Episode 10: Practice Like an Engineer, Perform Like an Artist
Jean Laurenz on Pre-Performance Routines and Building a Trusting Mindset
About This Episode
This episode, we’ve got Jean Laurenz (@jeanlaurenz) in the lab. Jean is a trumpet player and Assistant Professor of Trumpet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a dog enthusiast, and a succulent killer. As a performer, Jean has enjoyed appearances with Adele, The Hanson Brothers, The Boston Pops, The New York Philharmonic, and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble.
Jean’s also a vocalist and stage performer who curates interdisciplinary performances which combine theater, singing, trumpet, and visual arts. She recently developed an award winning multi-media work, DESCENDED.
Jean holds degrees in trumpet performance and Choral Education from Yale University and Northwestern University. She is a passionate educator, social activist, and teaching artist, and you can hear throughout the interview how thoughtful and engaged she is with the process of creating art.
In this episode, we cover a LOT of ground. Jean shares the evolution of her pre-performance routine, strategies for how to practice to create a trusting mindset, and why trying to get things RIGHT can sometimes get in the way of your best performance.
Links and Resources
Why Confidence is Overrated (blog post)
Descended (Trailer)
Episode Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
performance, practice, mindset, trust, feel, jazz, routine
Jean Laurenz 00:00
I have a quarter that I put on my desk. And if it's on heads, I'm actively practicing being in the moment. And I give myself one mental task. So now and I explore what in the moment engagement, cue, or mantra or trigger word works for me.
Pete Kadushin 00:32
Welcome to the mental training lab. I am Pete Kadushin, your host, and my job is to have fun conversations that leave you with actionable tools, little experiments that will help you improve your mindset and mental skills so that you can do the things you love at a higher level. This episode we've got Jean Lawrence in the lab. Jean is a trumpet player and assistant professor of trumpet at the University of Wisconsin Madison. She's also a dog enthusiast and a succulent killer. As a performer, Jean has enjoyed appearances with Adele, the Hanson brothers the Boston Pops, the New York Philharmonic, and the Hong Kong new music ensemble. Jean is also a vocalist and stage performer who curates interdisciplinary performances, which combine theater, singing, trumpet and visual arts. She recently developed an award winning multimedia work descendant, and we're going to include the link to the trailer in the show notes, and you should definitely go check it out. Jean holds degrees in trumpet performance and choral education from Yale and Northwestern Universities. She is a passionate educator, social activist and teaching artists. And you can hear throughout the interview how thoughtful and engaged she is, with the process of creative art. In this episode, we cover a lot of ground. Jean shares the evolution of her pre performance routine, strategies for how to practice to create a trusting mindset, and why trying to get things right, can actually sometimes get in the way of your best performance. Alright, enough preamble, I know you're gonna love the show. So it's showtime. Jean, welcome to the mental training lab. I'm so excited to have you here.
Jean Laurenz 02:01
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited for this.
Pete Kadushin 02:03
Yeah, we've had an opportunity on a very brief occasion to geek out around musicianship and the role that mental skills and mindset play. And so I'm excited to explore some deeper waters today, for sure. And actually, what I love is you sent over a list of questions that you had for me to go along with the questions that I'd rolled out for you. And so I actually want to start with one of the ones that you had for me, because I want a little bit more clarification. So you pointed out that you often find that you need to set yourself up well before a performance. And if you get mentally off track early, you said it was really hard to refocus. And so I wonder, two parts, what do you do to set yourself up well before performance? And then when you say that something gets you off track, what does that look like?
Jean Laurenz 02:51
Good question. So I've been honing what my pre performance routine is for a long time. And what I do, it has grown. And it's kind of one of those sort of yin yang experiences where it I've learned, I've discovered that it's good for me, my process, but then I keep tweaking it and adding to it and then it becomes a burden and it becomes this big chore. And so I'm trying to always refine it. So before the pandemic, which is the last time I performed, I would wake up in the morning, and the very first thing I would do would be meditate. And I can meditate for quite a while, you know. A 45 minute session is something that I can do. It is not something I practice regularly. So if I know I'm leading up to a stressful performance, I will meditate maybe 10 to 20 minutes a day leading up to it to sort of build the practice. And then on the day of performance I actually find a longer session is really good. And I use like a guided meditation, not necessarily a talking guided meditation, but more like a it's like a sound, a sonic meditation, that sort of builds and it takes me through a process of just listening to the sound and it tends to be drone, low drone tones. And then I visualize my music. I'll sort of remind myself of the tricky spots in my music. And instead of thinking, oh, these are the hard spots, I try to just recall the body feeling of being successful in those little spots. And so I'll try to just actually engage a physical memory of those moments when i when i was successful at it and then maybe one or two little mantras of this one I need to energize the air or think that the air is that I'm exhaling, you know, through the wall that's furthest away from me. A projectile sort of imagery for the air and sound. And then I will, depending on how stressful the performance is, this is the hardest part of the chore. Sometimes I will go through the entire performance in my head from beginning to end, which is a big commitment in the morning. So if you're talking about like, you got to leave for the day at 9am, you know, 45 minutes of meditating, a full run of the show, plus a little bit of studying man, it's a commitment. And that's what I mean by it feels like a chore. It feels like something I have to really wake up for, and engage in. But I found success in doing that. It just what now what I need to find success in is actually the emotional process of doing it because it feels hard, but it feels totally worth it. Now, is that sustainable when I'm performing, you know, 80 times a year, or more 80 to 100 times a year? No, it's not. And so that's kind of the process. And then when it comes to physically warming up my instrument, I'll do it sometime in the middle of the day. I will not do it for too long. I'll just get warm. I will touch on some ingredients that I need. Like, I won't necessarily touch the hard parts. But I'll touch on like, this is the kind of air I need for the hard part. This is the kind of physicality, I need to get this really tricky passage. And these are what my fingers need to do, to be really working for this difficult passage. And so I'll just, I'll spend maybe 15 to 20 minutes doing that, and then then I leave it, and then I'm done. And then it just comes to I get ready for the show. And then about five minutes before the show, I start meditating again, just for two or three minutes, just to kind of re tap into that space, a few notes. And then I go, and if I do those things, I feel really good. So that's my process.
