Just imagine your day in the office involved doing something for a large group of people. But these people know the words that you're about to say and the songs that you're about to sing, and they have huge expectations. The pressure of being a performer and playing a role like the Phantom of the Opera is pretty much as intense as it comes. But for musical theater star Josh Pitterman, this is just another day in the office, night after night.
In twenty nineteen, Josh had his debut as Phantom on the West End in London, and before that he's appeared in many musicals across Australia and the UK, as well as performing as one of the ten in the international pop opera group The Ten Tenors. So what does Josh do on a daily basis to make sure he's always at his a game? And how does Josh keep things fresh? And it's his two hundredth night in a row performing as a phantom, And what did Josh learn from Ash
Barty's mindset coach that was an absolute game changer. My name is doctor Amett the Imba. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy invent him, and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. Whenever I go to the theater, I'm always curious as to how the performers are feeling and what they're doing in the few seconds before they step onto the stage.
So I asked, Josh, what would I see him doing?
Oh, someone who's probably turning back at you and saying, Chucker's mate.
Yeah, that's it.
I'd like to think that before I go on stage, I'm sharing that moment with anyone who who's with me, Like.
Are you feeling nervous or excited?
I think it's like not one of those feelings that's always the same. It shifts and changes depending on what I'm experiencing within my own life, what I'm experiencing outside of the walls of the theater, and what I'm experiencing just on any given day, you know, I might be feeling just so fresh and in you know, great great voice and great spirits, and I'm just like, you know,
really just excited to get out there. But then there's days where it's like, oh, this is show sixty four in a row, the last you know, done eight a week for the last eight weeks. And I'm just spent, and I'm just thinking just zone in and sort of get through this and have a day off on the other side or whatever. You know.
So it.
Differs from from moment to moment, but generally ends up having regardless of what I'm feeling before on I'm on is Doctor footlights just takes over and I'm just sort of swept up by the magic of the moment of being on stage, no matter when I'm on stage.
Oh that sounds quite magical.
On those days where you know it's show sixty four and you're just not feeling it, what does your pre show almost warm up or prep look like to get you into the zone that you need to be in.
Yeah, such a good question. Ultimately that doesn't really change
for me. So you know, let's say I was doing Phantom, for example, I always arrive in the makeup chair, having already come into the theater about an hour before that, and meditated for twenty minutes and done some sort of light movement and stretching, sort of yoga flowish sort of stuff, and had a decent seeing like a good warm up and pretty juicy sing and probably something light to eat, and then an hour before the show starts, I'd step into the makeup chair and just have good chats with
you know, makeup artists. And my dress room doors always open, so whoever comes past would be stopping by and having a chat, hopefully if they can bear me, and just.
Just you know, enjoying the community.
Of the theater and the relationships and the backstage vibe
and whatnot. And so the makeup experience would take the best part of an hour, and then the curtain goes up and Phantom doesn't arrive for another twenty minutes on stage, and so I'd go back out, having been all made up, get my costume on, and do a little secondary like little focus meditation three minutes, five minutes, but of body awareness stuff, just bringing myself back into the present moment, sort of just get not warm up the voice, but just get the voice cooking again after you know, not
having sung for the best part of an hour or so. And then the final thing I do is look into the mirror. I have a bunch of notes on that mirror that have words that might inspire me for that particular show. So a word like animal or danger or romance or something just a little nuanced taking oh, yeah, I'm feeling a bit dangerous tonight, or I'm feeling a
bit romantic tonight, whatever it is. And then the final thing I do is look into the mirror and pop the mask on in a very ritualistic sort of manner. That's the final thing I do before I step out on stage. So I'm big with routine and I'm big with rituals.
How do you keep things fresh? I just find it mind boggling that idea of keeping things fresh after you've done, you know, maybe two hundred performances of the exact same thing.
Yeah, it's a question I get asked a lot, Amantha. And my theory is that.
