Christopher Wellbrook — Centered Under Pressure; Mental Skills For Performers

What if the freedom you crave onstage has less to do with the perfect high note and more to do with the state you bring to it? Today we sit down with mental performance coach and five-time national karate champion Christopher Wellbrook to unpack how elite sport principles can transform the lives of singers, musicians, and creative pros. Christopher believes fully that opera singers are elite athletes. From long rehearsal blocks to constant travel and high-stakes visibility, the mental load rivals any arena. Together we dig into practical, science-backed tools that turn pressure into presence.

We explore why outcome chasing rarely delivers fulfillment and how to replace it with a grounded, other-centered mindset. Christopher shows how tiny, identity-based habits—sleep routines, hydration, daily movement—build durable confidence and reduce the chaos of last-minute schedules. He walks us through visualization that embraces imperfection, so you’re not blindsided when nerves hit, and introduces anchors and box breathing to calm the nervous system in real time. You’ll hear how to communicate with creative teams without defensiveness, how to reframe burnout by raising the excellence of the room, and how to protect your identity when career turbulence hits.

If you’ve ever thought, once I win that competition, then I’ll feel worthy, this conversation offers a better path. You’ll leave with simple strategies, pre-performance steps, and a mindset shift that makes composure repeatable and joy sustainable. 

All episodes are also available in video form on our YouTube Channel. All episodes are hosted by Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome Christopher Wellbrook, Performance Coach
• 1:31 Opera Singers As Elite Athletes
• 5:34 Performance Anxiety And Medication Culture
• 9:24 Presence Over Perfection
• 12:12 First Sessions And Belief Mapping
• 16:07 Traits Of High Performers
• 20:08 Rethinking Goals And Fulfillment
• 24:30 Habits, Routine, And Creative Discipline
• 31:08 The Biggest Mindset Trap
• 33:32 Burnout And Shifting To Service
• 40:18 Communication With Creative Teams
• 43:08 Identity Beyond The Stage

Transcript

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 0:00

Hi, I'm Elizabeth Bowman and welcome to the scene room. Today I have Christopher Wellbrook in the room. Christopher is a mental performance coach and five-time national karate champion who helps elite performers cultivate focus, resilience, and confidence under pressure. A former member of the United States national karate team, Christopher understands firsthand the mental demands of performing at the highest level. And since 2022, he has coached athletes and performing artists to strengthen their mindset, optimize preparation, and perform with composure and consistency. He integrates evidence-based strategies and cognitive training to enhance both well-being and excellence. I'm really excited for this conversation today. This is an important one for performers. It's also fascinating for audience members interested in the mental side of the performing artist. If you're enjoying the podcast, please like, share, do any of those things to get the word out. I really appreciate you all listening and engaging in any of the ways you can. Send me messages about guests you're interested in hearing from or topics you're interested in having covered. I appreciate any and all of the connection I have to my listeners. Now let's get to the conversation. Christopher, welcome to the scene room. Thanks so much for being here.

Christopher Wellbrook: 1:33

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be on here.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 1:35

So for listeners that might not know who you are or what you do, can you give us a brief background about who you are and why you might be in the scene room?

Christopher Wellbrook: 1:46

Yeah, of course. So yeah, my name is Christopher Wellbrook, and I'm a mental performance coach. I work with athletes, performers, and leaders. And my goal is I really want them to develop the structures, the skills, and the space to perform their best in their respective profession, whatever that may be. But more importantly, I want them to live their best life possible. So my background is in martial arts. I earned my black belt at the age of 13, and I spent many years competing internationally as a part of Team USA. And for me, karate has really influenced and really informed the lens in which I see the world. It's a Japanese, it's an Eastern-based philosophy. Um, and it's really rooted in respect and honor. So even though I competed, the competition was different. It wasn't like a lot of Western sports where it's you want to win, you want to beat your opponent down, and if you don't win, then you're really upset. The competition is really with yourself and how you compete and how you hold yourself with dignity and honor is represented when you're on the mat. So that kind of gave me my first glimpse into what competition is and informed my lens on that. So I've been coaching since then. For several years now, I began with coaching teachers and school leaders. And my goal was to for them to improve their practice in order to best serve students. And from there, I kind of grew out working with different clientele, uh, with singers, with athletes, anyone who's looking to enhance their performance and elevate their lives to the next level. So, how did I end up here on the scene room? That's probably the biggest question that people are wondering. It's like, these are great, but how do we connect? So, my wife is an opera singer, she's a Canadian mezzo, named Deepa Johnny. And our time together has been amazing. It's really been an opportunity for me to kind of peek behind the curtain of what is life really like for an opera singer who sings around the world? And what is what does that day-to-day look like? And it's given me the opportunity to see, you know, and ask questions to her, to other singers of okay, what is the rehearsal process like? What are the things, the challenges that singers face, the opportunities for resilience that they overcome, and what is the support that they receive, both kind of on the job and in their training. And the big thing for me that I've realized this, and I and I really want to make this statement really clear, is that, you know, I was I'm an elite athlete. I competed around the world on many different stages. And when I see an opera singer, I'm convinced that opera singers are elite athletes. The training that they do, whether that's vocal training, role prep, they're traveling around the world, away from family and communities often. And what we've learned in athletics is that the mental side of sport is just as important as the physical side. And the questions that I've been asking with singers is okay, how are you mentally preparing for your performances? How are you mentally preparing for these two-month rehearsal periods in a foreign place, away from your support system, right? And working with a bunch of different personalities, all thrown together at once, that you need to put the show together. You don't have time to really get to know each other. It's let's go day one, let's get to work. And how are you using that to perform your best on the stage? And a lot of this conversations that I've heard from singers is I would really love to have the space and the strategies to really focus on my mental work and really focus on my mental performance because I really feel like that would flourish and really impact my um my performance on stage. But more importantly, I really want my every client I work with, I want them not just to experience success and have a great show. I want them to sustain success. I want them, I want longevity, I want long careers and really impactful lives. So that's kind of a really roundabout way of how I ended up really realizing that, man, there is a need within classical music, within opera. And I would love to bring my experience as a as an athlete, my experience as a coach to serve and really impact the experiences for the artists and more importantly, the audience as well for their lives.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 5:34

