Live Your Bloom Podcast

Elisa Di Napoli, Helping artists defeat stage nerves and DARE TO BE SEEN

November 28, 2022 Sharman Nittoli
Live Your Bloom Podcast
Elisa Di Napoli, Helping artists defeat stage nerves and DARE TO BE SEEN
Show Notes Transcript

My guest this week is Elisa Di Napoli, an artist, coach, hypnotherapist and multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter.

In addition, she is the best-selling author of the book, online course, and podcast Dare to Be Seen which helps artists command the stage, magnify their presence, and defeat stage nerves.

Also, under the name Elyssa Vulpes, she has produced 12 albums of original music.

Elisa believes that coaching is about empowering you to get clear on goals and setting up strategies that help you achieve them. Holistic life coaching is about stopping letting excuses get in the way and eliminating the roadblocks to success so you can get the career you always wanted. 

To her credit, in 2021 she was awarded the Top Coach award from the Coach Foundation, Top 3 Hypnotherapy in Edinburgh and has developed intuitive strategies that work to help her clients.

You are encouraged to book a free discovery call from her website to learn more.

Elisa had this to say, “Just remember the world needs your particular type of light.”


Links:

www.elisadinapoli.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypnotichealingedinburgh/?originalSubdomain=nz

https://www.instagram.com/elisadinapoli/?hl=en

https://www.facebook.com/elisa.d.napoli.9/

info@elisadinapoli.com

Phone: +642040484828

Books:

https://www.amazon.com/Elisa-Di-Napoli/e/B07Z57M8XC%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

https://www.audible.com/author/Elisa-Di-Napoli/B07Z57M8XC

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19601815.Elisa_Di_Napoli

Music:

https://www.elyssavulpes.com/



Sharman Nittoli:

This is the Live Your Bloom podcast, where I interview people sharing stories about their ongoing journeys to blooming and fulfillment. My guest this week is Elisa Di Napoli. She's an artist, a coach, a hypnotherapist, and a multi-instrumentalist singer and songwriter. But in addition, she's the best selling author of the book online course and podcast, Dare To Be Seen, which helps artists command the stage, magnify their presence and defeat stage nerves. Something I know a lot about. Also under the name Elyssa Vulpes, she has produced 12 albums. In fact, we're listening to one of the songs from her most recent CD. It's called, 'Do You Wanna Play'.*Song playing* Love that song. Welcome, Elisa.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Thank you for having me.

Sharman Nittoli:

Oh, my pleasure. You have a very unusual style of music, kind of an ethnic thing infused with all your songs. Did you have a lot of music in your family growing up?

Elisa Di Napoli:

No, actually not really. My parents just liked classical music and we listened to all the big composers. And then they, my father loved the opera, but that's it. They couldn't play anything and they never sung. It was not something that I was expected to get into.

Sharman Nittoli:

I wasn't either, so it was, my parents weren't thrilled with it, but eventually they accepted it.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah, exactly. But I have a lot of influences from different places, places that I've lived, influences from Italy, influences from Scotland, and Ireland, and boyfriends as well. I discovered different kinds of music.

Sharman Nittoli:

I would like our people to know that you are coming to us right now from New Zealand. Yes.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yes, we are. I am.

Sharman Nittoli:

And I know on your CD you do sing a few songs in Italian. Yes.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yes I do. Yeah. I sing in English. I sing in Italian. Yeah.

Sharman Nittoli:

Well, you know, I'm always interested in the journey of the musician and I would enjoy hearing yours how an Italian woman ended up in New Zealand.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, it, it is a long story, but just to cut it short, to give you the essentials. When I was 16, my parents went around the world for a trip to celebrate their marriage, the 25th of their marriage anniversary. And they basically decided to move to New Zealand because it was a beautiful country. They were fed up with Italian politics at the time. And I vowed never to come to New Zealand. I was like, 'I'm not going. You guys go.' I don't care.

Sharman Nittoli:

A typical teenager.

