You’ll never feel ready to play in front of people. You’ll just get less scared each time.

Readiness is not the feeling you are waiting for. Nerves do not resolve into confidence at some point before you start; they shrink gradually across many times of doing it anyway, and people who have performed for years still feel a share of it. Waiting to stop being scared means waiting for the one thing that only happens afterwards.

Take the smallest audience you can find this week: one friend, a parent, a half-empty room. Play it badly in front of somebody rather than perfectly alone. Make the next audience slightly bigger and let the fear shrink on its own schedule.