I don't even think about it being the same show because it's not, because it's a new moment in time. Every time I go out there, it's not redoing what I did the night before. It's present moment stuff. So it's new. It's a new audience. We might have new cast members on stage or people in different plots, because it's very rare that in any show that you get the forecast on every night, there's always a swing or an understudy coming on, so there's always different, different energy.
I go back to that stuff that I have on the mirror. There's normally like eight to ten words up there for any show I do, and they also helped me keep it fresh that you know. As I said, I took animal and danger and romance, but for Phantom there are words like wordsmith, magician, magnificus, an obsession, and I take on these words and they just be like little embers to inspire a sort of flame within me for something just subtly different, subtly nuance, store or new.
I'm curious as to how you go about memorizing everything that needs to be memorized when you start a new show.
Something that I sort of have always taken with me I learned very early in my career when it comes to learning lines is I always do it before I go to bed at night, and the first thing I do when I wake up, so I sort of dream on it and then reiterate that as soon as I get up, so it just just gets it into that part of my brain quicker. And music, I just don't know why, but I just pick that up very quickly.
So it's probably in order of ease for me is music, then lines, and far down the bottom sitting on the bottom the latter's choreography, but.
Patients practice time, you know.
It's also yeah, it's all a muscle that you just get better at using. And we all have our muscles in whatever career we have that we just get good at doing certain things that we have to do on repeat.
I like that trick about sort of taking advantage of that time before you go to sleep, and you know, that's such a good time for things to seep into your.
Memory totally in all sorts of ways too, And if there's things that you're wanting to like bring, I feel like more into your life. And you know, when I'm not doing script work and not being a full and scrolling or I go to bed, I tend to journal before I go to bed, and their journal when I get up as well, and they it tends to sort of implement certain behavioral patterns into my psyche and system. So I feel like there's a lot in that on multiple fronts.
AH, tell me about the journaling, What like, are you journaling with a purpose or with specific questions in mind? What does that look like before bed?
And then in the morning, Well in the morning for the best place to start, because that's how it feels like it starts to me. So I always write down three things that I'm grateful for, because gratitude thinks likely just such an important thing to foster and to nurture within our own selves. I think we do get caught up in the I guess, the ascensionistic nature of life and the consumeristic nature of life, of wanting to achieve
more and wanting to bring more into our lives. And not that there's anything wrong with dreaming or manifesting or whatever, but when we do that from a scarcity of mentality, it's normally because we're not grateful for what we do have now. So it's just a constant reminder of all the wonderful things I do have in my life and being constantly appreciative of that, And there's something humbling and
grounding about that that I always find. So whether that's just like in lockdown now in Sydney, just being in BONDI just being grateful for access to like the beauty of nature, being grateful for time with my with my partner that I don't get in this way very very often, Grateful for the friendships that I have and the brothers and sisters in my life who always check in on me and who I have beautiful relationships with, so there'd
be some examples. And then I write down some affirmations or what I call unconditional i ams, So like I am curious, I am kind, I am loving, I am humble, I am passionate. You know, things that, no matter what the situation, cod this that the other you can't take away from, nothing could take away from me. Whereas if I wrote down I am the fan of the opera, well, you know I get to do that when I'm performing in that role. But when I'm not right now, I'm not.
So things that are unconditional. And then three intentions. So what I call I wills in terms of acts of service to either myself that couldn't benefit my greater community and my relationships, or directly to my relationships. So I will meditate today twice because I know that brings a more calm, measured, discerning version of myself to the outside world.
Or I will smile at a stranger, or I will help the help someone with their shopping, or you know, just ways of just minor acts of or major acts of service. And then after that, if I feel that the need I just freehand write whatever sort of on my mind, and then at night it's more around like how did I go with those things? Did I uphold
those things that I set out for the day? And then any to do this stuff that I've really got to do that tomorrow I've got a So it's like a wrapping up of the day and setting up for the following day.
Now you've mentioned meditation a few times.
Can you tell me about what kind of meditation you do?
What does that look like?
Yeah, do you meditate?