Elisa Di Napoli:

And then they left and I went to Scotland. And then after a while they basically told me, 'Look, you can get citizenship. If you come here later it would be difficult. Just, just come for holiday.' So I went to New Zealand, really liked it. Ended up staying for 12 years on and off. And then, moved away to Scotland where I spent another 10 years and I've just come back now after the recent pandemic mess. So I was actually in New Zealand.

Sharman Nittoli:

And how did you get into music? How old were you when you started your career?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, I started singing when I was very young. I used to love cartoon opening credit music. And I recorded my little tape recorder and, and learned them all, and I thought that's what I'm gonna be when I grew up. And so I might have been, I don't know, like six. I was so young. And then after that, I started playing piano when I was 12, but I, I gave up really after a year because I was studying classical and I, I actually wanted to study pop and rock, but I was too shy to tell that to my teacher so I stopped. And then I started playing guitar when I was 16, and then finally drums much later on in my life, like 37, drum. So, and then I, I got piano. I got back into piano a couple of years ago. And I love the piano now. It's my favorite.

Sharman Nittoli:

Do you play a lot of the instruments on your CDs?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yes. On the particular song that you were playing, I was playing. What was I playing? The guitar and the bass and I was singing. Now at the moment I'm playing also the piano. So I plan to play the drums as well. That's kind of the, the whole point is to be able to play everything. But of course it takes that point.

Sharman Nittoli:

And, in the midst of all this, you, you have a story of stage fright because that's what prompted you to actually get into this line of work. So what is your story of stage fright?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah. Well, I, I was really not in a good place in my twenties, I used to be very nervous before a show and I sometimes I even lost my voice before a show. Like suddenly, magically, it would just go and I'd be like, 'What? I had it yesterday, today I don't have it.' And I'm not surprised now, but leading to really not do the show. And I also, when I did do the show, I just didn't feel very good. You know what? I spent the entire time worrying about what other people thought, made mistakes wasn't very, you know, my, my performance wasn't very brilliant. I knew I can do better. And then afterwards I would berate myself about all the mistake I've done, and I'm not that good. I'm much better than this, et cetera, and then apologize. And then at one point I almost gave up because I remember one time, I was singing and in the middle of a song, I got this thought that says, 'What if now you're gonna forget the entire song?' And then, of course, I forgot the entire song. Like I knew the song I played but it just was and vanished. And there was nothing I could do. I froze and I had to run away in the middle of the performance. It was so humiliating. I thought, 'oh my God, I'm never gonna do this again. This is, this is just, I'm not meant to do this', et cetera. So I thought, okay, maybe I need to give up. But the thought of giving up was just too painful. It was like, ' Oh, it might as well cut my arm off.' So I decided to do something about it that wasn't what I already had done, which was BW blockers, drinking wine, doing improve classes, acting classes, or things that maybe a little helped but didn't get rid of it. They didn't really look at the root of the problem. So then, see, at the time I was also hypnotised. I was still a hypnotherapist back then. And, but it didn't occur to me to use hypnosis because, you know, it's a little bit like fish in the water don't realize that there is water. It's obvious, but they just don't see it. And at the time I, it suddenly occurred to me, I thought, what a minute. What about it process you? It works on so many things. So then I went to a colleague. And I asked them to gimme a couple of sessions that really worked. It worked like about 70% and I thought, okay, if this is just a couple of sessions can help 70%, I need to look into it more. And so I went to other hypnotherapists. I started studying it, getting clients, helping see what worked with them, and then applying it to myself. And then that whole thing basically led me to find fundamental kind of principles and, and, and sessions that would actually work. And, and then I wrote a book and an online course about that.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. On your website you state that fear can make you a bad performer. How so?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, what I mean by that is that you are not in the present and you're not connected to the music.

Sharman Nittoli:

No.

Elisa Di Napoli:

You are lost into, into this what I sometimes call like a, the La La Land of, of your conscious thoughts. Of what ifs and, and then thinking about whether you're good enough or what are the audience thinking and what if I make a mistakes and all these things. They get you, they take you away from being present. And being present and in the flow and connected to your music is all. It's what it's about. Right.