I think what you do is so important to the industry. As a trained opera singer myself, I quit singing because I had a severe case of performance anxiety. Now that we didn't have the tools that you're offering now, it was you weren't really to talk necessarily about performance anxiety in the time that I was in school training. Of course, it was spoken about, but it wasn't wasn't cool to admit how much it was debilitating you. It was more, well, there are these drugs that you can take. Beta blockers, and actually, I ended up taking Atavan, which is a terrible drug. I can't even believe that that that someone offered me that. And then I felt like actually I couldn't perform unless I had it. Right. So I'm so delighted to talk to you today. And I'm hoping that many, many singers and high performance individuals are listening as well, because it it doesn't have to be part of the equation taking drugs and ignoring your problems.

Christopher Wellbrook: 6:43

Right. Well, even just creating a space where people can talk and even just voice it, because a lot of the times when I talk to singers, they're like, well, you know, like we all kind of deal with it and we just move on, and it was dealt with before. And it's like, okay, clearly, like let's let's see if there's another way to go about this, right? And really be able to grow instead of just like you said, keeping everything inside, keeping it quiet and just be like, I'm grateful to be here. It's like, yes, that can be true, but you also can perform and think about how you can really perform your absolute best and live a high quality of life.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 7:15

Yeah, there is this attitude, I think, and I'm not sure if it persists, you would you would be more attuned to this, but the attitude before was that every time you performed, whether or not that was in a small masterclass or in a bigger performance, it would make more sense if it was in a bigger performance that it was all or nothing. If you didn't hit the high C in that aria, your career was over, but you hadn't even started your career. So just this mentality was unhealthy to begin with. And even if you think again, this analogy to sports that you're interconnecting all these dots, not every workout is a race. You know, like you have to build up those tools in the toolbox, and then you get to be a big event and you you put it all together, and ideally it it works out the the way you plan it as as long as you have the support systems in place.

Christopher Wellbrook: 8:16

No, and I and I agree, and I think that the mindset is it doesn't set a performer up for success when they are thinking I have to hit this high C, for example, in order, and if I don't, then I'm sick, I'm not gonna be successful, and then you spiral down from there. And it's like that idea of you want something so bad that you clench your fists and you're like, you try, you force it. And as we all know from ever doing that, that that doesn't lead to your best performance. That leads to a stress response, and really not the freedom that we want when we step on stage or in the field or wherever we are, in our boardroom. These are something that I really like to explore with my clients is okay, how do we be fully present in the moment and experience freedom despite what the circumstances may be?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 9:01

I imagine that confidence building is a big part of your work with your clients. So can you walk me through what it would be like? Say I was in an initial meeting with you.

Christopher Wellbrook: 9:14

Yeah.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 9:14

Do you have certain questions that you might ask a new client, or does it change just every time?