Pete Kadushin 06:44
Yeah. The first thing that strikes me is that you've put a lot of time and energy into thinking about and then experimenting and refining. I was also trying to keep a mental tally. And we're now up to like, two or three hours worth of pre performance work, which which can be challenging. And this actually comes up a lot with athletes that I work with, because sometimes you have control of the time before a performance. But there's a lot of times where you think you have, you know, 45 minutes or an hour and all of a sudden the track meet got off schedule. And now you have either two hours instead, and you've ramped up too early or the opposite. Now all of a sudden, you have 15 minutes, and you need to be on the line. And you need to be able to figure out how to keep the potency of the pre performance routine, but you can't keep the same time. And that can be a real challenge, figuring out what's essential. You talked about ingredients, right? What are the most essential ingredients?
Jean Laurenz 07:42
Absolutely. And I think one thing I like about my morning routine before the event is I can control when I wake up. It’s not always convenient to wake up at five or 430 in the morning, but at my events at nine, I can do that. I can control that a little bit. And then if I have just a very small pre performance routine immediately before the event, if I keep it to five minutes, the chances of me being able to be flexible, are higher, but it's still a chore in the morning. So
Pete Kadushin 08:15
Well and it's mitigating the potential for things being out of your control, because you like you said, you can wake up as early as you need to even if it's not fun. And then you can call back and reactivate the work that you did in just five minutes before a performance instead of feeling like the 45 minutes before you have to go perform is like the critical window.
Jean Laurenz 08:34
Oh, that would be really tough.
Pete Kadushin 08:36
Yeah. And so then the second piece of the question, what happens either in that process or right at the beginning, when you get off track or feel like you're off track?
Jean Laurenz 08:47
It just feels like a mental unraveling where I become my own sort of mental drone, and it's just kind of hovering in my psyche as I perform. And I start missing notes. And not that that is the end all be all you know, getting a note perfect show is not the goal, but when I become distracted, because there are active thoughts that I didn't invite in, I find it really hard to recover from that. Which is why I've set such a strong morning routine because I found that that is what I can do. Where I find success in not having that mental chatter. I do have some things that I engaged to refocus but it's almost like if I'm not in the right mental place before my motivation severely drops and so I, that is something I struggle with and I'm searching for. And it could be it could be not a mental problem but more of a let's reflect and say like, did you want to play that concert, was that the right activity for you and your vision and your goals? And so it's a little bit of sort of finding the motivation intrinsically for what I want to do in a large scale, and then also finding the the more micro focus that I need for the task at hand, because that's what I was hired to do.
Pete Kadushin 10:21
Yeah, it always gets more complicated before it gets more simple. And so now, it's not just about the pre performance routine, and then the capacity to focus on the right things with sort of what you were describing is having let go of that meta thought level, right? And so when you're in it, there isn't that extra layer of thought, and that voice kind of hovering like a drone that's like, oh, you did you did that better earlier today, or you did that better the last time you played this song, and kind of that constant chatter. But it's not just that it's also that this interfaces with motivation. So if you're someplace, and not super enthused about the experience, that it might be easier to feel that experience of getting off track, because you maybe weren't fully engaged from the start.
Jean Laurenz 11:10
Exactly. Yeah. So have you discovered that in the athletes that you work with?
Pete Kadushin 11:17
I think that with a lot of the athletes I work with, they're still trying to clarify this space that you you alluded to, right? The one where you are in the experience, and most performers have had an opportunity to have flow or be in the zone before. But for a lot of athletes, it's sort of like, I don't know, it's a mystical experience. And I'm not sure when it's gonna come back and I have no idea what to do. And so a lot of my work early on is awareness building around how to set the table so that flow can come to dinner. I think that once you clear, you level up and you move through that experience, that the next challenge is to be able to consistently put yourself in a mindset where you're ready, regardless of some of those external conditions, but taking into account those external conditions. Am I jet lagged? Am I actually not really excited about this performance? Am I not feeling great? Did I not eat well? All those. And then the final piece of the puzzle is, how do you get back to ready and neutral and sort of in the flow after you've gotten knocked out. And so it's that you kind of see it as a pyramid. And as you climb up, you have to have the foundation underneath it. So you have to have the awareness first. And then you have to have arrived at ready through the process of a pre performance routine. And then you also then need to have the tools to get back in the groove when you fallen out. I think that can be really challenging, because athletes and performers generally like to predict the future. And so depending on what happens, throughout the course of an experience, you might go like, oh that's a signal today is not going to be the day. Right? So maybe the five minutes before you go out, something just doesn't feel right. And it's easy for that layer of your mind to go like, today's gonna suck Jean isn't it? And so I think that learning to not try and predict the future. But to rest more in the present moment is really what we work towards with those performers that I engage. But it's really tough because we like we like the control. And we would rather assume a terrible performance. And be certain than be uncertain of how it's going to go and feel uncomfortable about how uncertain that is. And I wonder if that that tracks for you?
Jean Laurenz 13:34
It does, it does. I was poking around on your website, and I saw the word trust a lot. And I I was like, that's the word. That's it. It's and there was one article that you posted, you know, trust versus confidence. And I had gone through a whole thing of like, fake it till you make it competence. But that doesn't work for me because in order to express what I need to express, in the athletic part of playing, but also in the musical part of playing, I need to feel authentic. And so even the very first word fake it, just doesn't work for me because it doesn't encourage authenticity. And, and I one thing I aside from meditation, which has really helped me is having a clarified practice, practice techniques, where, for example, I have a quarter that I put on my desk, and if it's on heads, I'm actively practicing being in the moment. And I give myself one mental task. So now and I explore what in the moment engagement, cue, or mantra or trigger word works for me. And it could be different from piece to piece or it could be different from performance to performance, or I could find like the money like the master key word that really clicks with all of performing. And then I, so I'm practicing actually not thinking as I play. That’s really hard for me. I'm a very analytical person. But it's not fun to be analytical while performing. And then the tails is when I'm allowing myself to be analytical. I'm allowing myself to play and stop and say, what was the problem? Scientific method it procedure, observation data, new hypothesis continue, and it's very analytical. And then the switching the side of the coin helps me flip from sort of engineer to artist and back. But it's a cool trick that I'm proud of. But it's also not something I would say I'm I've mastered at all yet.
