The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield; HarperCollins, 2007
Not specifically about performance anxiety, but the most comprehensive book I’ve seen, written in a straightforward, easy-to-read, inspirational style about many ideas helpful to all those wishing to transform their lives to a higher level. Includes information about taking responsibility, visualizing goals, getting rid of fear, asking for support, dealing with obstacles, cultivating perseverance and positive relationships, and much, much more. Packed with stories of successful people and further resources within each topic.
The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self by William Westby
I highly recommend this book for any flutist: professional, teacher or amateur. I saw Dr. Westby speak at the National Flute Convention and was ignited by his dynamic presence and innovative and healthy ideas about the study of music. The book is easy to read and offers wonderful insights into childhood musical development, practicing with passion, performance anxiety, and more. The book is filled with references to other disciplines as well. I wish I’d read this book when I was a beginning flute teacher 22 years ago!
From this book:
PRISONS
Drawing, writing, and dancing were once a part of me. I felt no fear when I picked up a crayon. I didn’t retreat when music asked me to dance.
Then I found myself in dance classes, art classes, violin lessons. Soon there were expectations to fulfill; the effort became joyless. My mind might trick me into revealing I wasn’t smart enough. My body could trap me into betraying that I was not a dancer, not a musician, not an artist–that I was nothing. My drawings, poems, the pull of my bow across the violin strings, all seemed inadequate. The violin was a special instrument of torture, not self-expression.
It was time to retreat. I refused battles I was not sure of winning. My drawings became mechanical; in the modern dance and ballet classes I imitated the movements without being in my body. I tried only when I knew I could do something well, and went through the motions in everything else. No one saw what I was doing, including me. Around the best part of myself I constructed bars so strong I still can’t break free.
What this prison needs is a riot–a knife held to the throat of the jailer that is me.
——-Anonymous reader’s contribution, published in The Sun Magazine, 1992.