Christopher Wellbrook: 9:21

Yeah, it changes every time. And I think I really I think it's I believe that it's an individualized process because every person is coming, even if they're all approaching it, like let's say we're all opera singers, everyone comes from a different path. And every opera singer's path who I have, you know, who can work with me is different. You know, you have maybe the quote unquote more traditional path, rad school young artists, competition, or maybe they didn't do a competition, they got a rule, or maybe, you know, on the other side, it's you did a competition and all of a sudden you won and you went from obscurity to now you're singing everywhere. And how do you reconcile that? So I think for me, the first thing you need, you know, we talk about is I I really want people to be honest. And I think this is something we can talk about later too. But this is something that I think artists are exceptional at. Is you know, there you have all had a lot of auditions where you're like, you have 10 minutes, let me show you everything I'm at. This is everything I have. So whenever I have a an initial discovery call with someone, I'm like, okay, tell me where you're at. And it's very like, nope, this is everything, this is all I got. And I think that that music, the training really helps in that. But really trying to understand for my job is where do your beliefs come from? Beliefs about yourself, beliefs about what's possible. Because ultimately, when we're performing, our beliefs are the foundation of what we can and can't achieve. So that's my first step is understanding that. And then from there, we can build the structures, the habits, and also just the space to talk about these things. Because I think oftentimes we have these conversations with fear in our in our own head, and we're saying, okay, I'm afraid of this, and you don't talk to anyone about it. And we just kind of relive the same, whether or not we think it's not actually ever true, but we think it's true. And then the moment we say it to someone else, it's like, okay, that wasn't as bad as I thought. Or you can you can look at things more objectively. So for me, the first step we always we always take is talk to me. And so for me, that's kind of the first step.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 11:16

Yeah, I always say honesty resonates.

Christopher Wellbrook: 11:18

Yeah.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 11:19

And I I think what what you're saying here is so interesting because artists tend to be in tune with with their feelings and who they are, because that's literally their job is to convey that. And then the issue where you come in is where they build up their own walls and then they can't convey that honesty to the audience, even though they're full of it and they have all these stories to tell, but they they have all these fear things and these that prevent them from communicating.

Christopher Wellbrook: 11:53

Yeah, it's very right on right on the money.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 11:56

So you can't obviously tell me because it changes with every person, but can you tell me typical patterns that you see among high performing artists and and athletes?

Christopher Wellbrook: 12:07

Yeah, I think the patterns that I see is the first and foremost, high performing, and I'm just gonna put high performers because, like I said before, opera singers, athletes, I really believe that they that they fall in the same category. But the first thing is that they're extremely hard workers. Like the work ethic, the it is the rigorous amount of work ethic that takes an individual from being a performer to a high-level performer. And something that I see among these high performers is this vision. Like they they have a vision for their future, they're working towards some goal, and that specific goal can be I want to sing at this particular house or this level or whatever. And they believe in this goal to their core, to where people around them who aren't on their level think that they're delusional. Where it's like, no, look at all these things that all these reasons why, you know, it hasn't worked out, or this isn't as straight of a path up and to the right that we thought it was. I thought you were just gonna go straight to a young artist and then straight to, you know, singing at COC and the Matt or whatever, right? And for the high performers, that's fine. They're like, I'm still doing it, I still see myself there. Even and when when people are like, I don't know, like maybe we should pivot. They're like, I don't pivot. This is what I'm meant to do. There is some sort of like healthy level of delusion where you're chasing your dreams regardless. And I think something that builds into that is this super high level of resilience. They can, you know, regardless of whether things work out perfectly, which they don't ever in life, but when things don't work out, the high performers they get back up and they're saying, okay, I'll get back at it. I'll get back at it. And they realize that slowly chipping away, slowly making these small gains will ultimately lead to the life that they want to live. Whether or not they realize it and they actually can put words to, oh yeah, I'm doing the small steps, they do it instinctively. And I think that that really separates someone who is a performer and has potentially has talent to taking them to the next level of being a high-level person.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 14:03

Do you think that lofty goals can be a distraction for some? Like in terms of putting that pressure on themselves, you know, you talk about chipping away and then having obviously it's important to have a goal, but to be like, I will sing on the Metropolitan Opera stage, can that detract for some people?

Christopher Wellbrook: 14:26

Yeah, 100%. I think I think it can detract. And when I when we set goals, these are just observations that I've made. And I don't know if having a goal that you have to sing at the Met, and therefore, if you're not at the Met, then again, you're basing, you're creating your own barometer of success with this goal. And this is something that I often work with high performers with, is that how do we shift our lens from being self-centered, which is I need to achieve this goal for me in order for me to be XYZ happy, fulfilled, whatever, to being more other centered, where it's like, okay, I have this gift. How can I show up in regardless of what stage I'm at, regardless if I'm in a masterclass or if I'm in a rehearsal room or if I'm at the stage of the Met, right? It doesn't matter because I'm showing up in conveying this love that I have for this art. So for me, you're right. I I don't think that the goal is the answer. I think that is what traditionally our society and our training has said this is what success is. But there are plenty of people who have reached the top, and myself can I can attest to this as an athlete. Reaching your goal only gives you a temporary high. Like it really doesn't. Like I've won the US National Karate Championships five times. I've been on the podium at the world stage, and it's like, this is great. I can talk about it now, but that doesn't fulfill that part within me that is really looking for, you know, absolute joy and fullness of life.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 15:57