Pete Kadushin 15:50
I'm over here. And my mind is blown because this was something that fell into place for me towards the end of my grad school experience. And I remember being really angry when I first heard this set of concepts because it crystallized everything for me. Alright, crystallized most things. For me, it was this shift between a training mindset and a trusting mindset. Right, that we can use the same tools in terms of mental skills or physical skills. We can be addressing the same piece of music, but that the shift in mindset from that engineer to artist or training mindset, where I'm really trying to improve, as opposed to be in the moment and express the music, right, which is then on the other side of it. And then for an athlete, right, it's, am I trying to get better? Or am I trying to play my best? And what really gets us into trouble is, generally we're stuck in middle gear, we're trying to do both, right? I want to emotionally connect and be present to the experience I'm having. But I'm also thinking about, was that just right? Or Was I a little early? Did I rush that part? Or did I drag it a little bit? And so I love the the physical cue of a quarter in front of you. And I immediately started thinking about like, well, what could I do for the athletes that work with? You know, wristband on one hand, and then shift it over to the other. But I find that a physical cue and then also thresholds in this room, I think, like this, or in the dugout, I approach things like this. But as soon as I'm on the field, I have the freedom to just let go. But the key for me is really that it's, it's about trust, when we get into the performance mindset. I don't love confidence, because confidence gets translated as an absence of doubt. And the truth is, is that if you really care deeply about something, there's going to be some uncertainty in performance, and you're not sure how it's going to go. And so there's going to be some doubt. And so artificially creating that confidence, right? The whole fake it till you make it, like part of you knows that you're lying. Right? Like, I feel great, I feel great. I feel great. My body knows. And so you can trust even when you don't feel 100%. And that unlocks the capacity to engage the experience at the highest level you're capable of, regardless of how you're feeling. And I think that that ends up being the secret for a lot of performers, when they're no longer having to hunt down feeling amazing. They're free to then just go do what they know how to do and have trained to do.
Jean Laurenz 18:19
I have a follow up question.
Pete Kadushin 18:21
Yeah, let's do it.
Jean Laurenz 18:24
I think I think it's, I think it's connected, it might be a little bit of a departure. But I've heard to the quarter idea is, I'm sure something that somebody has done before. Or through osmosis, I thought of it, but it felt like it was something I came up with at the time. But though, another technique that I've heard a lot of musicians do is the 10 Penny technique, where you have 10 pennies on your stand. And every time you play a rep perfectly or correctly, you take it and you move it. And so then the goal is to get all 10 pennies to the other side of the stand. And it's just a way, a little calculator. And really great professors and teachers preach this skill. But that kind of practice was very detrimental to me because I noticed, in hindsight, I can reflect and say, well, every time I moved a penny over my body got tenser because the the weight and the need for the next one to be right was increased this sort of negative grip inside me. And then I was doing at least six of the 10 repetitions with poor physical approach because I was tight. And do you see that in your athletes? Do you see that where, yes, positive repetition is obviously what quality practice looks like? But do you see a sort of weight setting on the perfection of repetitions? And do you see that negatively affecting the people you work with? Or is this more of a me thing? Or is it more of a musician thing?
Pete Kadushin 20:18
I love that you you said negative grit. And I'm, I want to explore that more, at some point. We’re gonna end up with like a four hour podcast. And I think that for me, the way I'm thinking about the penny technique is that there's, there's enough training mindset, and then there's too much. And that there's a rigidity that gets cooked into performers, when there's a sense of I was perfect, and then I was perfect again, and now I need to be perfect the next time. And you lose degrees of freedom. And for a lot of performers, that feels comfortable, because again, they don't, they don't want the uncertainty and so they'd rather the pressure and the tightness. And the next one has to be perfect, then like, well, I could flub a note and it would actually sound better because I'm more present to the experience. And, and so I think the, the way I describe it for athletes is, it would be like going into the gym and only lifting your left bicep, right? Like you're just doing curls every day, but the only thing you're lifting is your left bicep, you're going to look ridiculous. And you're going to be a terrible athlete, because you're imbalanced. And so it, the way I envision is sort of like if you're going through your training mindset, you're powering up your mind, but then there has to be a process through which you transition all of that power down into your body. Because when it comes time to perform your body is the thing that's doing it. And and so that transition is something that I think we all need to be more mindful of. And so if you're going to do the penny technique, then how do you engage that trusting mindset as you feel the tension rising? So it actually could be a really interesting exercise because you've created artificial stakes. And now you're able to go notice, like your shoulders creep up a little bit, diaphragm’s a little bit tighter, there's just more muscle tension in general. And how do I respond to that? How do I fall into a state of trust, as I noticed that my body and my mind are going the opposite direction? I think the problem though, is that most performers are not going to do that. They’re just going to double down on the next one has to be right. And that's just grooving the pattern of being more rigid, and more stuck, when things aren't going to go exactly the way you want. So, yeah, I see you buying what I'm selling.
Jean Laurenz 22:31
I was like, yeah exactly. I'm eating the cake for sure. I think that's a really cool, it's just a reframing of the penny exercise, which is, it is a mental practice exercise. It's how can I keep my emotional and mental state healthy and relaxed as I go through the pennies, and the failure does not come in the mistakes that you make, or the results. The failure comes in when the mistakes are made and you you can say or when they're not made, when you when you got through the passage, and you're like, you know what, I was tight. I was not in a good mental or emotional state. And I would count that as not a success, even if I was not perfect.
Pete Kadushin 23:20
Well, an so there could be a situation where you moved the penny over and it actually made you worse.
Jean Laurenz 23:24
Yeah, yeah. Oh, that story, my life, story of my youth.
