Self awareness training takes years and years of training.
This is not completely true. For people that toy with the idea and do it for all other reasons, but the right one, it is true. But if you ignite the spark in you because you used your logic and see this as a way to happiness and freedom in life, the spark quickly turns into a raging fire. That fire is a passion that allows you to turn your attention within and do not seek fulfillment in the world out there only. You never gonna find it outside of you - EVER. You have to use both worlds as outside is a reflection of inside (attachments and aversions to world) and to find all (there is a lot of it that we are not aware at the moment) that you really desire within (to be able to drop it) you have to observe the outside and look for it inside. Inside is reflected outside and your reactions to outside influence inside - it is a loop. But all what happens in someones life is self created - taking early life programing from outside as necessity and thing which is outside of our control. Thoughts create all.
What logic I am talking about?
Look at other people experiences.
Leader of a pop band “Simply Red” admitted to sleeping with over 3000 women in 3 years to whom he apologized. Do you think he found happiness in it? Do you think he is happy now?
Look at Michael Douglas and his wife. They are famous, rich. You still think they are happy?
Look at your own close or distant family. The strife, divorces, arguments which are covered on family gatherings with fake smiles. Not all is bad, there is good staff also. Pleasure and pain alternate in our life, if we live as prisoners of our minds. But this is a pathological way of living.
What is normal you may ask?
Normal is a state in which you psyche is free of any emotional energy. Body is empty of it and your nervous system is not impacted by adrenaline. You body is always naturally relaxed. You do not have ANY thoughts coming and disturbing constant peace that you feel. You may use thought for communication, planing etc. - but you are their master. The thoughts bring feelings with them, but you can change what you feel by changing thoughts. Feeling will follow in 3 to 4 seconds. You never gonna have shaking hands while performing. Why? Because there will be no stupid thoughts telling you, before you even start playing, that you will probably fail (as it happened before) and expectation of that will make your body tremble in fear. The memories are accessible to you as information but not as emotional energy, trapped in the body and creating havoc there. All of that nonsense is totally gone forever !!! You live in the NOW of things and not in you past memories, or in the unknown future, which you are afraid of. Kids, when very young, live that way. Always full of energy, inquisitive and curious. If get distracted, hurt - quickly comeback to the happy state. Why? Because this is normal !!!
Anyone can live that way. It requires understanding based on logic and self work. That is it. Very simple to comprehend but hard to implement.
What "minimax" and others don't realize is that when you fall apart during a performance it is permanently burned into your consciousness as a negative.
It is not permanently burned !!!!. It is only that way if you let your feelings be attached to a memory, as an emotion. That emotion is an illusion created by your thinking about what transpired and what later might happen. If you remove an emotional aspect of that memory it becomes benevolent. It will never bring you new thoughts, unless you consciously will choose to comeback to the memory. Otherwise it will run your life to the end of it, as what is suppressed always wants to expand and leave the body (hence coming thoughts stream), but we do not allow it to happen. That is why you should not want to use “crutches” in life in form of pills, alcohol, drugs, TV to escape from you feelings. They only mask the problem and never fix it. But YOU alone can fix it !!! Do you want to escape all the time from what you carry inside? For most people their past time (vacations, concerts, TV, ... etc) is an escape from what eats them alive, when they are alone with themselves. You know it, when you get free, otherwise it is just a speculation.
How to remove suppressed feelings from the psyche?
“Sedona Method” created by Lester Levenson is a useful tool that will allow anyone to instantly work on that part of themselves. There is plenty info for free on the net. You just have to look.
Parenthetically, if you do go see a neurologist just ask him/her how many physicians (especially surgeons) that they know of who take this medication to steady their hands. You cannot get any more self-aware than these guys.
If this is what they really do, it just proves that they as close to self-awareness as the distance between New York and Paris. They rather developed a good concentration. That is all. If you are self aware you see real cause of things that happen and do not guess it. If you see real cause of a problem you remove it, but not use substitutes that mask it.
I will give you an example from my life proving the connection between garbage that we carry inside and the body functioning.
One day I woke up and right away I noticed that my nose was running, I felt weak ... all symptoms of a coming cold. Since I always was starting my day, with conscious removing what I felt inside of me (I developed it really good and it was automatic work for me at that time) I went to work on it. It took me approx. 5 min. to remove most of the other garbage, until I felt a heaviness in my head starting from my nose to the left. As soon as I realized that it was grief, it started going down and instantly all the symptoms were gone. ALL of IT. It took no more then a second. Do you think that I listen to the doctors telling me how the bacteria starts illnesses and all other stuff and take pills that they want to prescribe? Doctors have their place in our lives, most are good people, but why not trust ourselves to find the truth?
P.S. I hope Luis is not taking my rumblings as an attack on his views. He has had his experience in life and shares them whit us and I do the same. As you all can see, my were quite different, and that is why I post. I hope OP will not object that I expanded on my answer to his question. This is just food for thought.
Topic: How to get over performance anxiety?