you know, um, train of thought, train of thought, Reggie, train of thought. So when we put our personality and our talent together and we, we put it out there, you know, and it doesn't go right, we're, we're naturally going to feel bad. We're going to feel rejected. We're going to feel, um, we can call it awkward, I guess. We're going to feel, actually, sometimes we're just going to feel like we're not talented, but we feel bad. We're going to feel like we're not talented, but we feel like we're not talented, but we feel like we're not talented. You can call it just down on yourself. You feel down on yourself. And being, being in that position, you gotta, you gotta set yourself up for continued success as a performer. That's something you have to have a mindset for is you're going to continue to find success. You're going to continue to go after something. And when you get in your, when you get down in the dumps, but when you get in your feelings, uh, it can affect your ability to move forward. And we all go through it. You're not alone. Like, if, if you're like, oh my God, he gets me. No, every single performer goes through this. From multi-million dollar platinum recording artists and Cirque du Soleil performers, all the way down to the guy that just got on stage for the first time Saturday night. Every single one of us has nights like that, that just, they don't go our way. All of us. And that's a little bit where I was getting this weekend, you know, and it wasn't anything having to do. With the, with the podcast or coaching or, uh, anything like that. I have another, another business that I run as well. And that kind of got me a little upset this weekend. And then things with the fam, not my family, it's anyways, not to get into too much detail, but there's some family stuff going on with trying to get things straightened out around the house. And, and just, it's just been a tiring, awful weekend. And I, this morning I woke up and I'm like, all right, it's been a day or so. It's been like a day and a half since you recorded a podcast. What are you doing? Why are you acting like this? And you got to slap yourself, almost slap yourself in the face sometimes. And for me, I, this is terrible. This is the, this is the corporate man in me, if you will. Um, for me, Monday mornings always offer a reset and you can pick any day of the week, you know, as performers, sometimes Thursdays and Fridays are better reset days. Um, but Monday just naturally it's first day of the week. It's everyone. It's getting, there's like an energy in the air of productivity because everyone's getting up and starting, starting back at it, uh, again. So Monday's always offer me a good reset, but think about this. You know, if you've got a show Wednesday night, you can't wait till Monday to move past it. My friend, you gotta, you gotta set yourself a time. So this is what you do. Okay. I'm kind of, kind of leading into it. So here's, here's what you do right now today. No, you know what? Right now, I'm not going to give you any time to do this right now. Pick a time or. Amount of hours, if you will, from the time that you get off stage until the time you have to get over it. And this is great show or terrible show, but you're going to find yourself using this probably more for terrible shows after a great show. This can happen to us too. We become a little complacent because, oh my God, we did it. That was amazing. And the next day you wake up and you're like, um, and now what, what do I do now? Cause that was amazing. How. Or you just feel like you can relax a little bit. And that's not the case either. So great show or terrible show, you got to pick yourself a timeframe for self-pity and for, uh, self-celebration. So whether you're celebrating your success and your amazing performance or, or you're wallowing in your sadness because it was awful. Sorry. I put it so bluntly right there. Pick yourself a timeframe, allow time to celebrate and to feel these emotions. Like allow time to. To process, to rewatch the performance, um, allow yourself time to do that. But I always like 36 hours cause I feel like two days, probably a little too much, but one day is sometimes not quite enough. Um, I don't know. So I like, I like 36 hours. You get a good amount of sleep in between that time. Um, it gives you, it's usually another, a morning refresh because you got the 24 hours until the same time the next day and then 12 hours later. So you usually should probably be. Sleeping twice in 36 hours. Most people would anyways. Um, but that kind of gives you a double reset if you will. And so, so 36 hours is, is my chosen timeframe. So no matter what my performance is like, no matter what my day is like, I only allow myself 36 hours to experience it and to celebrate it or to, um, cry in a corner about it. But 36 hours, that's it. So this is actually my 36 hours from my terrible, awful Saturday. Uh, a little bit more than 36 hours cause I didn't wake up at 6:00 AM, but who can blame me? I don't, I don't do 6:00 AM, uh, so, but that's just it. You, you, you pick yourself a timeframe and you have to stick to that. Even listen, there, there are, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. There are going to be shows that you just want to erase from history and pretend