Yeah. In a different, I can't compare to what you just talked about, like, you know, doing karate on the world stage and that kind of thing. But when I was a little girl, I always dreamed of singing with an orchestra solo. You know, I was like, oh, this is this is the be all and end all. I'll sing the soprano solo in Messiah. Because church would do it every year and it was a big thing. And I, you know, I worked toward that goal. And then one year, well, I got hired to do it a few times, but the first time I got hired to do it was like, oh, this is it, this is everything. I stood up and I sang it, and it was satisfying to sing, but then I remember this like huge letdown after I'd done it, because I thought, well, okay, everyone just left and it's over. It's like that's it, it's over, right? It's like everyone moves on, like moves on, and that was your big goal, and that and now what, right? Obviously, there's there's a lot more to singing the Messiah's holo in your church choir, but like at the time that was the pinnacle for me. But it was a very enlightening experience in terms of seeing that goal and then seeing where you land and really learning that the the process is it really is the important thing, the journey.

Christopher Wellbrook: 17:21

We live under this illusion where if we accomplish something, like your goal of singing the Messiah, then we'll be happy. Like then we'll be filled with all of these feelings that I have, you know, not allowed myself to experience until that moment. And then when it comes, we're like, okay, I felt it, and then life moves on. Other people move on. As much as I wish that other people think about me, I think about myself the most. Like that is just how we all work. So I think that what one of the big things I work with performers is okay, if you want, if you're chasing all of these feelings that you think this event, this award, whatever will give you, then why don't we go straight for those feelings and bring that to your work? And if we work on that inner world, then we will see how actually our performance will like grow exponentially in ways we can really imagine where we actually don't really care about singing the Messiah. We thought we did, but we really wanted to really experience what we felt when we were in choir as an eight-year-old, right? And we were like, wow, this was the most beautiful moment of harmony and all this stuff. I'm trying to use my best amount of musical words here. But like, no, truthfully, there's like this amazing resonance. And I was just working with a singer like this, and they were saying, Man, like when I was in choir, there was this feeling, and I'm like, why don't you bring that? Because you started studying voice, and all of a sudden you went away from this amazing feeling that you felt. Bring that. And then we can see how, you know, the satisfaction, the love, the joy can really like exude from their work.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 18:50

How much do you work in habit building with your clients?

Christopher Wellbrook: 18:55

Yeah, habit building is big. I think it's it's two-way full. We have to first like unlearn a lot of the habits that we've whether or not consciously developed in our lives to succeed, or maybe that helped us in one part of our life, but it is no longer service now, but we just kind of bring it along. So the first step is really identifying like, hey, what are your habits? What are you doing in your daily life? How are you approaching your practice, your singing? And most of the time, as we all know, like you, if you're doing a role, you're spending two plus months or a month and a half to two months prepping it for, you know, six to ten shows. Like that doesn't always if we have that. So the majority of our time is spent in the rehearsal or the practice mode of any of any sport, any high performer. So what are we doing during that period? Because I think a lot of times people think about, well, I just want to perform better on the stage. And it's like, that's great, that's awesome. But that performance begins the moment you open the score in the beginning and the first day to show up to rehearsal and how you come and treat your colleagues on stage and the people in the costume department. So I think that a lot of that, a lot of my work is habit building, but also learning more about the motivations and the beliefs that kind of underlie the habits.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 20:10

Do you think that creative people in general might be more prone to ADHD behaviors?

Christopher Wellbrook: 20:16

I don't want to like like say ADHD, but I think like I was thinking about, and I have been thinking for a while, of what can especially now that you know I'm I'm entering more into the artistic space and working with creative people as an athlete. Like, what could if I could have like an artist learn one thing from an athlete, it would be like the power of routine. Because it's just like with creativity comes like, I'm just gonna be creative and just kind of whatever my heart says in that moment, I'm gonna do. And of course, like there is some like regimented work, but with athletics, it's like, no, every day you get up and you eat the same thing and you do the, you know, it's like that's kind of ingrained in us in a very young age. And I don't think that the industry really supports routine because you don't find out what your schedule is until 9 p.m. or 5 p.m. the day before. So it's like you have to figure out how I can create the simplest routine possible that I can say, okay, my rehearsal is at 10 a.m. tomorrow. All right, cool, I can plug it in here, or my rehearsal's at 5 p.m. tomorrow, I can move it. So I think there's a level of flexibility, but I do think that, yeah, like I think that creative people would benefit from from kind of some routine without feeling constricted. And I think that that's kind of like the beautiful balance of like, hey, I want to do what I want, but like let's hit these things today too, in the way that you feel creative.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 21:40

Yeah, it's almost like you have to attach certain actions to the start of your rehearsal time. So if you're starting at 5 p.m. that day, then you actually just count backwards and you say, like, two hours before I do this, one hour before I do that, in order to have that regularity. I completely agree with you though. I started running late later in my life. So I love running, currently getting over an injury right now, but I will be back out there quickly. But what running taught me was this whole discipline thing. Like you like you say, you get up, you need a certain amount of protein. So you're thinking about your diet constantly, what's going in your body. I stopped drinking completely, I guess like four years ago. And the athletic side of me taught my creative side so much.