Pete Kadushin 23:30
Well, and so I think this becomes a really important point around practice is what are we actually trying to improve? Because I think across the board, performers get caught up in the outcome, and they get really focused on. If they're purposeful at all about picking what they're practicing, they're picking things that are going to look good. They're the things that are going to move the penny. And I think the mistake is that we're missing what's getting patterned underneath that. So if I'm getting better at being tighter, being more rigid, being kind of crispier with my thought process, right? I'm either in or I'm out. And when I'm out, I'm gone. Right? When that happens now, what have I gotten better at? Well, when the stakes are up, the stresses on, I'm feeling the pressure. Now my body goes, oh here's what we do when this happens. And I've now trained that pattern that just like Pavlov's dog. And it's like that's not what we want. So we can really we can construct practice in a way that works against that, or I guess we could chart the course of practice so that you start with that training mindset predominating. And then, as you get closer to a performance, trusting mindset really becomes the thing that takes the center stage. I just don't think we do that very well across the board.
Jean Laurenz 24:42
No, I totally agree. I mean, it has to be a deliberate intention. If you want the results that you want, whether they're physical results or mental results or emotional results. Like I want to like performing. I love playing trumpet and singing and performing, or at least rehearsing. But basically, my entire young, professional life has been loving the preparation process, but not the performance itself. And so I realize if my, if what I want, as a musician and performer is to really love the performing part, that, you know, that's a feeling. So maybe I should build in, and I have been working on this. I'm practicing an emotional, practicing the emotional journey and plugging that as well as the sort of psychological and physical journey that get wrapped up in a practice session. And otherwise, that like going back to the negative grit, that's, that's what as you would say, I'm patterning into it, and that's just gonna come out in performance. You, what you churn out is what you set up.
Pete Kadushin 25:54
It's, I mean, I think about dominoes sometimes, and you have athletes who then want a different outcome, but they've spent an entire preseason or season, setting the dominoes up, and you go, well, it's gonna fall this way. because this is what you've been practicing. This is what the path that you've been grooving through your neural networks. And we have to make different choices for things to change. Yeah the negative grit, that sort of like, I'm going to do it, but I'm going to clench my teeth, and I'm just going to, through force of will make it through, well, you've gotten better at being tighter being more sort of just rigid through that whole thing. And it's gonna come back to bite you in the ass.
Jean Laurenz 26:33
For sure. You know? And if that's kind of cultural, like no pain, no gain, you know. That’s what I that's what I learned. And I has the culture shifted, or do we just know more now? Or what? What happened? What changed?
Pete Kadushin 26:53
I mean, I think I'm a bit of a contrarian. And so when somebody said, no pain, no gain, I was kind of like, well, isn't there a better way? Now, again, like I was a wrestler throughout high school, so I very much lived that experience. It was like, oh, if it hurts, then you just need to go a little harder. And so maybe it was through that keyhole, that I eventually realized, like, well, my body's falling apart, and I didn't perform particularly well. But there are people out there that are beating the drum for alternative approaches. I think that it's just tough, because there's a certain amount of control, we feel when we're like, well, I'll just put the hammer down a little bit harder, you know, foot on the gas pedal. And the idea of being a little softer, you know, you mentioned the Yin and Yang. Engaging a little bit more of that feminine energy. And now all of a sudden, we've lost half the listeners, you're like, nah I'll never do that. Right but, the idea that you could be a little softer, a little more accepting. And that when you're in the flow of the experience, the rhythm of the experience, that things that you didn't think were possible suddenly appear, because you were just present to the opportunities that unfolded. And it sounds woowoo. But it's not when you've been in the experience and had it happen.
Jean Laurenz 28:05
And then there's a certain point in in anybody's evolution, their skill, where they're willing to try whatever woowoo thing is on the plate, you know. You get to a point where you feel like you've tried all of the stock over the counter tricks. And you're like, I am plateauing. I need to try something new, I'm willing to do anything. And that's when I think the most exciting discovery happens, because that's true exploration.
Pete Kadushin 28:34
Well and the letting go into the experience, I think becomes much more upfront when you're playing music with other people, as opposed to you know, you're out on a baseball diamond. And you don't necessarily recognize the insync, the moments. But I can remember playing music, and it was somebody that I hadn't played a lot with yet, we were just jamming. And all of a sudden, we're in the middle of a song. And we both paused at the same exact time and then started back up at the same. And there had not been any conversation. We weren't looking at each other. There was just this sense of like this, what happens next. And it was totally ad libs. And you go like, we'll start looking up in the air. Where'd that come from? Then it's being present to the moment as it unfolds. And I wish more athletes were able to notice that experience with their teammates. And there are certain sports that I think lend itself to that. But it would really help kind of push the motivation because when those things happen, and you feel connected to the people around you in that way, you go, well it wasn't because I was forcing it. And so you learn that there's that balance between, you know, going and being sort of leaning forward in your chair, and then there's moments where you might lean back just a little bit to allow the experience to come to you instead.
Jean Laurenz 29:47
Yeah, yes. 100%. And it's like the it's like building instinct. I remember when I was in high school. I auditioned. So I was torn between auditioning in classical trumpet or vocal jazz. And I was auditioning at Western Michigan University. And for the jazz program there, they were like, well, you spend two years learning all the theory, all the skills, all the notes, and then two years forgetting, because jazz does a really good job of instilling the theory into you, but then allowing you and encouraging you it is built into the culture for you to forget all those things. And that's not the same in classical music, which is why classical music might be. Jazz might be more like basketball, where you have to be instinctive on the court and reactive to whatever's around you. And then, you know, classical music kinda is like the figure skating routine that you've practiced for X number of years, and you've perfected every tiny little move, but you need that sense of control. Over over because you've manipulated every moment. And I think I'm gonna start practicing jazz.
Pete Kadushin 30:59
My, my first sport psych teacher was the back of a Charlie Parker CD. So I just gotten turned in on to jazz. I was like, fifth or sixth grader, and I'm walking through, I think it was the wall back when that was an actual store. And some guys, can I help you and I was shy fifth grader, so I was like, oh God, I don't know. I'm kinda into Jazz. He said, well you play an instrument? Yeah, alto sax. He goes, well you know, Charlie Parker, then? Then I went uh-uh and he went, his eyes lit up. He was like, so excited. He walked me over, hand me the thing. And it was the central charlie Parker and I flipped over the back. And the quote was, and it probably wasn't bird who said it first. But they at least gave it to them. Learn the notes, learn your instrument, then forget all that shit and just play. And remember being like, oh that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. You got to do it until it's Yeah, muscle memory. And then you just got to let it go so that the good stuff can show up. And that's, that's that's it that you know that. That's training mindset and trusting mindset in a direct nutshell. And it just took me 10 years, 15 years to come back around puts in the theory to it. That made sense. But the back of that CD case understood in a way that I didn't at that point.