Sharman Nittoli:

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as I, we talked about, I, I know about stage fright and when I first started working with my husband in the band, he had come one of, he was older than I and had an extensive career in Las Vegas, big show band. He was MCing doing comedy and all this. So he, he turned to me at one point and he said, okay, announce us off. Or, there's a birthday in the house, announce the birthday. And I would lean over and, 'don't do that.' And he looked at me like, 'what did you say?' I said, 'not, I don't do that. You have to ask somebody else for that'. And he, he just said, 'I have never heard of that before, but we're gonna work on that.' And you know what, I was gonna ask you though, those feelings of not being good enough, having that inferiority thing. Did you find in your personal life you felt that way, or did it really exacerbate when you played music?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, I felt that way in my life to some extent it exacerbated. So the answer is yes to both questions.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. Cause I did too. And I, and I found the older that I got, the freer that I got, the more into my music that I got, I started to, I started to settle into saying, 'Hey, wait a minute, I'm a good musician, I'm a good writer, I'm a good singer'. And I, I can't think of anything really, truly better than being able to just drop into the song, connect with the song, and just not care and trust the fact that that connection is what people are gonna relate to. It doesn't matter. Nothing else really matters. But that, and it, it took years, years to work to that point.

Elisa Di Napoli:

It does take time. But you know, there are ways in which you can speed up the process if you know what to do. That is.

Sharman Nittoli:

And that's what you do.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the, the thing is, there's, there's two main causes of performance anxiety, right? The main causes are, the first one is "negative conditioning". And by that I mean, the experiences that we've had at any point in our lives, often in childhood, but not, not necessarily only that teach us that it's not okay to be ourselves. It's not safe to be ourselves. So that's one thing that we need to work on and figure out what this negative conditioning is, or negative conditioning also create negative limiting beliefs that also reinforce the conditioning. Then, the second thing is what I call "negative mental rehearsal", which is basically worry. Worry about all the things that will go wrong and imagining those things because that's what our brain naturally does. So these two things, either or, or combined like it was in my case, fight or flight response. And then, fight or flight response, you, you just cannot really function normally. That's not what I wanted to say two things created that like the fight or flight is created by the excessive fear of rejection that we get it.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. I read stories, I did some research before this, and some of the singers that have been crippled by anxiety. A lot of people know about Adele because she's made that very public. But they didn't. They don't know about Barbara Streisand who seems like the most confident and experienced singer, and she goes through tremendous anxiety before she performs. Rod Stewart, who has a long history of being in rock bands and doing all different kinds of music. And I did know about Carly Simon also, and there are a lot of others who are professional, successful singers who really do not enjoy the performance aspect of it. Love the studio. Don't like to perform and promote. Have you ever had someone that you really couldn't help?

Elisa Di Napoli:

With this particular problem, with other problems? Yes. With this particular problem, well, not really. Like the only person people that I couldn't help were people that came for like a 30-minute sort of consultation to see if we were a good fit. And then, they decided just not to go ahead. They decided not to do it. Not, not to, they gave up even before we started. So if you have that attitude, then yes, it's not gonna work.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. I, I when I work with people, I know when they are committed and they show up for themselves, and they really say, 'I say this because of what I did to change. I just said to myself, I don't wanna be like this. I don't wanna be like this. I'm gonna do what I have to do to change. This is not the way I wanna go out.' And I worked at it. So what? When I went for help, whatever they recommended I do, I did it, whatever it was.

Elisa Di Napoli:

I think that's really important. If you have enough of, 'Oh, let's see. Let's test if this is gonna work, or I bet its gonna work.' I say immediately,'we're not working together because you are sabotaging the entire thing.'

Sharman Nittoli:

Point. Yeah. If they, if you would give an exercise or, or if I had received a homework assignment, basically, do this three times a week, do this four times a week, maybe meditate, maybe journal, whatever. I would do it. And I changed. If I get someone who comes back to me and says, 'Oh, I had such a busy week, I just didn't have time to do it', then it's not that important. It's it, it's got to be important where you show up, cause if you don't show up for yourself, nothing is gonna happen.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah, and I mean, sometimes there are underlying causes for that. I often, before I just say, 'Look, obviously if you can't commit then there's no point in working together.' I do may try to investigate what happened. Cause sometimes people may have an underlying belief that you know, 'Oh, just, I'm not good enough to even do this'. And work on, on that first. So there are cases which that might be.'What we need to do?' But otherwise, I totally agree with you. It is a collaboration. It's not magic.

