Establish a Routine

Hey, rock stars, your host Reggie Daughson with The Being On Stage. I was reading a book earlier about stage fright and performance anxiety, and one of the things I was looking at that kind of resonated with me, and I wanted to kind of talk about a little bit in my own words, is the day of the show. What do you do the day of the show to prepare? No matter who you are, maybe you're a comedian, maybe you're a dancer, maybe you're a speaker, maybe you're a drag performer.

Maybe you perform burlesque, maybe you're a street performer. But what do you do the day of your show, or even the night before your show, to prepare yourself? There's a lot of different things that celebrities do. Some of them are odd quirks and things like that. There's a lot of things that professional musicians do to prepare for a show. For me, I'm not a professional musician. I'm not a celebrity.

I'm not someone who's made millions of dollars and been on hundreds. I haven't won any awards other than one single local award, but my focus was never my own success. My focus has always been the success of others, and that's why I'm doing this today. But one of the things that I wanted to bring up, and I wanted to make sure that you at least were thinking about, is what do you do before your show to prepare?

How do you prepare your mind? How do you prepare your body? How do you prepare your emotions? I mean, of course. You have your material down. You know the jokes you're going to tell. You know the songs you're going to sing. You know the chords you're going to play. You know the words that you're going to lip-sync. You know the choreography that you're going to perform. But what do you do to prepare the rest of you?

Some people eat a certain diet the day of a meal. Some people relax all day. For me, what I used to do the day of the show is, and it's probably not the most healthiest of habits, I would not eat probably at least four to five hours before the show. I wouldn't eat. But my last meal before the show would usually be something light. You know, like a salad, or sometimes it'd be like a light soup, like a chicken soup or something like that.

It'd be something relatively light. Occasionally I would have like, you know, chicken nuggets. But that was always my vice. McDonald's chicken nuggets. They're terrible. I know. I know. I understand. The pink meat. The pink meat. All that crap. They're terrible. Whatever. But my vice was McDonald's chicken nuggets. But before the show, I would have a routine. Even leading up to the show, even the two hour, you know, even the hour, the two hours leading up to the show, I had certain things that I would do to prepare myself, you know, deep breaths.

I would listen to the music I was going to do. And then I would also listen to something completely different. Just once. Just to kind of relax my mind and get away from the fact that I was about to get on stage. Just kind of let something else wash over me. For a minute. And then refocus. But that's something I had to do. Everybody has to have a different routine. Now, we're not all celebrities.

We can't all take the whole, you know, day off and prepare with a, you know, a cleanse in the morning and a relaxing bath in the afternoon. And we can't all do, you know, just lay around and do whatever we want the day of a show. Most of us have jobs. Most of us have other things that we need to take care of. One thing you really should not be doing the day of the show is practicing.

Just because. You don't want to overdo it. All you're practicing. All you're rehearsing. That should be done. So that's the one thing you don't want to do the day of the show. But the things you do want to think about the day of the show is you want to make sure you have some time to relax. You want to have some sort of downtime. Even if it's a half an hour where you just sit in silence or play on your phone.

Play a game on your phone. Do something that relaxes you. If it's yoga, great. If it's playing on your phone or playing a video game, great. Take at least a half an hour to an hour. Take at least an hour to get some sort of relaxation. Yes, I understand you have a day job. I get that. Maybe you're getting right off work and going right to your gig. That's fine. You still need a moment or two, five, ten minutes, something of relaxation before you switch into performance mode.

You can't just flip the switch and it's go time. You have to bring yourself down for a minute and just relax and let it all wash away. And then flip that switch. And then hit go. And then hit the big red button that makes everybody run and scream and go, yeah! Then go for it. But you need to have a moment for yourself. A moment to relax. That's one thing you have got to do the day of the show.

Another thing you have to do is you have to eat. I understand your stomach may be queasy. Maybe you do have a tinge of stage fright. Maybe it's more than a tinge. But you have to eat. Your body cannot function without food. I mean, you can look up different things to do. There's, you know, protein. I mean, in the morning and carbs right before. There's eating an all-carb diet the day of.