Christopher Wellbrook: 22:37

Yeah.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 22:38

So yeah, I I would totally agree with you in terms of of that. It's just so good for artists to have that discipline and habit building. How do you teach someone to implement a new habit?

Christopher Wellbrook: 22:51

I think the for me, it depends. I mean, when we're teaching a new habit, the first thing we want to do is we don't want to just like it's everyone's first, it's like the New Year's resolution thing where you're like, I'm actually just gonna transform my life all at once. I'm gonna do seven new habits for what we think is like the whole year, but it lasts like maybe seven days, maybe three days if we're lucky. So when we we're talking about instilling a new habit, we want it to be one, a small change that's tied to a positive kind of activity that we enjoy. When we think about building habits, and I think what creative, like you said, creative people sometimes think of structure and they're like, oh man, now I feel constricted and I gotta shut it loose because this is you know, so we have to think about no, let's reframe this. Actually, structure routine gives you the freedom, gives you freedom to actually be able to do whatever you want. So that's kind of the first step is okay, now instead of, and this is kind of built off of the work of James Clare Atomic Habits, it's like you don't have to go and run a marathon on your first day. You just need to get on your walking shoes, go for a walk. And go for a walk for how long? I don't know. Just do it. Just get in your mind that yes, I'm the type of person who can get outside. And when I'm working with performers, and it's really difficult when you're on the road to start instilling new habits. It just is. You're doing a million different things. You're in a place that is new, you don't have the routine or the resources that maybe you your familiarity with home. So the important thing is how are you instilling these when you are home, whether you're home for a few days, a few weeks, a few months before you go on a gig somewhere? How are you sleeping? Are you moving? Doesn't matter how you're moving, doesn't matter what, like, don't do something that is soul draining. The best thing you can do is just walk. Because you can walk anywhere, anywhere in the world. You don't have to feel like I have to go find a gym and do all this stuff. It's like just move. How are you moving? How are you sleeping? And how are you drinking water? Like, are you hydrating yourself and preparing yourself to be successful at home so that it's really easy to take it on the road or wherever you're at? Because those are just things that you do instead of now I have to think about I've got to create this new habit. No, no, no. You already did that.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 24:58

Yeah. I've read Atomic Habits as well. Great book. Uh, for anyone listening, do check it out. Is there a mindset trap that you find people fall into often?

Christopher Wellbrook: 25:10

Yes. Yeah. The mindset trap that people fall into, and I kind of hinted at this before, is that when I do this, or if I do this, if I get this, then I will be blank. That is the biggest mindset trap that we all get fall into because it's kind of this thing where the society feeds us this. If I get this job, if I sing at this place, if I get into this program, this young artist program, this grad school program, whatever, then I will be you feeling whatever you're looking for. Then I'll be happy, then I will feel accomplished, then I'll be, then I'll be confident, right? If I lose this weight, then I'll be confident. What we do at that point when we think about that mindset trap, first we deprive ourselves from experiencing all of those feelings until we quote unquote reach that goal. And first of all, when we reach that goal, we don't even realize we reached that goal unless it's singing a role, then that's pretty clear. But if you're talking about like losing weight, then sometimes we don't go and be like, okay, I am one pound away. In one pound, I will feel blank. That's not how it works. And I think that when we deprive ourselves, we really remove ourselves from being present in the moment and saying, okay, how can I actually bring I'm capable of feeling these emotions. I want to feel these emotions, but I'm not allowing myself to do it in the moment. And I'll say, I'll saving it for later because I don't feel like I deserve it. All these different things that we work through. So yeah, I think that's the biggest mindset trap that if we aren't aware and we don't talk to people about it, coach, vocal coach, friend, family, then we kind of just allow ourselves to believe.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 26:41

And I imagine people might come to you if they are experiencing burnout, you know, it happens a lot in our industry, especially with the performing artists, because they're often not paid very much and then they're working really hard and then accumulating debt, et cetera, et cetera. How do you help someone in a situation like that?

