About self-doubts when playing

Sometimes when we perform in public, we doubt ourselves for our skills, we fear of what might our listeners think, or we might even be unsure of how this piece sounds. When we have self-doubts, we start to make mistakes, sometimes even lose our place.

Start doubting ourselves some more and we'll get a panic attack - our breathing will be disrupted, the pulse will become very fast, we will want to run off the stage, and we will freeze without being able to play anything - especially from memory.

It turns out self-doubts are perfectly natural, even essential. Whoever doesn't have them is either a fool or has simply too little experience.

But when you play, something else is much more important - it doesn't matter what kind of thoughts come to your head, you have to force yourself with all you've got to stick to just one thing - the current measure you are playing. Not to what has just sounded a few seconds ago, not to what will come on the next page, but now.

If you do that, then trusting yourself becomes irrelevant.