that they never. Ever happened. I know I've been there. I did a Marilyn Manson song at a hip hop club. Talk about a show you want to erase from history. Okay. I'm coming out makeup, Gothic clothes, straps hanging off my clothes, gloves and fishnets and buckles and, and top hats. And, and these people are like gold chains and, and snapbacks. Like I, I didn't, it was not. At all the place for that performance. So I get it sometime. Well, that was a terrible decision cause I didn't research the crowd, but that's a whole nother, that's a whole nother episode. If you get booked at a venue and you're not really sure what type of venue it is, just side lesson of this podcast, you should really check out what venue, what type of venue it is. And you can do that by asking the promoter, the owner, the DJ, and it doesn't have to be a completely ignorant question. What kind of music are you going to be playing that night? What else is going to be going on? Those types of questions can give you a really good feel for what it's going to be. So if I had asked what type of music it was, I probably would've made a different decision, but it's still a performance that. Although I didn't make the right decisions leading up to, I just, oh, I wish I could just, just delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete. Um, no, no applause, blank stares. One girl threatened almost like punched me because she was afraid of clowns. And I was like half a clown. Like it was, it was bad. And so you're going to have, excuse me. you're gonna have nights like that maybe not quite like that but you're gonna have nights where you just bomb and it just doesn't happen for you so but you have to move on like you have to also have the ability to move on from that otherwise that's gonna be it whether it's whether it's flip side maybe it's an i've had amazing show i've had a show where literally afterwards the entire crowd was chanting my name and they made me pre-perform the same like i've had that show where i had an immediate encore like so i've had both ends of the spectrums and you will too if you haven't already you're gonna have shows that are just blow your mind you're like oh my god i made it that's how i felt one night and those shows can also lead to the same thing they can lead to you being complacent they can lead to you not really like doing as much anymore they can lead to you just kind of like rot trying to ride that high for a little bit and that's going to end the same way as the wallowing crying in the corner self-pity because my show was awful no matter which way you which one you get sucked into whether you're riding that high or you're riding that low no matter which one you get sucked into you have the ability you have to have the ability to pull yourself out otherwise you will get stuck and getting unstuck can be hard it can be really hard if you let yourself get stuck in that feeling that emotion even riding that high you let yourself get stuck it's going to be really hard to work your way back because the ego and that cockiness and that just that person you become you know and having this plan having this timeline this 36 hours or maybe you need 48 hours maybe you need 72 hours it depends on how long you've been performing what stage you're at uh how sometimes it depends on how good or how bad it was too what else is going on in your life and what you're doing in your life like there's a lot of variables to think of but you have to pick a time frame and i want you to pick a time frame today before you go to bed today and don't push pause and start listening to this again tomorrow to get an extra day because you're about to go to bed uh-huh uh-huh i got a teenager i know the tricks anyway make a decision today how long are you going to give yourself to ride that emotion how long is it gonna be 24 hours 36 hours 48 72 i'm always doing 12 hour 24 hour increments but you can pick any increment you know you you can you can pick a day you can say all right no matter what monday monday morning every day no matter when i perform i'm over it i'm moving forward you can pick wednesday i mean you technically pick saturday but pick a time that you're going to move forward no matter what and stick to that time that's that's probably the hardest part is stick to that time you have to be able to move forward there's no way that you're going to find either continued success or there's no way you're going to find success or continued success i should say if you get stuck and i guess that's the point of the podcast if you already feel stuck like listen we can all feel stuck in different ways if you already feel stuck and you need a little bit of help getting unstuck whether it be an encouraging talk help figuring things out what you need to do making a plan to move forward or just a stiff kick in the pants hop on my calendar and i'll see you next time bye bye beingonstage.com slash calendar i want to be that stiff kick in the pants to get you moving forward all right all right i'll talk to you soon hop on that calendar and i'll give you a call at the date and the time that you choose and we will just we'll vet it out man i got i got people popping up on my calendar here and there so uh yeah keep them coming keep them coming and of course keep on shining