There is a moment before a show — not the preparation part, not the warmup, not the part where I am shaking out tension in a parking lot hoping no one is watching — where I just stand still and ask myself what I actually believe about what I am about to do. Whether I think it is going to go well. Whether I feel like a person who can walk out there and connect with the lyrics, the music, and the audience. That check-in is useful. It is also occasionally a disaster.

The mind has opinions. Loud ones. And on certain nights those opinions have nothing to do with what I am actually capable of and everything to do with what happened earlier that day, or what someone said six months ago, or the particular quality of the lighting in the room that is making me feel like a stock photo of a nervous person.

I have always tended to slouch. Shoulders rolled forward, chest caved in, the whole arrangement communicating something I was not consciously trying to say. I started working on it honestly for the most superficial reason available: I wanted to look more confident than I was. That phrase — fake it till you make it — is everywhere and I have complicated feelings about it, but I will say this: I was faking nothing. I was just standing up straighter and waiting to see what happened.

What happened was not what I expected.

The first thing I noticed was the breath. Not confidence, not some internal shift in how I felt about myself — just breath. More of it. Easier access to it. My capacity to hold air changed in a way that had nothing to do with any exercise I was doing and everything to do with the fact that I had stopped compressing the machinery. I was still afraid. I just had more air while I was afraid, which turns out to make a meaningful difference. Because what that air actually did was improve my singing — the phrasing, the length of a note, the delivery of a line. And when your singing gets better, even incrementally, even quietly, something shifts that no amount of telling yourself to feel confident ever achieves. It is evidence. My body gave me a reason to believe it, and that is a different thing entirely than just deciding to stand up straight and hope for the best.

Increased confidence came later. Quietly, slowly, not all at once, and honestly not as much as I would have liked in the beginning. But it came from the singing getting better, which is the only kind of confidence that actually sticks.

Even with better breath, improved delivery, incremental confidence — still, underneath it, a part of me stayed vigilant. Watching. Waiting. One step ahead of whatever might be coming. What I had not figured out yet was what to do with the part of me that stayed on guard anyway.

That is a different problem than posture. It took a different solution.

And eventually I developed something else — an acronym, my own system, something I reach for now when I need to reset quickly on stage. That one gets its own conversation.

Now, the last thing I do before I walk on stage — the very last thing, after the warmup and the shaking out and the breathing — is this: with an inhale, I raise both arms straight up over my head stretching as tall as I can and then easily let them fall to my sides. And I stand there for a second in whatever that is. Open. Tall. Slightly ridiculous. Ready.

It is a cue. The arms going up is the signal and the drop is the release and the standing that follows is what I am actually after — that specific combination of height and ease that does not come from bracing and does not come from collapsing but from somewhere in between that I had found by accident because no one told me it existed.

Sometimes I do it on stage, worked into the songs, and no one in the audience knows what they are watching. They just feel something shift. Or maybe they do not notice at all and I am the only one who needed it. Either way it works.

Before you do anything, just notice where you are right now. How are you sitting or standing? Where are your shoulders? How much air are you actually working with? How do you feel — not emotionally, just physically. Take a read.

Now stand up. Feet shoulder-width apart. Hands on your hips. Chest open. Chin level. Hold it like you mean it — like you are actually Superman and you know exactly how this ends. LOL!

Stay there for thirty seconds and then ask yourself the same questions. Where are your shoulders now? How is the air moving? Does anything feel different — in your body, in your head, in the amount of space you are willing to take up? Then, keeping that height, inhale and raise your arms straight overhead, stretch as tall as you can, and let them easily fall on your exhale. Notice what your breath does. Notice what quiets down. Notice where your heart is over your hips and your head is over your heart.

You do not have to feel confident first. You do not have to wait until the circumstances cooperate or the nerves settle or the lighting improves. You can stand like the version of yourself that already knows how this goes and let the rest catch up.

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