Jean Laurenz 32:17
Yeah.Amazing.
Pete Kadushin 32:20
So we made it through the first question. That was that was the first.
Jean Laurenz 32:26
Oh, my goodness.
Pete Kadushin 32:27
So I want to I want to loop back around because for me being able to frame the conversation that we're having through your experience as a performer, and getting a better sense of sort of the beats of your performance career. And so if you could write your performance story. If we were sitting down to write your memoir, what would some of the key chapters or section headings be titled?
Jean Laurenz 32:54
Hmm, okay. This is the one the question that I was a little bit like, oh, I don't know how to answer this. Can I ask you a follow up question? Are you hoping for like, I know, I know, you're not hoping for anything specific. But like, the chapters of my life, like, this is how it flowed or more like, these are the series of aha moments that I had?
Pete Kadushin 33:18
I mean, this can be a Christopher Nolan movie, or it can be a much more traditional. Like, if we're gonna, that's why I like to leave it wide open. So if it's, if it's the latter, awesome. If you want to go a little more chronologically, but it's really about how you've arrived here, as the person and performer you are.
Jean Laurenz 33:37
So I can do a little bit of both. High School was about discovery, and discovering negative grit through a competitive approach, wanting to win. That got me physically good, more talented, you know. I gained a lot of skill, and mentally really messed up. Northwestern University, where I went for my undergrad, further down that path. So I would say that was the chapter that was like learning everything, learning how to do everything the wrong way, with really great people around me. Strong teachers, strong leaders, amazing student body. And me trying to turn everything into a formula. So that's the formulaic chapter, I guess, where I was trying to dissect all the successes I saw around me and turn it into something that I could follow in a sort of 1,2,3 manner. And that when that didn't work, it was devastating. Followed by injury, and inability to do what I had focused on for 10 years. So I left Northwestern not even being able to play a major scale, a full major scale. Not not something that I could have done when I was in sixth grade. So total and utter the next year I became a public school teacher. And that is rebuilding. Relearning physically how to play. So basically I took, I played whack a mole with all the main categories of growing growth, right. So you, I destroyed my physical self. I destroyed my mental self. And my, like a psychological emotional self, was also a victim. And then I was like, okay, I still want to be here, for some reason. Still want to try to do this. But let's, let's switch switch the flip. So, I spent that year rebuilding my physical self into a better efficient machine. So the pipe that is our body, you know, essentially, like, the way the air flows is just a pipe, and you know, your armature is your hose nozzle, and you adjust the speed that the water comes out. And your diaphragm and support structure, the supporting muscles, affect the speed of the air. And I just basically rebuilt that mostly my pipe or my body, so that I was utilizing really efficient posture to help me do the work I needed to do. And then I was just redeveloping the mental psychological side as well. And then I I wanted to go back to playing full time. And so I went to Yale for my master's degree and as a second degree, artist's diploma, which is not a PhD, but so I've got two degrees from Yale. And there I went, and walked into the space being like, I'm still injured. I am handicapped, and I am just happy to be here, because I missed playing. And that shifting of perspective and lens was a total allowed for massive growth because I was open in my mind and in my energy, and in my willingness to take on information, and then my will and my ability to process that process that information without like the iron prison around me that that was saying, you have to do it this way. I was really able to, like, go in with a jazz analogy, improvise my way through this growth process, build my physical self, my. And then I was also doing playing music that I liked a lot more, which is contemporary classical. And I was very affected by my surroundings, which was a much more positive space for me, and much less focused on the perfection and less focus on orchestra, which can be a really intense community and culture, although it doesn't have to be. I know plenty of orchestra musicians who are amazing and free spirited. And so then it was a building three years for me. Growth. Exhilarating. And I don't know what let it what encouraged the growth the most, whether it was like my psychological approach, as I walked into the school for the first time. If it was the fact that I actually did rebuild myself physically to be a more efficient machine so that my mind and spirit could be more effective when it comes to expressing the music I wanted to share. So there's more mental bandwidth for the things that actually matter that actually get to people when you perform music or offer an art form. And then I then I started to see success in and I was then I moved to I did a job or a fellowship program at Carnegie Hall, where you're teaching and you're performing and you're trying, you're you're really exerting a creative approach into the way you perform. And that helped further change my mind out of this like formulaic approach into a very expressive focus on the people and don't focus on yourself. And it just got me out of the, the sort of solitary, dark space that my mind was. And so it kind of, I hope this is answering your question. Just kind of like the stepping stones of like, break me down and build me up experience. And then I moved. So then I was in New York, and then I did that fellowship program for two years, and I did one year of freelancing. And then I went back into a space, a headspace, that was very much extrinsically motivated, because as a freelancer, it's based everybody's perception of you is how you get work. So I was very focused on the external praise that I could receive. And it went okay. It went pretty well, but I wasn't happy. And so then I moved to Boston, and sort of let the pendulum swing back into what do I want to do, how do I want to grow? And that I wasn't playing quite as much when I moved to Boston, and so I had time to build into this, you know. Zooming forward into now, the pandemic has been this weird gift of time, in some ways where I am not performing so I'm not always going for that extrinsic qualifier. So I just have time to sort of meditate on what I'm doing in my practice. And I had that when I moved to Boston at the beginning. But then when you grow, you get more opportunities. And so I joined a touring group called Thera Brass, which allowed me to perform so many more times in the year, which really helped my mental game, because each performance had less weight, because there were more of them. And because there were more of them, I got to practice just like in improvising and in jazz. It's just like, instead of setting up all the control and feeling stuff and making it, trying to over manipulate the experience, every performance was like, well, what if I try this next performance? What if I try that? And just these like little tweaking of the dials that helped.
