Answers...Part 1
The first in a two part post about the ongoing personal journey taken to the create GRACE Framework® and deliver the transformative experiences at the heart of my work for individuals and teams.
It was just after 3 pm on a Saturday and the prize draw to take part in the end of Masterclass jam session had finished and my draw ticket was still in the hat.
It was 2009, and I’d travelled to the London International Music Show to attend renowned musician Steve Vai’s ‘Alien Guitar Secrets’ Masterclass. It was an opportunity to hear him share his knowledge and experiences of writing, recording and performing as an artist and professional musician.
More importantly, it was also an opportunity to play alongside him.
As part of the event, there was a raffle and an opportunity for those whose tickets were pulled from the hat to get up and play alongside Steve jamming over a track for a couple of minutes.
‘Bummer’, I sighed silently as I fixed an empty gaze on the back of the chair in front of me and kept breathing, feeling a mix of frustration and disappointment.
It was a bit of an anti-climax and my inner monkey mind was off and running with a silent but lively negative commentary.
I was distracted by the internal chatter not noticing what was going on in the room.
And then it happened.
‘Who else wants to jam with me?’ he asked. ‘We’ve got time for more than six haven’t we?’
‘You’re kidding!’ my brain shrieked.
‘Another chance?’
I was elated.
Steve paused for confirmation from the organisers and Mike, his long-standing road manager and companion. They all nodded and he turned back to the audience.
‘OK then, who else?
In less than a nanosecond, my unconscious, inner fan-boy had taken firm control of the situation and before I knew what happening, I’d leapt to my feet.
This was now a ‘come hell or high water’ moment and as if to confirm this, my words dashed enthusiastically out of my mouth in an instant.
‘Steve….me, please. I’ll play.’
This was a moment. A chance to fulfil a deep-seated, schoolboy desire to commune through music with a guitar virtuoso and one of my musical heroes, Steve Vai.
Such a delicious cliché I know, but in that moment, it was oh so very real.
“Pick me,” my inner voice yelled.
Within a heartbeat, he turned his head in my direction, caught my eye and his arm beckoned, ‘OK. Great. C’mon up.’ And without thinking about the consequences, I did just that. Game on!
The brief was simple enough.
Strap on your guitar. Check.
Plug in. Check.
Turn the volume up. Check.
16 bars of call and response over a D minor vamp from a song called ’The Animal’ followed by 16 bars of improvisation as a duet, in his words, ‘making some noise’.
Great. What could possibly go wrong?
Me. Him. Two guitars with a backing track and just over a hundred guitarists and fans watching intently1.
“What on earth were you thinking?” my inner monkey mind chimed, “and by the way, now you’re up here, don’t f**k it up! ”
It was kinda like the Ralph Macchio versus Jack Butler scene from the 1986 film Crossroads, only I wasn't anywhere near the same league as either of them2.
Still in control, the initial musical call and response section went surprisingly rather well. His was effortless (no surprises there!). Mine was more fluent than I expected it to be and hence, a definite surprise.
My next bit of playing wasn’t quite so good and it threw me off track. It started OK and then that familiar feeling of tunnel vision kicked in as I began to analyse my way through the music and I sensed my mind began to slow down.
If you’ve ever been in a car crash it’s almost the same sensation. Everything happens in slow motion until the moment of impact.
Back in the moment, my right hand trembled as I fought to keep up and make the plectrum strike the strings and fret some notes somewhere close to the orbit where Mr. Vai was weaving his musical spell.
Things accelerated all too swiftly and the shaking got worse. My fingers were no longer fingers, they were now boxing gloves and useless for playing guitar. My breathing had stopped with my last breath motionless and high in my chest. My mouth was dry and I could no longer do anything but stare at my fretboard.
Too late. I’d frozen. Again.
He was very gracious as things came to a premature end. The backing track was paused and he smiled as I unplugged and returned to my seat accompanied by a heady mix of elation, shame and polite applause.
We may be human but we are still animals3
Our human design is a magnificent thing to look at from the outside but to attempt to understand our current best explanations of the complexity of its inner and outer workings, how we experience our feelings and how this experience translates into our behaviours, is what makes it beautiful.
This personal story of an inconsequential experience of music performance anxiety unwittingly tells the complete story of our interpersonal neurobiological genius and how it creates our powerful, unconscious inner drive to survive.