Christopher Wellbrook: 27:02

Yeah, I think that's it kind of feeds into what I mentioned earlier, which is the difference between self-centered and other-centered thinking. And I think that it's this all feeds into many different things where you're kind of the ability for for an artist to be vulnerable, because everything that you do when you step on stage in the whole process is being vulnerable with a part of you, right? And maybe it's the judgment and being focused on the judgment of others, whether that's like applause, whether that's getting more contracts, whether that's feeling like I put in all this work, I should be getting all of this by now. I've done my time. And I think that it's really challenging to perform at your absolute best when you are feeling that way, when you are thinking about all of these stressors. And I don't work and try to say, look, I'm gonna fix all of your problems and I will cure your burnout, but I will give you an opportunity to shift and we can work together to shift your mindset to saying, okay, right now, everything you said is valid, but it's all about me. Like it's saying, I'm feeling this, this is impacting me. Oh my gosh. And in order for us to, what we really think is what impacts performance is the ability for you to shift that and say, how can I bring this to someone else? How can I approach? And this is something that I worked with a, with, uh, with a singer a few months ago, which was I'm in rehearsal, they were telling me, okay, I'm having a really difficult time with the creative team. I'm feeling like I can't be myself. I feel like I'm just dimming my own light. I'm completely like charred at both ends. How do I do this? I don't know. And I'm like, first of all, you said it out loud because you could just be pissed by yourself in a corner and you don't you have you had the ability and willingness to change, which is awesome. Also, okay, let's go back to the basics. You have five weeks left of rehearsal. We know what the condition is. What can you do to show up fully present? And there's this book that that really inspires a lot of my work, which is called Inner Excellence by Jim Murphy. I highly recommend anyone listening to watch it. It puts words to a lot of the things that I've felt my whole life and really has inspired me to continue and push forward in this book. And Jim Murphy says, if we switch our mindset to saying, how can I raise the level of excellence in my life in order to raise it and elevate it in other people's lives? If I'm focused on being the best that I can, but not so that everyone says, wow, Chris, you are the best, but to say, okay, I'm gonna show up so that my colleagues can raise their excellence. Together we can raise the show's excellence. And if we raise the show's excellence, then we will raise the experience for the audience. And you never know who's in the audience. It could be someone who says, This is my first time going to the opera, and I now love we never know. But if that was the mindset, so I worked with this singer and I said, How can you show up every day to your rehearsal and say, All right, how can I show up? Excellent, and no matter what people say, no matter what the room feels like, I can respond and react in a present and excellent way. And all of a sudden, we see over the course of time, it wasn't a magical the next day was rainbows, but by the time the show came, they were performing with the most amount of freedom they could because it wasn't about them. And it wasn't about, oh my gosh, I'm feeling this way. It was about, wow, I've been able to impact and really raise and create an awesome experience for someone in the audience.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 30:23

It's amazing how important communication is in this whole, well, in everything, in this whole life. Just to communicate with, I mean, I imagine in that situation, it is much more satisfying to talk to the creative team one-on-one or to their vision or, you know, any of any of these questions, which I'm sure you're advising your clients to ask. It is incredible the importance and the art of communication and connection ultimately in order to achieve anything.

Christopher Wellbrook: 31:00

And I think that that's it's key. It's it's communication, but it's also like approaching these conversations with a willingness to learn instead of being defensive. And the first thing in a situation like this that I that I talk to a client about is look, what people are thinking about, it probably has nothing to do with you. First step, don't take things personally. Let's think at this creative team. Let's look at all the things that are on their plate, first of all, right? We have this deadline. We have how many people are they managing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't think they're going home and they're thinking, let's just see how I can make it horrible experience for X person. No, that's not how it is. So we give them the grace, and instead of showing up to those communications, looking for evidence of how they are acting a certain way to you, it's saying, no, okay, how can I be fully able and flexible and present to push this project forward? So I think there's a shift there as well that comes with working in these situations.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 31:52

So you've touched on this uh throughout this episode already a little bit, but just I want to ask you very specifically about this. Artists and athletes tend to identify with exactly who they are as an artist, not necessarily aligning that with who they are. If that makes any sense. For instance, a great opera singer suddenly loses their their voice or something, then they have an identity crisis, right? Because they feel like the only purpose and value for them is this performing it at a high level. And I'm sure is similar for athletes performing at a high level who may experience some type of injury or so. I'm just wondering how you might manage with that or or how you build up an artist with this idea of integrating their whole identity. What's your philosophy there?

