Dorkiness vs. Confidence

Remember that feeling you had when you got up onstage and started performing and you didn’t really know what to do? So you wandered around just kind of moving anywhere all the time because you thought, “I gotta do something!!”

And then you would say stuff to the audience cause...well, that’s what other rock star performers do... right.?

So you thought, I’ll just say what I’ve heard other people say from stage, like... “How are you guys doing tonight?”, “This next song is called...”, “Hello Cleveland!”

And then do you remember that felling like, “I have no idea what the audience is thinking and that just sounded like BS. I hope they like us.?”

I was in a band called Destiny... yes, Destiny; my idea, because the previous names I had come up with, Black Diamond and Zapla were even worse, relatively speaking (see picture)... when I was junior high/high school. (I'm the guy playing drums.)

When I graduated from high school, I auditioned for a company that put bands together and toured them around the US and Canada. I learned stage performance at that time and realized that most of the stuff I had done from stage prior to that was really pretty useless.

I had desire coming out the wazoo, I just didn’t have any knowledge.

You know.... when things don’t work, that you try really hard at... that’s when you start asking questions.

Being on stage and seeing what worked, answered a bunch of questions for me.

It made me more confident that when I would perform, I wasn’t just sort of flailing around hoping that I was good enough for people to like me and want to follow what I did.

There is a way to do this thing on stage that actually works! But it’s going to take a bit of learning and application. Once you understand some things, like why people come to shows and what they’re expecting, you can start doing the things that make sense to them and they’ll start responding!

It takes confidence to get up onstage but confidence isn’t enough. You have to know what to do with that confidence; how to use it; how to direct it in a way that the audience benefits from it. People who do things out of love for others, always get a return. If you go up and “love” your audience, they’ll return it.

That’s what you use your confidence to do; love your audience.

So confidence isn’t exactly what a lot of people think it is.

It’s not so much confidence in ourselves (although you do have to have that), it’s really confidence that what you have, can benefit others and you use that confidence to bring your very best to them.

Start using your confidence to love your audience and you’ll never fail!