Pete Kadushin 41:23
And so one of the ways that I described this experience of building awareness, and then using that awareness is that if we could think of readiness, right, physical, mental, emotional readiness, as a spot on a map, that, in some ways, you're you, of course, your journey is from then to now, right? And so there's a temporal component, but there's also having explored all the terrain around readiness, right, and different ways of getting to ready. Right, so shooting the gap by being super extra crispy, negative grit, I'm gonna push myself and then finding different ways to experiment. And then fast forwarding to the experience, you're just describing, right? This, this capacity to play around a little bit, say, okay, well, I know the destination I want to get to, right, can I get there from here? Can I get there from here? And that flexibility, I think, for me is the difference between a performer who can bring it at a high level, consistently, and the one that can only do it when like, the very narrow window of conditions, physical, internal, external, all of those lineup. And so I want, I want a resilient, robust performer if I'm working with them, and that's really I feel like, the journey that you just described was to that,
Jean Laurenz 42:36
For sure. And I think it all comes back to trust. Like if I were a younger person, and I said, I'm gonna make a lot of mistakes along the way. I'm gonna have a really unique path, because everybody does. But I know that I am surrounding myself with people who will help me get better. And I know I have the ability to grow and learn, because I've already shown that I could do that. You know, if 18 year old me could have had that trust, it would have been a different story. I mean, I'm grateful for the story that I have, because of the amount of insight that comes out of having to work through major failure. But wow, wow, like having that faith in the growing process.
Pete Kadushin 43:22
This is really weird, because the question I was gonna ask next is, if you could hop in a time machine, and go back and tell your younger self something, and then you, you already had a feeling for what that would be. I think the interesting part, like I know, if I went back to 15 year old me and had a conversation, he'd be like, first of all, you're you're a square. And so he'd probably tease me, and then he probably wouldn't listen to me. And so I think there's a certain sense of, like, you got a, you got to fall down over and over again, before you're really ready to internalize the lesson. And I hope that maybe I could have eased some of the suffering along the way.
Jean Laurenz 44:01
For sure, yeah. And I think there's obviously there's a difference between wisdom and knowledge. You, you hear, don't practice hard, practice smart. But you don't know what that means. Like, you only can know what that means by not doing it.
Pete Kadushin 44:17
And by burning yourself out, and moving the pennies over and over and going, and this isn't working, and then go well, let me get smarter.
Jean Laurenz 44:25
Right. And then that, you know, another huge thing that was really effective for me is the practice of reflection. Because it took me years to zoom out and be like, wait, this isn't working. I am not getting results. How you know, like you're not, it's not working. And I just, it just felt like a process I could control so it felt good, but it's not working and not getting, you know. I'm not getting better as quickly as I need to.
Pete Kadushin 44:54
Yeah, the power of thoughtful evaluation is actually usually the it's the skill that I adress first with most of my clients, because generally, what we do is we have an experience, whether it's training or performance, and it was either good or it was bad. And if it was good, I don't want to look at it, because now I feel a little superstitious, and I don't want to mess with success. And if it was bad, I don't want to look at it because it was bad and uncomfortable, and I don't want to think about it. And then in the background, while I'm trying to go to sleep, and then the next day, and the day after that, I'm just picking apart everything that happened, that I didn't like. And the thing is what we pay attention to grows. So I'm running all of these programs in the background, and I'm just paying attention to everything that was terrible. And then I can't figure out why the next time I'm in that situation, I feel worse, I perform worse, and then the cycle deepens itself. The alternative, right, is to get smarter about your evaluation, right to be able to see what's working, what isn't from a reflection standpoint, and then build a system that allows you to see everything else, you know, upstream from that. And so I'm wondering, what's your reflection process, like?
Jean Laurenz 46:05
Listening to recordings, or watching videos, and trying to recall the ingredients that were went into those moments of success and moments of failure? So the ingredients for me, you know, we in brass playing winded song is what they say. Was I focusing on the song, the music? Was I focusing, was I using my air effectively? Because that's the first thing that gets stifled when you're especially really tight and nervous. But then for me, so it's like, wind, song, and body. And then, the sort of mental emotional part as well. I can I can remember how I felt. And so I tried to just analytically pick, pick it apart. Like how did that sound? Was that good? Or was it not where I want it to be? And then I try, then I try to use the other ingredients to kind of answer why something was particularly good or why something was particularly not what I wanted it to be.
Pete Kadushin 47:10
Well and so the big difference then is you're curious, and you're moving towards both the positive and negative experiences within a performance. You also have a framework that allows you to sort of work down the checklist and say, okay, well, which one of these was the thing that either contributed? Or maybe it was combination that contributed to the success or what what got in the way? Because I think if we just stopped that, yeah, that one wasn't great, we haven't learned anything. We haven't put together a plan for how to get better next time, which I think is just critical. I also think that what you pointed to is that you've got a troubleshooting guide for yourself, you know, like one of your devices isn't working. You just open up the internet and then go to the you know, the FAQ. And somebody asked that question, and then there's usually a fairly straightforward fix. We don't do this for ourselves very often, though, right? So what happens when I'm not feeling well? Well, if I'm having a crappy day, I'm gonna have a harder time identifying why I'm having a crappy day. And so now I have a checklist that I go down, right? Like, did I sleep well? Am I hydrated, right? Have I been outside in the sunshine? Have I moved to today? And those all seem like no brainers when you're feeling great. Like, of course, I would recognize it. But when I'm feeling terrible, I forget everything, right? Because I'm feeling terrible. And so the same goes for performers within the context of evaluation. And then certainly what we talked about with the pre performance, right is being able to have that checklist and being able to work through so that you don't have to rely on your mind to remember. You can feel free to like have a system and then let go into the experience.
Jean Laurenz 48:50
Exactly. Because because you know that you you have a lot of time for the analytical process later. So give it up now and just go with the flow. Yeah, it's, it's hard to do.
Pete Kadushin 49:03
It takes practice and the what I'm getting from our conversation is that this isn't something that's taught explicitly. That it's something that most musicians are left to figure out on their own. or if they're lucky, they might get a mentor or a teacher who has a good sense for that.
Jean Laurenz 49:21
Yes, yeah. Cuz you you know, you get as a student, you get one hour a week with your mentor, professor, and then you're on your own for you're practicing and you're, it's hard to get results from your own practicing. Most people don't even remember their own practice sessions. And so, you know, the whole recording situation is something I do in my practicing too. I have to listen back to my to sort of practice performances. Otherwise, I have no idea what to expect in the actual performance.