I have tried, unsuccessfully, and I know that that is not a thing being an unsuccessful meditator. I've found hypnotherapy a lot more effective, which kind of gets me into a similar state. But I just find it easy. I find the whole process easier and possitively because I grew up with a mother who's a clinical psychologist but specializes and also teaches hypnotherapy so amazing.
So that's quite familiar to me.
Whereas when I've tried meditation, I struggled, and I feel like I know that it's a practice. It's a practice for a reason. You know you don't get perfect at it. But I found it difficult to get into a meditation habit.
And what do you find challenging about it? Because I'm really I'm really interested in this because I feel like certain things come up for people when they meditate that that you know, leads them of course, or.
Puts them off doing it all together.
I think for me it was it was that sense of like, I'm not making progress, I'm not feeling the impact. And I think I struggled with the idea that from you know, I think various practitioners they said, well, you know, you need to do it every day for a few weeks to feel an impact, whereas I feel like when I use hypnotherapy, I feel the difference, you know, in terms of whatever the sort of the purpose of the
of the hypnosis is for. So I think it's that, yeah, that that lack of that immediate kind of visitive reinforcement if you.
Like to keep going.
Yeah, I totally hear that. I think you're so not alone there. And whether it's hypnotherapy or for some people that might be psychedelics or you know, things like psilocybin or whatever, they just want to have that extreme conscious awakening or transcendent experience or that that.
Is totally yeah.
Yeah, it's totally transcending, and that meditation although can achieve a level of that, they want it instantaneously. And I think it's a thing not to like knock that it's a thing that I feel like is really pertinent or
pervades our society a lot. Is that the idea of immediacy, of needing things quickly, there's a there's sort of beauty in just practicing a practice and just develop being things slowly and taking time and not winning or achieving or or feeling like you're you're making progress, Like it's just the practice is the practice.
You're going to have good days, bad days. Sometimes I meditate and.
It's it's like, you know, not particularly gratifying, and some days I meditate and it's extremely gratifying.
That's what meditation does for me.
So I teach a couple of different forms of meditation when I'm not performing. And that sort of came to me going around a long way of talking about this, but it sort of came to me from a lot of performance anxiety, stress, panic attacks, all that sort of yucky mental health stuff that I was dealing with sort of two thousand and fifteenish, well, from thirteen to fifteen and it's got to a point where I was like, this is not sustainable like that. I can't exist like this.
Something has to shift, and apart from having some therapy around that, I started meditating using a technique called one Giant Mind, which is a form of a being technique or a form of transcendental style meditation using a manthra.
And that really really helped.
And so subsequently in Lockdown last year, I decided to do the four or five month teacher training on that so I could teach that to a lot of other people, because I felt like people are really suffering with their mental health and that was a way I could be of service if we get back to the eye wheels.
But since twenty fifteen, I've explored all sorts of other meditations, from heart math to mindfulness, to sort of chakra stuff to visualization, tantric Kundalini yoga has a fit of that, lot of breath work, all sorts of different things that I've played in, and so I tend to teach other than One Giant Mind. I tend to teach a heart opening style mindfulness meditation, and that's yes something that I've
decided that I need to offer more people. So, like every Sunday night at five o'clock during the Sydney Lockdown, I just have been running these free zoom sessions for anyone and everyone who from anywhere in the world who seems to confine them through my Instagram bio that you just pop on and it's a twenty minute guarded meditation and everyone says thanks and sends love to each other
and see you later. So it's been a big journey meditation, as you can see by sort of the whole exploration of the last five or so minutes talking about it. But it plays a big part in my life, and I meditate twice a day and it's just something I hold very dear, especially in the chaos of the outside world at the moment. To have a really have strong practices that enable calm and unstressing within your inside world, I think is really important.
