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My Close Up Competition is in 2 weeks, and I get increasingly nervous every day. In the early stages, a few months ago, I felt like "My act is great! I am going to win!"

But, now my attitude is changing to, "My act sucks! I am going to lose.."

This is happening because I do not know what I am up against and am starting to question my act, even though it may not be necessary?

My question is, how do I beat the nervousness and the doubt? How do I get rid of the butterflies and shake off the negative nellies?

Thank you!

Michael Kras

Nerves are something that we all deal with, in all forms of life. The only thing to do is to use them constructively: if you're nervous about your act, you should put that nervous energy towards more practice. When it comes round to it, right before you start, take 3 deep breaths, hold them in for a few seconds, breathe out slowly, and just go for it.

I am reminded of a quote from the guy who played King Leonidas in the film 300 (awesome film ). For the role he did hours and hours of physical training, every day. His motivation for doing so was that he didn't want to be stood there on the first day of filming thinking "Damn, I should have trained more." And when it came down to that first day, he didn't. He stood there thinking "Damn, I feel like a lion."

I'm sure you get what I mean.

Forget the nerves for the timne being and focus on what is making you think that your act sucks and why you already think that you are going to lose without knowing what you are up against.

At this stage, statistically speaking you have exactly the same chance as everyone else that enters. It's only down to the performance on the day so focus on that day and visualize what success looks like for you.

Look back on previous years competitions - how many entered, what was the standard, what tricks were performed, who won?

If you don't know the answers to these questions then find out and this would be a good starting point. Then start looking at your routine to see if anything has been done to death in previous years etc.

Small step will get you across that canyon.

Thank you so much for your advice! It wil definitely come in handy on competition day!

UPDATE: I just performed my competition act for a group of laypeople and not only were they stunned, they were killing themselves laughing! They also tell me my speaking skills are impecible, so I am no longer worried for the time being. BUT, I am sure I will be a wreck on competition day, so everyone's advice will definitely come in handy.



Inhale... exhale.... inhale... exhale... inhale... inhale... inhale... BIG exhale.

Whew.

Your nervousness is apparent in your videos and it WILL be obvious when you perform. Key points you should work on between now and then include slowing your speech down, minimizing fidgeting, and stop rocking. When you get to college, take a public speaking class and you'll learn specifics on how to prevent things like that.

Ciao,
Rob

It might help to go through your entire act in your mind with as much detail as possible. Every line, every movement, heck, if you're good, maybe even blocking. Don't imagine the audience response, though. You don't want to have your ego inflate because of nonexistent spectators, now do you?

Good luck.

Nerves are good. Your nervousness will produce the adrenalin which will make the difference between an ordinary performance and one with edge. I am speaking in general terms here, not just magic terms.

So far as the act goes all you can do is practice, practice and practice again to make sure thatyou are technically sound. If you can do the tricks without thinking about them too much it will give you the freedom to concentrate on the presentation.

I do quite a lot of business presentations. I learn the content as thoroughly as I can so that I can deliver it without having to read it. It works

Good luck

Just relax, you've put in the work, your act is solid just practice to iron out any last little faults. Don't change anything now, trust the act that you'veput together.

And as far as the competition goes, just do your best, you can't control who else turns up or how they perform so don't worry about them. Just do your best and as long as you do that, you've done all you can.

Best of luck with it.

Nerves are only natural.

But dont worry about it, practice your routine in front of as many people as you can.

Nerves tend to come from excitment as well, so the fact that your excited deep down is really a good thing imo.

Good luck, make sure you let us know how it goes!

P.S
I you can why not try to record your routine and post it on here and let us have a look.

i suggest you drink heavily, and finish on a puke...

abraxus wrote:i suggest you drink heavily, and finish on a puke...

or this????

Mike, while people here are saying that you should practice every detail of your performance, you have to remember that you can only practice so much before it starts to hurt your performance. Things will looked overrehearsed which is a bad thing. If, however, you have practiced even more and you are still not happy with it, you will have to face the fact that maybe it's not going to go as well as you planned.

I don't think you can do too MUCH rehearsal, far from it. The adrenalin will stop your performance from feeling stale, so don't worry about rehearsing it too much.

I'm not sure what kind of act this is, but if it's a parlour/stage act then there is a different dynamic between yourself and your participants than there is in a close-up performance (where sticking to a rigid script and not going with the flow a little is a bad thing).

So KEEP rehearsing.

Practise until you can do it, then practise until it becomes easy, then practise it until it becomes natural

Then practice some more.....

A routine can never be practiced or performed too much. A friend of mine did the same routine for 40 years, and still got nervous every time and still tried to improve it each time.
Magic like most art forms is very rarely perfected.

Good luck Mike I hope it goes well for you, I'm sure you'll let us know whatever the outcome.