Sharman Nittoli:

No, it's not. No. And I, I, I can't tell you why I was like that, but that's the way I was. I, I don't know. I, I think sometimes we, some of us have this very strong learning quotient kind of like we feel like we really have to put in a lot more time in order to be good enough to be proficient enough. And every time we hear someone who's better, we admire it, but we come up short. We just come up short. And, that was the thing I had to work on overcoming. And every once in a while it still haunts me, but I, I recognized it. I, I just, I, I feel like it's a little person that comes and sits on my shoulder. And I always say, 'I know you're gonna be here, but you're not sitting next to me. Sit back there.'

. Elisa Di Napoli:

I love that. That's, that's wonderful. That's exactly right. You know, it's like thinking, okay, you know, like fear, fear is always gonna be with us. It is here for a reason. It's to protects us from dangerous. But not being in a car with a kid who is super scared of driving and he is driving. You don't want a kid to drive. You wanna be the adult and you can, the can be in the back seat and you can be like, 'okay, you, you'd be there in the back seat. I take care of the driving.'

Sharman Nittoli:

Right, right. So someone comes to you and they start your course. What's the first thing you would have them do?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, I mean, they can do my course on their own, but if they need help or they want more guidance, then I would usually have a consultation first with them. And the whole point of that is to understand where they're at. Because there's people that the main important thing, the most important thing is to understand your negative conditioning and your negative beliefs. Like those are the first thing that we need to look at. So there's an exercise I get them to do where they think about performing and they write down their automatic negative toxic thoughts, they write them all down. Like, 'Oh, what if this happens? Oh, I'm not good enough.' Whatever may be. And then, we work on flipping them, changing them, creating empowering beliefs that they can actually, believe in. Things that are, that are personally make sense to them. Because, you know, if we just use general empowering beliefs, it might not work because the person might be like, 'Well, this, this doesn't resonate with me. if I just, you're a great performer.' Some people might be like, 'yeah, okay'. And other people be like, 'absolutely not.' So first thing we need to do is find out what those negative beliefs are, flipping them, and then we need to work on the, the negative conditioning if there anything there. Like negative experiences, that kind of thing? And I also get them, I've got this master class where even before any of this, if the person feels particularly physically panicky. So it's not just a mental thing, but it's actually like a physical thing. Like for example, they go on stage and the throat parches and, and their heart rate goes, really goes up and their hands starts trembling and stuff like that. That's a sign that they're in a, in a panic basically, in a fight or flight state. And then I get them to do a pre-performance ritual. That is, that is included in my free master class. So anyone on this podcast can go and, and have a look at that, and it's a very practical thing you can do to actually calm yourself down. Then nothing else would work. First, you need to know how to calm yourself down.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. One time, someone said a drummer, we were doing a concert somewhere, and the drummer couldn't make it. He sent a drummer that came in who had a serious anxiety problem. And he pulled into himself, was playing this song. I remember it was a rascal song called 'Good Loving'. And he would not stop playing and, I mean, it, it was funny, but it was sad. He would not stop playing. He was into himself. He was playing and playing. And finally, my husband went up and kind of gently touched his shoulders and said,'We need to stop now.' Just a sheer panic. He, he just went into, and he played very well. He just was so, so nervous. I really, I felt for him. But I had never seen anybody display those kinds of that kind of anxiety. Yeah. When did you write your book?

Elisa Di Napoli:

I wrote my book back in, I think it's been three years ago now actually. But I've just, I just published a journal that goes with it this year. I had some people, they would read the book, but, and they would do the course, but, but then they would be like, there's some exercises, you know, that come with the course in the book. And some of them were like, 'Oh, I need something to keep me accountable and, and keep me on the right track.' And then I'll, okay, well, I can, I can create a journal that would be, make it easier to just go to.