We will be back soon with Josh and talking about what he learned from Ash Barty's Mindset Coach that was an absolute game changer for him. And if you're looking for more tips to improve the way that you work, you might be interested in a short newsletter that I write once a fortnight, which contains three cool things that I have discovered that helped me work better, So ranging from interesting research findings through to the gadgets and software that I'm loving. You can sign up for that at
Howiwork dot com. That's how I Work dot c O. I want to know about health in general, because like, I use my voice a fair bit for what I do through keynote, speaking in the podcast, and so on, but no where, but it's nowhere near as much as you would be using yours, particularly when you in the middle of the season and you're doing eight shows a week, and I want to know how do you keep your vocal health and also your physical health like to where it needs to be.
What are some of the things that you're doing every day.
I'm big on, as you can tell, quite a spiritual thinker, and I see things and maybe some unusual ways, but I do look at vocal health under the sort of pillars of physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, soulf or health, because when one is out of whack, it does affect your voice. You know, if your emotional health is not right, it's going to affect your voice. If your physical health is not in a good place, it does affect your voice. If your nutrition is not great, you know, it can
affect your voice. You know, acid reflux and all of that affect your voice. So it's multiple things, but on a basic sort of level. Rest So when I finish, let's say, if phantom is always a good example, after you know, saying good eight to people at stage door, I don't say a word after that until midday the next day, or if it's a matinee day, maybe eleven am the next day. So just about thirteen hours of
just silence. And that is really challenging on relationships and requires the people who or the person who loves me most bloody too, to just be so compassionate and understanding and develop a great ability to lip read and to have immense patience.
So I am ever grateful for how she cares and loves me in that way.
And hydration, I think I'd end up drinking on a show, like four to five liters of water a day, Like it's just wow, so much hydra agent and steam is one thing that I'll do after a show when I get back home is just I have a little little steamer, little steamy pot and steam my voice because steam actually can It's like an anti in flam for the cords, and water can't get into the cords cords, although it will naturally hydrate over a period of time, but steam
sort of directly gets the courts. So yeah, rest water steam. But then yeah, like not eating late at night. It really is one of the hardest ones that are all people in the h show a week world struggle with because you get home and your bloody starving. But if you if you eat too much, you eat the wrong things, you know, you end up like having acid reflux during the night, and then that is actually burning your cords.
Wow, what do your vocal warm ups look like? Because you made you'll do a vocal warm up before you're in the makeup chair, and then you'll do sort of a brief kind.
Of yeah, that's before I go out, like the final just have a bit of a thing.
To warm up.
I always start with some breath stuff, so set some breath exercises to sort of get this, you know, the breath is the support mechanism. And then I'll do some lit trills so things like they sound funnier, just like buzzing my lips together or that with my tongue out.
And then I'll do some sirens. I'm like a M, like a ng sort of sounds, and then I'll do all my vowels and my scales, so my r and my scales, and then and then I'll start and so I'll go all the way up and down my range and see where my voice, what my voice is feeling like that day, iron out any little cobwebs. It's sort of like a cricketer in the nets, you know, just like you know, facing enough balls to sort of iron
out his stuff. And I know Steve Smith, like who's certainly not a singer but a very great cricketer, sometimes says, oh, it takes a thousand balls for me to feel like I'm in the zone, and sometimes it takes two balls.
And sometimes I feel like that with my singing that you go, you know, I warm up for thirty second of my it's all cooking, and sometimes it's like more like fifteen twenty minutes to go, ah, yeah, yeah, we just need to iron out that cob web there, and you know, sort that little bit out, just iron over that little.
Passage in the voice. And yeah.
So it's it takes a long time to develop that level of understanding about the voice.
But that's really what I do.
And then I start singing some material that I'm going to sing that night, you know, so maybe sing a bit of music of the night or a part of the show that I'm just you know, the night before or that week. It felt a bit technically funny, you know, so just just to iron those couplebs up there.
Now, something I didn't you until myself and my producer did research for this show is that you've been doing work with a mindset coach, and not just any mindset coach, but the same one that Ash Barty uses, Ben Crow, And I want to know what have been some of the key things that You've learned from that relationship.
