Managing our energy underpins our ability to execute every single aspect of our performance. While self-care is often brushed aside as a luxury or an indulgence, burnout runs rampant in the music industry. Prioritising longevity and finding a sustainable pace for developing excellence has never been more important. In this module, you’ll learn about the 6 pillars of energy management, and the difference between rest and recovery. You’ll make an inventory of how your energy is currently being spent and where it could be optimised.

Building habits is fundamental to optimising performance. In performance psychology we tend to rely on goals to give us focus and motivation. Although these do provide direction for us, it is the habit and behaviour systems we put in place that encourage us to take action. In this module, you’ll learn about the mechanics of how to form helpful habits and what can get in the way.

Many of us may switch off or glaze over when we hear about goal setting. Creating change requires focused attention over time, allowing us to consistently move towards what we want to accomplish. It’s ultimately about more than just setting goals, but the process of organising unstructured thoughts and desires into clear objectives is an essential vehicle for transformation. In this module, you’ll learn how to create a goal system that is both motivating and flexible.

Common problems with motivation often sound like “I wish I were more motivated” or “I don’t know if I have the right motivations for this”. Motivation doesn’t appear out of thin air, it’s something we generate. Doing so skilfully requires us to understand what currently motivates us rather than waiting for an ideal drive to arise. In this module you’ll also learn about common motivational pitfalls, and how to navigate them.

Self-talk is our inner dialogue. It includes both automatic thoughts that arise seemingly out of nowhere, as well as thoughts we think about on purpose. it’s an essential part of our mental skills toolbox, and whether we’re aware of it or not, we’re using this tool all the time. In this module you’ll learn how to manage your inner critic, how to respond to disruptive thoughts, and how to strike a balance between our analytical and supportive voices.

You might wonder what the relevance of compassion is to high-level performance. We know that a career in the performing arts can be very joyful as well as full of challenges. Two common challenges include our ability to accept and forgive the mistakes we make, as well as the awareness that our standard can nearly always be higher. In this module, we outline why a supportive and positive relationship with ourselves is beneficial for performance.

Musicians are very familiar with the importance of practice. Because our current practice habits have, to an extent, served us well, many of us don’t question or refine the way we practice, or upgrade the quality of our habits. In this module, we’ll explore your current way of working and identify where there may be opportunities for marginal gains.

Imagery is a central pillar of applied psychology practice, and has become commonplace in elite sport to prepare for performance. One of the benefits of developing imagery as a skill is that it can prepare us for the many unknown scenarios that may come up on the day of a performance. In this module, we’ll take you through a detailed demonstration of how to train imagery and integrate it within your practice.

Performance anxiety can be a very emotive topic for many musicians, which is understandable as the effects of it can be very destabilising and frightening to experience. In this module you’ll learn about what performance anxiety is, and what physiological and psychological effects it has on the body and the mind. You’ll gain strategies to practice shifting out of anxiety into other states to regain a sense of control.

Everyone has at some point in their lives has struggled with confidence. When our confidence is challenged – for example when we’re facing a recital or presentation we’re not well prepared for – that is sometimes the moment we choose to frantically seek quick fixes for our confidence. In this module, we’ll look at how to build confidence for the long term, setting the foundations for robust self-belief.

Many of us can recognize full presence when we witness it on stage or when we feel it ourselves. It’s that feeling of being completely “in” our performance, creating an energy on stage that people are drawn to. In this module, we look at how we can train presence, as well as what gets in the way.

When a performance is affected by pressure, we often know that the problem isn’t that we haven’t practiced enough. The issue has more to do with us not being able to manage our experience of mounting pressure as the performance approaches. In this module, we’ll explore how to cope with performances that don’t meet our expectations, and start to answer the question ‘where does pressure come from?’ by taking a look at perfectionism and fear of other peoples’ opinions.

At the end of the course, we’ll give you an opportunity to reflect on what you’ve gained, and what steps you can take to integrate these ideas into your life for the long term. As the course cycle comes to a close, you’ll also look back at which concepts weren’t your priority this time, that you can come back to with your lifetime access to the course.