"Now's for Real Syndrome"

We’ve all done it.  We play through all or part of one of what we will perform.  We’re relaxed, we’re concentrated, and even perhaps just seeing how things go.  We nail--we play it beautifully. And then we tell ourselves, “next time is for real.”  We walk out on stage, tell ourselves “this time is for real,” and then get into our heads and mess it up.  For this reason, I never play something all the way through right before a performance. I want to avoid “now is for real syndrome."