This freezing thing had happened too often and I'd now reached the point of ‘enough is enough’ and made it my mission to find out the answers to why this happened and, more importantly, how to overcome it.
And so began a long (and ongoing) journey of discovery and learning.
"Hij die vraag, die vraag heeft, die moet steeds blijven vragen..."4
It's a journey that's taken me down many different paths of discovery about how we work as human beings, not only in terms of what we understand about our psychology, but also what we know and what little we know about our neurobiology, how our biology works and, if left to run in default mode, how it governs how we behave in certain situations.
During my psychotherapy studies, I designed and undertook a project to learn how to do something that I couldn't do…well not yet.
This was a perfect opportunity to figure this ‘freeze’ issue out and because my final grade to pass the course and gain the qualification depended on it, there was more than enough motivation to see this through. After all, I’d gone public and added some jeopardy into the mix so there was no stopping me.
The goal of the project was to model5 the behaviours of well-known professional musicians and artists to find out what it was that they did differently to control their nerves and discover what ‘the difference that made the difference’ was that enabled them to show up on stage and perform consistently at an elite level.
It was a good place to search for the answer to what lay behind this persistent issue.
My chosen professional exemplars included session bass player and teacher Paul Geary, solo artist Daniel Leigh, classical guitarist Richard Durrant, pianist and composer Louise Vause and soprano, Rebecca Newman.
Without exception, everyone was exceedingly generous in giving me their time and sharing their knowledge and experience. They were open, honest and vulnerable and genuinely keen to help support the completion of my course assignment.
What was fascinating was that when I spoke to each of them, none of them was able to describe in any detail what it was that they did that switched them from a state of being nervous to a state of getting on with performance and delivering what was needed at the moment when it mattered most.
Each one had their particular ritual or approach that they followed either well before the performance or right at the moments before they stepped onto the stage. There was no single model that could be drawn together from the interviews they were kind enough to give.
Hmm…what to do? After all not only did my final grade depend on it but this was supposed to be a journey of discovery that revealed the elixir that would help me relax and perform in situations that had high stakes6 attached
In the end, I was lucky to meet and interview Jayne Storey. Jayne isn’t a professional musician. Her background includes 37 years of training and teaching in the Eastern arts, including Buddhist meditation, Chi Kung and Tai Chi, which she has streamlined into a Performance Practice helping golfers and other athletes to perform under pressure.
She introduced me to the idea of how our breath connects our mind to our body and unlocked a series of connected dots that led me to codify what I’d learned into the model for my psychotherapy assignment and, now as I look backwards and connect the dots between my current Aikido practice and my first footsteps into the world of practical psychology, to the GRACE Framework®.
In part two, I’ll unpack the process underpinning the self-awareness model (above) that was developed and what all the hieroglyphics mean.
I’ll also explain how the wisdom, philosophy and practice of Yoshinkan Aikido continue to reveal nuances and details that help to ground, inform and continue to improve and update how I approach working in partnership with individuals and teams.
There is a musical variation of the classic "‘How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb…’ that goes like this ‘How many guitarists does it take to change a lightbulb? 100. One to do it and ninety-nine to say ‘I could have done that.’ That was the audience watching on this particular day! (Actually, it’s most gig audiences).
Steve Vai recorded both guitar parts in the guitar duel scene.
David Coverdale spoke this phrase at the end of ‘Liberty’, the opening track from the album Passion and Warfare
This phrase is the Dutch-spoken introduction from the track ‘Answers’ from the album ‘Passion and Warfare’ (1990) composed recorded and performed by Steve Vai. When translated to English the phrase means "He who has the question, must always keep asking..." This resonates strongly and is one of the central planks of my adult life.
Modelling is the process of representing the patterns of organisation of the specific skills and results of excellence of an exemplar; first in one’s own system, then subsequently in a form which can be taught to other people. The evidence of successful modelling is when the modeller’s performance achieves similar results within the same context and time frame as that demonstrated by the exemplar.
We’ll return to the whole idea of ‘high stakes’ in part 2 when we discover that the model works by reframing being self-conscious to becoming self-aware. This reframe is the primary idea behind the GRACE Framework® is central to my coaching philosophy and approach to working with individuals and teams.
What a lovely post! I’m so glad you met your “hero” I also suspect he loved Merton the student 🎸
Nice story Paul! Thanks for sharing that. Well written.
Looking forward to learning what you uncovered as you continued to follow your curiosity. 😃