Christopher Wellbrook: 32:49

That's a great question. And I think we see this a lot in athletics. Like you see professional athletes who after their careers, because professional athletic careers, unless you're really in baseball, like if you're in in football, American football, they're done and by the time they're in their 30s, right? So what do they do after that when it's their entire life and their entire identity? And if you're a high performer and you spend every day thinking about achieving your goal and working on your craft, you can't help but blur the lines between I am what I produced. Um and I think that if, for the example of losing a voice, and that is horrible, I would never wish that on anyone. And I think the first thing you enter those spaces with is patience and grace, and you use those times. And my philosophy is, you know, sometimes we have to, and I'm this isn't about losing the voice, but this is just philosophically, you kind of don't evaluate things until you kind of things are at a low point, a rock bottom, until you're able to get a really honest perspective of your beliefs, right? And your belief about yourself. And if you lose a voice and then you're like, I cannot contribute to the world, then again, that is an opportunity to really re-examine, okay, this is your belief. You have tied this, your whole worth to where you perform, right? And I think that a big shift that successful people do who create meaning after losing maybe a talent or a career or an opportunity is through service. And I talked about the shift from self to other centered, so I won't go all the way through that again. But if you can think about how you can use your experience, because you have just because you lost your voice, does not mean that you've lost all of the things that you've learned, all of the opportunities that you've gone through that can help someone else. So I think it's like walking through that with patience and grace and saying, okay, let's reevaluate your beliefs, let's reevaluate your habits. What got you here and served you? What doesn't serve you anymore? And how can we see how your work, your experience, your life can now impact someone else?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 34:52

Yeah, interesting. I quit singing after pursuing a career doing that. And then, you know, there was there are often people say, Well, why don't you keep singing? And I I just couldn't, I was like, No, that's it. This is it. If it's not gonna be this iteration of of the career, then it's gonna be nothing, which is I actually think is a little bit of a sad situation. And I don't think that that that's healthy, but again, we didn't have anyone talking about mental health back uh 20 years ago when that that was happening, but I did transfer the skills and work as a publicist in the performing arts world and had clients doing the career that I was interested in originally pursuing. So there was still that, and that was very healing for me. So ultimately I found the tools, but it would have probably been a lot faster if we had someone like you. I do hope that vocal programs are hiring you.

Christopher Wellbrook: 35:54

Yeah, that's that's something that I'm excited about for like a potential expansion because I I think about vocal preparation at a graduate school level or at a young artist level or just at an opera house level, because as of now, I work with clients around the world, but I'm like, man, and everyone says, if only I'd learned this when I was this level, or if only I had this. There's this famous quote by uh Yogi Berra, who is an old New York Yankees manager, and he says that you know, 90% of the game, you're talking about baseball, 90% of performance is half mental, which is like a funny joke that everyone laughs at, but it's like, okay, if we realize and we invest and we know that vocal technique, that language acquisition, that staging, that role prep are all vital to success. We know that the physical aspects are. I'm not downplaying that at all, but we also know that there is an advantage for investing in mental preparation, right? As far as longevities and for ultimate performance. What would it look like? What would it look like to really create a program where athletes can develop this alongside their prep?

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 37:02

Yeah. Well, you see, sports teams now have nutritionists, they have mental health coaches, they have all this now built into their programs. So it would absolutely make sense for university performance programs to integrate this into their practice as well, because it'll only make their graduates much stronger uh performers. So yeah, it's a it's similar to the whole entrepreneurship argument as well, that they all need to be learning these entrepreneur skills.

Christopher Wellbrook: 37:40

Very true.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 37:41

But really, this this mental health thing is hand in hand with that as well. So very important to have you in there doing something or with young artist programs.

Christopher Wellbrook: 37:52

Competitions, like what does it look like to be at a stage that's videotaped, put on YouTube, and you get into it? What happens if you go through? What happens if you don't make it? What happens if you win? Both of these are new opportunities where and new obstacles, challenges, both good and bad, right? That that a singer could face.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 38:10

Well, in competitions, especially obviously, because it is an extremely high pressure, high visibility scenario, they should really offer someone with mental health skills to talk to them as soon as they're admitted into that competition. I mean, we're talking about competitions that are international level. They could have access to your skill set on a Zoom call.

Christopher Wellbrook: 38:36

Yep.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 38:36

To learn how to even prepare. And then they would also actually have a story to tell, right? Because they could develop the PR narrative this way too.

Christopher Wellbrook: 38:47

There's many different levels. And I and I really think that again, investing in having singers understand and really develop those skills in those high pressure situations because a great ideal performance, like you're on stage, let's just whatever big performance, operelia doesn't matter. You're at the finals of operelia, you're at the finals of CMIM, wherever, right? That preparation, those moments that you are experiencing, those emotions, like great singers, those are not the first time they experience it. When you're when you're nervous, you don't walk on stage and be like, I don't never experience this before. Great performers are doing visualization. They're doing visualization to be on that stage and feel everything that they're feeling days and weeks and months before. So if you get admitted to a competition months before, we should already be doing that work so that when you get to the performance, you're like, oh, I've been here before. I can be resilient, I can really perform with the freedom I'm able to do.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 39:45

How important is breath work in your coaching?

