Petra is a Vocal Coach, Singing Teacher, Life & Career Coach for Creatives in Glasgow, United Kingdom. she has special expertise in helping (performing) artists and creatives to overcome limiting beliefs and emotional blocks to perform better and without fear.

She has helped hundreds of people to prepare for or sustain a singing career, find personal fulfilment through music and overcome limiting beliefs and performance anxiety.

Our conversation is broken into two parts, first dealing with performance anxiety for the singer, and second, setting oneself up for a growth mindset as a professional.    Petra began in this field by wanting to move the conversation with her students from the pure level of empathy to actually knowing the steps to enable the client or student to come up with their own solutions.   Here’s the important points I’ve picked up so far.   Performance anxiety may be caused by  1.a trauma from the past 2.perfectionism, we don’t feel we are enough yet 3.Too much outward focus, not enough inward focus.   As a mindset coach, Petra works with people to “get a grip” on their own minds, like 

• self limiting beliefs
• not wanting to reveal a weakness
• comparing themselves too much of others

Becoming aware of where you are on the continuum of a fixed mindset is a good start   Petra recommends the Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck - https://amzn.to/2ADUwnY   I’d like to talk to you briefly about my book the Teen Girl’s Singing Guide because there is a big section in that book on performance anxiety, written by Dr. Diana Allen, who was a guest of one of the most popular episodes of this podcast, episode ES022. In the book, Diana talks about many similar things to what Petra talks about here.    Diana calls herself a peak performance coach. And Petra calls herself a mindset coach. These two awesome women have in common that they work with creative professionals and amateurs, and specialize in singers. There are many mindset and peak performance coaches who work with athletes, business people, and others, but to have these two women available to us as musicians - that’s a great thing. Both of these people base their careers on helping us achieve our dreams. So we should take advantage of that.    Wherever you are in the world, you can reach out to Petra. The best way to find her is through her website: www.singingsense.com  What you’ll find there is her 3 Step Breakthrough Program for Creatives, her blog, and links to her totally useful social media pages. Facebook: @singingtutor   Thank you to Ken Feisel of Ken Feisel design for the fabulous podcast cover art.