Pete Kadushin 49:51
Yeah. I mean, it certainly brings up the fact that we don't see ourselves particularly accurately. We don't hear ourselves very accurately either. And so if you can't have somebody else to listen to you, the next best thing is to have a recording that you can go back to. I've actually found that because I edit all of these myself. And so being able to go back and listen, which is not normally something that I would do for every single experience I have, has been really helpful because it affirms the points where I'm like, oh, that was actually an alright question. Nice work there. There are moments where I'm able to go, ooh, yeah, you just rambled for hours. And nobody's listening anymore. You can think about how to set up some better boundaries next time. So I have a couple more questions. And I want to be mindful of your time. And so, uh-oh, that's, that's the green light, which means we will end up with a one-hour podcast.
Jean Laurenz 50:50
Yeah, I want to be mindful of your time.
Pete Kadushin 50:53
And so if I was going to lay out a couple of mental skills, I'm wondering which ones seem to be more or less important, from your perspective. And so if we were going to go with a list, like managing your energy, controlling your attention, being confident, using self talk for good instead of evil, because we usually use it for evil. Which one do you think, or which ones do you think would be more valuable for a musician?
Jean Laurenz 51:23
I think, using self talk for good. And then they're all kind of wrapped up in a web because managing your energy, well that's going to affect your energy. Can you repeat the other two?
Pete Kadushin 51:43
Controlling your attention and then confidence, but we could translate confidence to trust.
Jean Laurenz 51:48
Yeah, let's do that. Let's call it trust. Oh, my gosh, I'm actually gonna put controlling your attention second because that was a paradigm shift for me, when I started scripting out my practice sessions in a much more clear way. And then I can't put them in an order. It's almost like a pyramid, like you said. The trust has to be at the bottom, like all of these other steps are relying on the trust that I have in myself in my, my skill building.
Pete Kadushin 52:24
And so it's not transactional trust, which is I will trust if I'm feeling good, which gets back into the fake it till you make it and the way that we usually look at confidence. What you said instead was that you can trust your skill building, that you can trust the process. And this actually, this was the message that you would have sent to an 18 year old Jean to write like, that, you're going to continue to get better, and you're going to continue to move in the direction you want, and that you can trust that the ups and downs are going to be a part of that process.
Jean Laurenz 52:58
Absolutely. I think every mistake I've ever made in my building process has been because there was a lack of trust.
Pete Kadushin 53:08
So next hard question. How would you train trust more consistently starting today?
Jean Laurenz 53:21
Through reflection, and through identifying micro and macro milestones. You know, I like the number three, yeah, so I always use it, for some reason. It feels like a bite size number. So after a practice session, I would say, alright, what are three things or three areas that I got better at? And if I can't answer that, that means I need to adjust or recalibrate my goals. And if I can answer that, it helps reinforce a trust in the fact that I got better and I can point to exactly these three things, even though I probably got better at three other three a lot more than three things.
Pete Kadushin 53:59
Well, let me let me just emphasize a really important point here. It wasn't that you had a crappy session, right? It was that you you're there calibrated with goals a little bit off or that you're filter, in terms of what you're paying attention to, is a little off, because there's always three things that you got better at. And then the extension there is there's always more than three things too. But this is always a tough push for athletes and performers early on is like today sucked. But, no no no, we got to dig deeper than that. Well, no, literally nothing went well. If that's the answer, then we need to address a different challenge. It's not that today's practice session didn't go well. It's that we need to readjust the lens through which you're seeing things.
Jean Laurenz 54:42
Absolutely. Even identifying what doesn't work is one of those three things. Identifying a really crappy 15 minute segment, because the process I put into that segment, did not yield results. So I'm not going to do that tomorrow. That's a success. And another thing I tell my students and I try to tell myself is, at a certain point, we get very emotional about our performance. And that emotion can be used as fuel, or it can be a weapon. And so when I'm getting those thoughts that are like, oh, that sucked, nothing about that was good. It's basically shutdown mindset. And it helps me to reframe the lens and say, what is the data? What does the data say? And just kind of take away that emotional component and turn it back into the sort of scientific method approach where it's like, the data is telling me that this didn't go well, this didn't go well, this didn't go well. Now why, and then get as quickly to the why as you can, or to even your hypothesis, of why it didn't go well. And maybe you just were really tight. Maybe doing yoga would have been better than practicing because your body is tight. And maybe that applies to athletes too.
Pete Kadushin 56:11
It definitely does how you enter the tunnel of a practice session or a performance makes a difference, which is why I put a premium on arriving at ready as best as you can. Because the way I kind of think of is like, if you've ever driven down like a Colorado mountain pass in the snow, you're going to slide at some point. Right, it's not an if it's a win, and you've lost almost all control, when you start doing that. There are still things you can do, right. But if you try and wrestle control back in that moment, you're gonna make things worse. And so when you're in the moment of a performance, or in the, the woodshedding that takes place during a practice session, right, you've lost some of those controls. And so you've got to be a little bit more gentle on the drift, which means that if yoga was going to be a better idea, because that was going to put you in a position where your body your instrument, right that that physical pipe was going to be in better shape to then go practice, even if it meant half as much practice time or no practice time at all. It just means that you're putting yourself at a better position to start that drift from.
Jean Laurenz 57:20
Exactly. And I think, you know, we were talking about reflection after a performance, but I think inserting little check ins and little reflective moments within the session is also crucial to in setting up for being at least setting up a sort of web flow of the way my practice could go. These are, these are the things that I need to I would like to accomplish. And these are there are many ways to get there. After each segment, pause check in. How are things going? How am I feeling? Have I come up with at least one of the three things yet? All right, what's next? It could be one of these two or three things? Where is my energy pulling towards now? And if I keep avoiding that one thing over there, over the course of a few practice sessions, then I got to visit why. What am I avoiding? And so the the little mini check in moments, and then also, in within a performance, I'm going kind of a way for the practicing and back into sort of in a state of flow. I also do allow myself a few moments during performance to check in with the analytical side and say, how are things going? Anything we need to do? And I'll assign it to myself. I'll say this is an 85 measure rest. I have 15 minutes of just sitting, and I'll let my mind go into a space where I'm like, how was that? Everything good. You know, the trombone player next to me is playing a little louder than they did in the rehearsals, why am I adjusting? So let's let's, how do I do that? How would that feel? And then bookend it, say like, now I'm gonna be analytical, be analytical. Now I have done and just focus on the breath. And I think that helps in practice and performing and also performance practice.