Christopher Wellbrook: 39:50

Super important. Breath work is the way. So when we talk about a stress response, right, we talk about our muscles are clenching, our heart is racing, our mind, our thoughts are racing, right? We see our palms starting to get sweaty. This is just our sympathetic fight or flight response to happens in our nervous system, whether we are getting chased by a lion or whether we think we are gonna be going on stage. It's the same response. And breath work, especially box breathing, for those of us who are listening, that's inhaling for four seconds, holding for four seconds, exhaling for four seconds, and then holding for four seconds. You do that multiple times. This is a way that you can again directly address your sympathetic nervous response to calm your body down. You can't calm your body down thinking about it with the racing thoughts that are coming from you being stressed. That is just a recipe for a disaster of like, I should be calm, and then you get more stressed, and that's not how it works. You read James Nestor's book that I should that I put on my list.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 40:51

Yeah, it's a great book. And you you you will finish reading and then suddenly want to close your mouth a lot. Do a lot of note reading, but there are many uh stories in there that are just mind-blowing in terms of the healing effects of of real deep breathing. So that's great. I I can't keep you too much longer, but I do want to ask you if a s um a performer is about to go on stage, do you have like uh steps that they might like regular steps?

Christopher Wellbrook: 41:23

Yeah.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 41:24

That or just I know it's different for every client, but sort of could you give me walk me through a few steps that you commonly advise?

Christopher Wellbrook: 41:33

Yeah, so I will I will I'll just I have an example. I just worked with the with the performer, did a competition, and the preparation that we did began two weeks in advance. It was two weeks. So I I do a lot of visualization. What we're visualizing, and I think sometimes visualization is I just want to see myself succeeding. That's all I want. I just want to see everything going perfectly, but like life doesn't happen that way. So when you visualize everything working and then you are confronted with a situation where things aren't working, you haven't prepared for that. So the first step of preparation is two weeks in advance where we're talking about, okay, you're on stage. What emotion do you want to bring on stage? And what when I worked with this singer, it was I want to really be centered. I want to be present, I want to be centered. And I said, okay, so we went through and we found opportunities. And you can think, and there's people listening who are maybe like, yeah, I want to be centered, but like I can't, I'm not centered. I get on stage and I'm afraid. And you're maybe you feel like you're afraid on stage, but there are opportunities and op excuse me, there are events in your life outside of singing where you have been centered. So we find those events. And that event was, you know, maybe with a family or maybe a friend, or maybe somebody said something, and I was able to really be centered. And we went and we found that emotion. And what we do, and this is what I do when we do the prep, is a lot of it is anchoring. So we want to anchor that centered emotion, and that can be through anything. What we did is we do a lot of hand on the chest. That's something simple that you can do in a competition that no one knows that you're doing it, right? Like it's not going to look weird if your hand is on your chest. It can be a word you say, something like that, but we anchor, we visualize, okay, you're in, you're stepping on this, you you finally step up on the stage and you start feeling a little bit stressed out. And now put your hand to your chest and find that centered emotion. And what we do is over the course of that week before, is we continue to visualize not just being centered, but being a little bit stressed out because we want to have experienced that stress before we get on stage. Because then when it comes, we're like, yeah, no problem. I felt this. I'll center. So that's the something that I do with clients in preparation to for some sort of performance or competition.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 43:43

Yeah. Practicing, I guess, mock auditions, that kind of thing. Obviously, you can't necessarily create the exact same stress, but you can try to mimic as best as possible. That's great.

Christopher Wellbrook: 43:55

You can see yourself being resilient because we really are resilient people. It's just sometimes we don't know what to do because our mind starts racing. But if we have seen ourselves and we've practiced and we have muscle memory of, oh yeah, when I'm in this situation, I know what to do. It's a lot easier to do in the moment than just talking about it or thinking about it.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 44:15

Yeah, I think it all really boils down to this inner confidence building. And then with that sort of grounding confidence that is built through, again, these atomic habits that we talked about in this episode, it fertilizes success in the end. Well, thank you so much for being here. How can people uh find you if they want to hire you?

Christopher Wellbrook: 44:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the best way right now, follow me on Instagram. Check out my Instagram, which is at Christopher Wellbrook, my name. There you can find videos that I put up. You can also sign up for a free 20-minute discovery call. So you can message me on Instagram if you're interested. Sign up for a discovery call, or my email is crwellbrook at gmail.com. We're happy to reach out. I'd love to learn more about where you're at and where you want to go and how I can help.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Bowman: 45:01

Great. Well, thanks for being in the scene room today.

Christopher Wellbrook: 45:04

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the time.