Hopefully, you're doing some long-term things with your eating. So you can eat certain things. You can do certain exercises, yoga. You can look up things to do to help with producing energy, sustaining energy. Because that's what you're going to need when you get on stage. You're going to need to sustain energy. Things you can look up. Try different eating habits. Try different sleeping habits.

Sleep. You've got to sleep. The day before. The night before. The night before a show. I don't care if you work the night shift, the mid-shift, the day shift. You work for three hours or 12 hours. You have got to, got to, got to, got to, got to sleep the night before or the day before. However your sleep pattern works, you have got to sleep within, like, 16 hours of your show. Like, you have got to wake up and then do your show in the same day, 24-hour period.

But you can't, like, you can't go without sleep and then expect to get on stage. And worse, what if you're doing all these things? Like, what if you're doing all these things? You're not eating. You're not sleeping right. You're not exercising. You're not relaxing. You're not going to have a good time. You're going to be stressed out up to the minute that you step on stage. And then as soon as you step off stage, you're pretty much going to collapse.

And I'm not talking, like, medical attention collapse. But you're, you're emotion, you're emotionally going to collapse. You're physically probably going to need to sit down and have a huge, huge gulp of water. There's a chance that you'll probably get sick. You don't want to put yourself in that position. So please, please. Please, think about what you're doing to your body and to your mind the day of the performance.

You have to have some sort of routine. For me, I would have some sort of light meal. I would relax for, like, a half hour, 45 minutes. And then, you know, I would listen to my music on the way to the venue. When I got to the venue, it was all business from there. I would have, you know, I would have one drink. I'll be honest. I mean, come on. We all, we've all performed with some drinks in our system, right?

I'd have one drink. I would go. I would go prepare myself, get my outfits ready, get everything organized. And then I would immediately switch into professional mode. I would, you know, I would take care of everything I need to take care of to prepare to be on stage. Second thing, remember this. Before you get into whatever outfit you're wearing, go to the bathroom. Trust me, because the minute you're about to go on stage, you will have to pee.

Every single time, without fail, you will have to pee. Go to the bathroom before you get changed. But that would be my routine. I would immediately switch to professional. I would take care of, you know, my face. Because, yes, when you go on stage, you should be wearing some form of makeup. I would take care of my hair. I would take care of, like, refreshing myself, deodorant, cologne, that sort of stuff.

And then I would go to the bathroom, and then I would get dressed. And then while I'm waiting to actually go on stage, like, dressed and ready, and I'm waiting off to the side or backstage to go on, it was just breathing. There was a time when I was a smoker, so it was like smoking a cigarette and breathing, which did not really go hand-in-hand. But it was just breathing. It was just.

That was it. Just breathing in and breathing out and pacing. Yeah, I'm a pacer. It's okay. It was my way of dealing with my excitement and my anxiety all at the same time. It's my way of dealing with stuff. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it, but you have got to have some sort of routine. Whether it be relax for a half an hour, do a half an hour of yoga, listen to a certain song.

I used to always listen to Lose Yourself by Eminem because it just really put me in the right mindset to be on stage. I don't know. It just did it for me. So find your routine. Look up some stuff. Listen, there's a wonderful tool right in your hand. Pretty probably 50% of the day. It's called Google or Siri or Alexa or whatever you happen to have. You have a powerful tool that can help you find different ideas to try.

If something doesn't work or you don't feel right about it, look up something else to do for the same result. If you read somewhere that says you need to meditate in order to relax before a show, BS, you don't need to meditate. Find something else to relax you. For me, Netflix relaxes me. I'm not going to lie. I'll sit and watch a little bit of Netflix to relax before a show. But the important thing is you find something that relaxes you.

You eat something that's light. Make sure your body's rested, nourished, and relaxed. Those are three things you need. and then focus on your breathing, get out there and do the thing. Keep on shining, y'all. Oh, before I let you go, one more thing. Remember, send me an email for a free copy of my e-book, reggie at beingonstage.com. Check out Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Twitter and Instagram, we are at beingonstage, facebook.com slash beingonthestage.

Our website's still being built. Mic Drop Method is still being put together. Keep up with the podcast because everything's being announced here. But hook up with me. Let's chat. Let's see what we can make happen. Peace, y'all.