First and foremost, I learned that Ben Crow is a freaking amazing human and if people aren't following Mojo Crow on Instagram or have him downloaded the Mojo Crow app, then get on it. He's so intelligent and sightful and practical. What I learned first and foremost is something I've been working on for a while and I've been getting feeling
much better about, which is owning my story. And when I say owning my story, Watson, all shame and all everything that I've experienced in my life that I'm proud of or not proud of, holding space to have to share that and acknowledging that I'm not perfect, but I'm
enough and unconditionally loving myself regardless of anything. And I think that's so important for anyone who's in a performance based world where you feel like your self worth can be governed by the last performance you did, or you know, whether you're doing that really important gig or not, and your self worth is so far beyond that. It's helped me to fine tune I guess my deeper purpose, which is also something I'd be working on a lot. I think purpose is something that we don't talk about a
lot in life. In terms of deeper purpose, I think we have condition purposes once again, where you know, I'm a doctor or I'm a lawyer, it's my purpose to do that, but or I'm a singer or whatever it is. But there's times when we don't do that. So once again, are we worthy when we don't do that?
Well, No, we need to have deeper purposes than that. And so.
He helped Ben helped me get that into a paragraph or a few sentences that make me, you know, feel like I can, regardless of all the things that are out of my control and this big, bad world at the moment, I can still fulfill my purpose.
How did he do that? I mean that sounds fascinating.
Yeah, So you know, for Ash, I think it is to inspire Ash party and inspire young Indigenous boys and girls to achieve their dreams, because everyone deserves to have that opportunity. And I'm paraphrasing them, but I think that's something along those lines. So whether Ash winds Wimbledon or doesn't, she's achieved that purpose.
And for me it's you know, I get spiritual, poetic because that's me, but.
It's opening gates to a non ordinary world, a place of colors and feelings and depth and emotion and and getting out of the black and whites of life so that we all know what it means to feel and embody the wholeness of being human.
How did you get to that point?
Because I mean that that sounds amazing, Like like both those purposes like yours and Ashes sort of sense she was down my spine. How like what sort of questions did I don't know, did Ben ask of your exercises to go through to get to that.
It's it's funny that there's there's a lot of this this on on the app. But for me with with purpose, you know that chat with Ben. I knew that going in because I'd been doing a lot of work around there. I'd spent a lot of twenty twenty going hang on, if I'm not playing phantom at the moment, why am I feeling this way? Ah, It's because my identity is caught up with this show or that role or that,
and therefore my identity is caught up with it. My self worth is conditional on that, and then if something comes in like a COVID or something that's out of my control, then my self worth is diminished because of something that was out of my control. Now that's not a sustainable way to live. So I had to find what that deeper purpose was, and it was an exploration of my passions. And my passions are conversation, meditation, and performance.
And I've worked out that through conversation I get to access that purpose that I was talking about, that opening the gates to a nordinary world, which we've done today in you know, talking about things in different ways, definitely in meditation, because that's the inward journey, and certainly in performance, because the arts is all about the in betweens, the colors, the subjectivity. Art is not black and white. It's all the colors. And I think profoundly maybe that's what we're
missing in society at the moment. We have a lot of binary issues and dichotomies in the political and COVID landscape.
Are you acts? No?
Oh, well then you're anti vacs? Are you Biden? No oh, then your pro truck like people like don't find the in betweens in life at the moment, because that's what social media and media is throwing at us. So I'm all about finding those in betweens and using those things that I do as a vehicle for the deeper purpose.
How does that help in terms of dealing with all the criticism and rejection that comes from a career in the arts.
Yeah, that's another thing that Ben certainly help me with. He's got this great philosophy around results and outcomes, and it's so simple, and I love him for explain it to me in the most simplest terms. So he says, every result is an equation, and the equation is a which is your a game, which is your skill set and your mindset that you bring to the experience or situation.
