I wish I had a book like "The Secret" when I was on "American Idol." I could've used advice on the power of positive thinking.

It's incredibly difficult to get yourself in the right frame of mind to perform and just forget about all the outside stuff. Most times I wasn't able to do it; consequently, my mental state really affected my performances.

On Tuesday night, judge Simon Cowell told Carly Smithson, "Something about that performance didn't quite work. You were so tense. You need to lighten up a little."

On Wednesday host Ryan Seacrest asked her about her emotional anxiety.

"Apparently, I'm pregnant, but I'm not!" Carly said. "Simon was right. I did have something on my mind. I had a bunch of Spanx on last night trying to make myself look a bit thinner."

Spanx is a line of body-shaping underwear and pantyhose. Carly was obviously more focused on how she looked than how she sounded. Still, she managed to stay out of the bottom three this week.

Ramiele Malubay also had a difficult time focusing on her song. She was sick.

"The voice went bye-bye," she told Seacrest after her performance of Heart's "Alone." "I pushed everything out I had."

Despite the missing vocal cords (in theory, anyway), Cowell still predicted her performance was good enough to get her "through another week, no question about it."

He was right.

Seeing fellow contestants perform well and receive positive comments can also add to your mental pressure. While I always smiled and said "Congratulations!" when someone had a great night, I'd be lying if I said that deep down I wasn't thinking, "Dang it!"

It must've been difficult for the other contestants to watch David Cook and Michael Johns hit it out of the park this week with "molten-lava hot!" performances, according to the judges.

"For any of us who have ever said you haven't found yourself, we can all shut our mouths after this performance," said judge Paula Abdul of Johns' rendition of Queen's "We Will Rock You/We are the Champions."

"I saw star potential," Cowell said.

Cook also turned in a great performance. "That was brave. It could have been insane or amazing," Cowell said. "It was amazing."

Another amazing performer who, surprisingly, was in the bottom three this week was Syesha Mercado. She was joined by Jason Castro (who celebrated a birthday on March 25, same day as mine) and Chikeze. The first two were safe. Chikeze, with the lowest vote total, ended up being the first Top 10 contestant to leave the competition.

In addition to dealing with the judges' comments and watching other contestants succeed, the thing that probably psyched me out the most was dealing with comments from people backstage.