Pete Kadushin 59:02
Yeah, yes, yeah. And what you're pointing to is that when you've gotten good at flipping the quarter, and you can go with those big waves where I'm going to spend an extended period of time in training mindset. Now I'm going to shift into trusting mindset. That you can start to make those, those transitions smaller. And you can build trust, in the fact that you could shift in the middle of a performance for that 85, measure, rest, and then not worry about getting back to the appropriate mindset. I have athletes who will go out for a round of golf, and it's going to take four and a half hours and they think they need to be dialed in for all four and a half hours. It's like just not possible. And so planning the ebb and flow as opposed to like, hoping and leaving the rest up to chance is a terrible idea. And so, whether it's between songs or it's in those moments of rest that you've planned ahead. I think it's wonderful to kind of let off a little bit of the steam. Because there takes energy that builds and generates heat as you're like dialed in, and you're in the experience, even when it feels effortless. And the same is true for those threshold moments in practice, as you're transitioning from one exercise to the next, that's the perfect moment is pause and think. Because we're not really adjusting the amount of thinking that's taking place. We're just choosing where the thinking happens. So that there can be less thinking when that's going to actually be helpful.
Jean Laurenz 1:00:31
100%. It's like energy management in inside your head too.
Pete Kadushin 1:00:38
It's it. Like you pointed to that it's a full web. So you can't really disconnect any of those mental skills and say, well, this is the one that because if I don't manage my energy, I can't control my attention. If I'm not controlling my attention, then my self talk is going to be all over the place. Right trust unlocks the ability to do all of that. And then it's really hard to trust if I'm feeling activated and anxious. And feel like there's a saber toothed tiger hanging over the back of my shoulder while I'm trying to play this this segment. Man, we've covered so much ground, this is great. The last question I have for you is, if you could describe the beautiful moment for me when you're performing. Well, maybe it's not performing. Maybe it's practice. But as related to being a musician, what's the beautiful moment for you?
Jean Laurenz 1:01:28
So this is a tough question because it's so it's so abstract, but I'm going to give you a specific experience that I recently had, and share how that manifests in many scenarios. It's a little different than athletics, I think. But maybe not maybe note. I've been having a lot of fun playing with around playing with what you say, before you play. So you go up to the microphone, and you share a bit of information about the piece, and trying to tap into the human experience and build a bridge from the piece to the audience and pull them into a different perspective of the piece. It's a it's a fun challenge and an art in itself. I think and I see people do it beautifully. And we we my Seraph, my group Seraph Brass recently actually did our first show in Minot, North Dakota two weeks ago. And we were playing in I believe, I don't want to butcher it. But I believe it's Ann Nicole Nelson Hall. Ann Nelson Hall. I believe that's what it is. I'm and she she's from North Dakota, but she was tragically killed it in the 911 terrorist attacks and the hall was dedicated to her. And she was like a young 30 something year old woman who had only been working in the World Trade Center for four days. And we were about to play a beautiful piece and it was my turn to talk and I usually have a spiel, biographical information about the composer. But instead I you know, like dedicated the piece that we were about to play to the woman who lost her life and dedicated that not not to only her life, but her the fact that she was a young woman building herself up in the world to create a career because my group is all female. All we're all female brass quintet. And you feel this. And here's the answer to your question. When you've made that connection, that almost every human has some sort of empathy for. There's a feeling right as you begin a piece of music. It's like this calm intensity that is found through the linking of all the humans in the space. And it is so powerful. And it does not make me play more accurately or more perfectly, but it makes me play with more of that sort of like magical sauce, whatever it is the energy that you hear in these the great players of the world. And I think that is the that trying to find that moment is what I find beautiful. And I think in those moments, you don't even have space in your head or your heart to be nervous about yourself because it becomes not about you anymore. And I think that's a really beautiful experience.
Pete Kadushin 1:04:44
Yeah. And this question that was that was so cool. I love the question because it leaves the room open for whatever comes out and that was that's just neat. Yeah, I don't want to ruin it with anything. The last thing that I'll ask you is, you know, I'll have a link to Seraph Brass and your Instagram and all that. Is there anything else that you want folks to know about or check out as it relates to you and the work that you're doing?
Jean Laurenz 1:05:15
Well, if you are an aspiring college student, check out UW Madison, especially if you're interested in in majoring in music, or double majoring in music and something else. We're always there's a lot I imagine a lot of your listening basis, actually probably all over, but if they happen to be in the Boston area, we're always looking for those awesome East Coast souls.
Pete Kadushin 1:05:42
I mean, I should put a plug in for Penn State just to balance this out, but I'm gonna let it go.
Jean Laurenz 1:05:49
I'm not sure. I'm not 100% sure I want that plug in there.
Pete Kadushin 1:05:55
Yeah. Football rivalries.
Jean Laurenz 1:05:57
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Pete Kadushin 1:06:02
Jean, thank you so much for the time. And we got a bunch of questions that we didn't get to. And so at some point, I'll rope you into coming back around so that we can tackle more of this stuff. But for now, thank you so much.
Jean Laurenz 1:06:15
Let's do it again. I would love love to tackle more of the questions and thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Great fun.
Pete Kadushin 1:06:22
All right. That's it for today. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe to the show. And don't forget to rate and leave a review. If you want to dive deeper into the concepts and concrete practices from today. I'm talking access to show notes and the transcript for the episode and a whole bunch of other mental training goodies, head over to MTL dot Academy. That's MTL dot Academy. Each week after the episode goes live, I'll also be sharing a worksheet that's going to help you level up your mindset and mental skills. And the only way to get access is through our weekly newsletter. So when you hit the bottom of the webpage, don't forget to sign up for that too. Until next time, be well.