Sharman Nittoli:

You're, I know on your site it says, command the stage and magnify your presence in 10 easy steps. I was, I always think about that word presence because what I found when I started working on my presence is it had like a synergistic effect. It just affected my entire life. I became a better teacher that when I would go back and forth and teach in schools, I was leading some group. I just became comfortable with it. My, my, my presence in my life expanded a hundred percent by working through it. And I wish I had known you then because you only have 10 easy steps. Well, I wanted you to know the purpose of my online group, Live Your Bloom, is to inspire people of all ages - young, old. I have some people that are 82 just starting their memoirs now to live their fullest life for as long as they can with no judgment, not an easy thing to do. And many of them are just beginning to study instruments and some are actually pursuing singing careers or singing in the church or singing for pleasure. Although they are frequently plagued by self-judgment, insecurities, and that old friend, the inner critic. Got any advice for them?

Elisa Di Napoli:

Well, so many things, really. I mean, first of all, if you're never tempted to give up because you think,'Oh, it's gonna take too long'. Well, what I often say to myself is, well, the years are gonna pass no matter what. So whether you accomplish this or whether you give up or not, it's going to still 10 years, whatever, are gonna pass. So you might as well spend them well. You know, you, you might as well spend them practicing your instrument and in 10 years you'll be 10 times better than you are. In terms of the critic, I, it doesn't matter how, again, how old you are, first of all, let's look at comparison. I think it's, we live in a society that's very much about living idealistically, and it's me versus you, rather than us together, right? So I win, you lose kind. And, also, I'm better than you or you're better than me. And the reality is that no one's better than anyone else in terms of who we are and we shouldn't be looking up or down. We should just be look level. And so to remember that comparing yourself to others is really an illusionary. It's a self-defeating practice that isn't gonna really work for you, but also it's just based on an illusion that you can compare yourself to others because, I mean, can you compare an orange to an apple? No, not really. they are two different things. So that one is an orange, you got is an apple. The only thing that you really should compare yourself to is yourself. Are you doing your best today or, or are you not? And that's it. Your best today is what's required. And in terms of the critic, when, when the voice comes in, I think the important thing is to recognize that voice for what it is. Because we identify with our negative voices, and sometimes you have crazy voices going, 'Oh, what if I met them, I met here, fools on, on my house.' Well, that's a silly thing. That's probably never gonna happen. Should we really use a precious time thinking about this? Maybe not. So I'm thinking, okay, the inner critic, here's a reason to be there. They like a habit that we have fed. Probably, at some point, somebody talked to us that way and we adopted their voice. And we think that that's a way to get better, but it's not. That's a way to get us worked up and stop us from creating.

Sharman Nittoli:

And stop us. Yeah. And I always tell people too, like if you've been thinking about it for a while, guaranteed, you're gonna be thinking about it next year. You're gonna be thinking about it because it's in there. It wants to come out. It wants to be expressed. That is the only thing that matters. That is the only thing. There are many places to go to improve your skill if you choose to. And of course, if you have stage fright, now they know where to go to deal with that. But that is the only thing. It is the journey that matters. That's all that matters.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Absolutely. And, but also there are ways you can deal with that voice. So, like I said, first of all, awareness is key. And then, there's things you can do. You can, a funny one, for example, a funny exercise that your audience could try is to just pretend that your inner critic is sitting next to you and you're gonna be listening. And you're going write down everything like a, like a secretary. You're gonna write down everything it says about your performance, right? Oh, you're good for nothing, da da da da. And you're gonna all write it down. And then afterwards, what I wanted you could try to do is write on a piece of paper, like say six possibilities. One could be game show host, another could be a sexy soultrade, I dunno. Even porn star, if you like. Something like that or like, fascist, dictator, all these kind of things, you know. Crazy things. And then decide, pick one. And then recite or, or why any child, that's another one. Recite the, the list that what you've written. As if you are talking from the point of view of say, a game show host. For example, you've written something like, 'Oh, you never amount anything. You're good for nothing. Might as well give up now.' And then you just pretend that you're the game show host and you're like, 'You are good for nothing as well give up now.' You know, like you talk, you transform the voice if you like.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah. Yeah. Ridiculous. Yeah, it's, it sounds like you would be diffusing the power of those statements. You're just diffusing taking the power away and any humor is always a positive thing. Awesome. It works very well. That's a great idea. I never heard that one. But I love the title Dare to Be Seen When you know All Eyes Are On You.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sharman Nittoli:

You have to wear it. You have to wear it, Yeah.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Of being a vulnerability as well, and that it's safe, you know? It's okay. And, it's in fact exhilarating, but it's also not about you. That's the kind of paradox. Because we think even big stars, right? You're talking about Adele and it, yes. Okay. We might have this idea of the celebrity that we want to make into almost like a goddess and, and project all our stuff on them. When we go and see Adele, or when we go and see somebody, somebody like that, what we really want is to feel something, right? We wanna feel these emotions that in our everyday life, maybe you are cut off from us. And so, so it's not really about Adele in that moment. She's a channel, she's a conduit for those feelings, and that's what, she's a servant of the audience in a way. She's serving all of us. And so it's not about her in that moment. We don't care about what she had for breakfast or what she does in the morning, or whatever. We don't care. Yeah. We just wanna feel the music.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah, I agree with that. Totally. Yeah. And speaking of feeling the music, you have a new song out called The Night is Falling, which I would like to listen to a little bit right now. Staring at the clock, melts on your hands. It's thro in shock. The weather's night is falling. So what inspired this song? It's a very unusual sounding song. Yeah.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yeah. What inspired this song is the show, Yellow Jackets. I don't know if you know that song.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yes. Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Elisa Di Napoli:

That's a wonderful show. I loved it so much especially the costumes. Amazing. And so I thought, 'Aha, I would love to write a song for the show.' and whether you know, they accept my song, no, doesn't really matter because it's just an inspiration. So I went on the piano and, and started improvising something. And the idea of that for me is, is that I left it quite open, of course, interpretation, so it could be anything. But for me, when I wrote it, it was an older person who has a disease like Alzheimer's or dementia. And, that suddenly time has completely changed. Their relationship to time has completely changed, and they live in this sort of eternal, empty, weird, present, but also lost in their memories of the past. And they're quite confused. So the idea is like time, frozen time and being frozen in time, but also having these moments. Sudden realization as well of, 'Oh gosh, what's happening now when it's happening? Because I think I'm fascinated. My, my grandmother had that disease and I thought a lot about it. What it must be like to, to suddenly have your perception of time changed so much and so basically that's what, what inspired the song, but then I also thought of yellow jackets and the forest and snow and night, and I all went together into a jumble.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yes, it's got the mood that definitely suits that show. Yeah, I liked it a lot. Now I'm gonna have to go back and really check out the lyrics there. I, I, I know a bit about that. My mom had a little touch of dementia. Every once in a while she would call me Betty. And I was like, I don't know who Betty is, but it's okay with me. I want our listeners to know that you also have some special gifts for them, which can be found on the podcast landing page. So go back to the page so you can get these wonderful links along with the links that you're going to need to listen to Elisa's music as well as go to her website where you, where she offers her online course and information about her book. All good stuff that comes from proficiency and a desire really to help.

Elisa Di Napoli:

Yes. Cause your audience also gets a free book and they also get a free master class of English.

Sharman Nittoli:

Yeah, that's, that's wonderful. I may take advantage of that. So, is there anything else you would like our listeners to know about you, your service, your music, or-

Elisa Di Napoli:

Not really. I mean, I'm always here for artists and performers. It's my favorite person to help. And just, remember that the world needs your particular type of light. Your particular unique way of being. We all, they have something to give or shine that light.

Sharman Nittoli:

Thank you so much, Elisa Di Napoli, thank you so much for being here. This has been fascinating and fun. I will definitely be on your site to check out your masterclass. Thank you. Be well.