Times B and B is everything you can't control, what someone thinks of you, or what someone says, that reviewer, what the other actor is doing in my case, or the lighting guy or the sound guy, the technical guys, or all the things that are out of my control. Performance anxiety certainly comes from focusing on B everything you can't control and trying to control it. And we do a lot of that in all our lives. It's not just in those performances. It's in relationships, it's at workplaces,
it's with COVID. You know, we we we find you know that that we do spend a lot of time on B. But if I do, if I, in my honest world, say that I brought my a game, my best version of my skill set and my mindset to this situation.
Well then I've done.
I've done all I can And then you know, whether they liked me in the audition room is out of my control, or whether they the reviewers like me, or Andrew Lloyd Webber liked me or whatever. You know, we can't be liked by everyone.
That's just life.
But if we spend our time trying to and keep shifting and camealing in ourselves to do that and adapting and changing in ways that aren't authentic to us. Then it doesn't help us because we're just we're not We're playing the guessing game with ourselves and with everyone else.
Love that it's such a great way of looking at things and also just such a great way of managing nerves as well. I feel like that's such an eloquent way of and simple way of thinking about things.
And it means that, you know, if let's say, you know, I get to music of the night and I crack on the beg high note one night, which has happened? Do I come out of that and go? I can come out of that and go was that skill set or was that mindset? Or was that me focusing on b you know, And so you can objectively zoom out and look at that situation, go.
You know what, I'm just bloody tired. You know.
It is show sixty four in a row, and I'm human and I'm not perfect, but I'm enough, and you know, and all I need is a couple of days of rest and I'll be back and I'll be seeing it or I was obsessing over someone in the audience, so I really wanted to impress and was getting nervous around that so that you know you can and then you know, self sabotaged, you know that that sort of thing or was it? Yeah, it was a purely technical that I just didn't take a good enough supporting breath before I
got to that note. Ah, Okay, I can fix that up tomorrow, you know. So yeah, the ability to be objective in those situations helps with that, with that theory, But ultimately, what Ben helped me most was, and I guess what I was after was I had times in my career where I felt like that limitless, invincible flow state, like what people say being in the zone is. And I know, like, you know, I keep coming back to
tennis because the sport I love. But I think we've all seen like you know, Rafa or Federer or Jopovich, you know those guys, especially because they've been the top
for so long. What is it Levell won twenty grand stands each or something now, which is ludicrous that you've seen those moments where they're just like they're impenetrable and everything is so free, and like especially look at federer, because there's so much grace in his gameplay, like where that backhand could like it's just like he's got it on a string. And conversely, I'm sure we've seen times when you go, oh, it's probably a bit in his head at the moment. So how do you bottle that
zone feeling? And so Ben gave me some real tips and visualization meditations around how I can can work on that, because ultimately I feel like what's inside of me creatively is can be really powerful. But how do I how do I access that and ultimately get out of my own way?
Not Josh.
For people that have been listen and want to connect with you in some way or join in with all the amazing work you're doing around meditation as well, what are the best ways for listeners to connect with you.
I think Instagram is my way of connecting with people of most. I'm not on the other social media platforms as much. So it's just Josh Pitterman, p I one t M a N one in one T one in Josh Pittman, and then you'll find me.
There'll be a picture of a guy in a.
Mask, and then the link to all those things in my bio, so there's like you can watch performances and stream my album, but also access all the meditation stuff too.
Amazing.
Josh, I've so loved this chat. I've taken so many notes for myself. I'm so keen to try so many of the things that you talked about. So thank you so much for chatting with me.
Thank you so much for having me Amantha.
Hello there. I hope you enjoyed my chat with Josh. Now, if you have not subscribed or followed How I Work, you might want to hit the subscribe or follow button because next week I am very excited to have Christian O'Connell on the show, who you might have heard doing breakfast on Gold FM, and we talk about a whole range of things, from the panic attacks that Christian was having to experimenting with some breathing techniques during the interview,
which was very fun and quite relaxing as well. How I Work is produced by Inventing and with production support from Dead Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Jenna Coder, and thank you to Mattin Nimber who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound much better that it would have otherwise. See you next time.