See How a Great Opera Singer Overcame Stage Fright Through a Simple Change
Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) was a great Italian opera singer, considered by many the best and the most famous tenor who ever lived. Coming from an economically poor family, at the age of 11 Caruso already began working as a mechanic apprentice, and he complemented the family income by singing in the streets and café in Naples. His first professional stage debut happened when he was 22, and although he performed at small theaters, this was the beginning of a lustrous career. Eventually, his work culminated in a contract with the famed Opera House La Scala in Milan, in 1900. He performed in front of audiences in Monte Carlo, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Saint Petersburg, Moscow, London, Vienna, Berlin, and many other world cities. In 1903, he performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He gained worldwide publicity and fame, became one of the highest-paid artists, and he produced nearly 250 recordings. He received many honors and recognitions, including the Order of the Crown of Italy, the FrenchLegion of Honor, and the Order of the Crown Eagle of Prussia.
You are a gardener, and you are planting seeds (thoughts) in your subconscious mind all day long, based on your habitual thinking. As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.
Begin now to sow thoughts of peace, happiness, right action, goodwill, and prosperity. Think quietly and with interest in these qualities and accept them fully in your conscious reasoning mind. Continue to plant these wonderful seeds (thoughts) in the garden of your mind, and you will reap a glorious harvest. Your subconscious mind may be likened to the soil, which will grow all kinds of seeds, good or bad. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Every thought is, therefore, a cause, and every condition is an effect. For this reason, you must take charge of your thoughts to bring forth only desirable conditions.
When your mind thinks correctly, when you understand the truth, and when the thoughts deposited in your subconscious mind are constructive, harmonious, and peaceful, the magic working power of your subconscious will respond and bring about harmonious conditions, agreeable surroundings, and the best of everything. When you begin to control your thought processes, you can apply the powers of your subconscious to any problem or difficulty. In other words, you will be consciously cooperating with the infinite power and omnipotent law, which governs all things.
Look around you wherever you live and you will notice that the vast majority of mankind lives in the world without; the more enlightened men are intensely interested in the world within. Remember, it is the world within, namely, your thoughts, feelings, and imagery that makes your world without. It is, therefore, the only creative power, and everything, which you find in your world of expression, has been created by you in the inner world of your mind consciously or unconsciously.
Knowledge of the interaction of your conscious and subconscious minds will enable you to transform your whole life. To change external conditions, you must change the cause. Most men try to change conditions and circumstances by working with conditions and circumstances. To remove discord, confusion, lack, and limitation, you must remove the cause, and the cause is the way you are using your conscious mind. In other words, the way you are thinking and picturing in your mind.
You are living in a fathomless sea of infinite riches. Your subconscious is very sensitive to your thoughts. Your thoughts form the mold or matrix through which the infinite intelligence, wisdom, vital forces, and energies of your subconscious flow. (…)
Most of the great scientists, artists, poets, singers, writers, and inventors have a deep understanding of the workings of the conscious and subconscious minds.
One time Caruso, the great operatic tenor, was struck with stage fright. He said his throat was paralyzed due to spasms caused by intense fear, which constricted the muscles of his throat. Perspiration poured copiously down his face. He was ashamed because in a few minutes, he had to go out on the stage, yet he was shaking with fear and trepidation. He said, “They will laugh at me. I can't sing.” Then he shouted in the presence of those behind the stage, “The Little Me wants to strangle the Big Me within.”
He said to the Little Me, “Get out of here, the Big Me wants to sing through me.” By the Big Me, he meant the limitless power and wisdom of his subconscious mind, and he began to shout, “Get out, get out, the Big Me is going to sing!”
His subconscious mind responded releasing the vital forces within him. When the call came, he walked out on the stage and sang gloriously and majestically, enthralling the audience.
It is obvious to you now that Caruso must have understood the two levels of mind — the conscious or rational, and the subconscious or irrational level. Your subconscious mind is reactive and responds to the nature of your thoughts. When your conscious mind (the Little Me) is full of fear, worry, and anxiety, the negative emotions engendered in your subconscious mind (the Big Me) are released and flood the conscious mind with a sense of panic, foreboding, and despair. When this happens, you can, like Caruso, speak affirmatively and with a deep sense of authority to the irrational emotions generated in your deeper mind as follows: “Be still, be quiet, I am in control, you must obey me, you are subject to my command, you cannot intrude where you do not belong.”
It is fascinating and intensely interesting to observe how you can speak authoritatively and with conviction to the rational movement of your deeper self bringing silence, harmony, and peace to your mind. The subconscious is subject to the conscious mind, and that is why it is called subconscious or subjective.
Sources
—Excerpt from “The Power of YourSubconscious Mind” by Joseph Murphy—