Ballroom State of Mind: Recent Episodes
Amber Haider
Ballroom dancers love working on their dancing skills and technique! But if dancers neglect to train their mind, it can sabotage them when it counts most.
I'm Amber Haider and I'm a Life and Mental Strength Coach for amateur ballroom dancers. If you want to take your dancing further, faster, with less anxiety and more fun, stick around. It's time to make that beautiful brain your most powerful asset. We talk about dance AND life, providing tools to uplevel all areas of your life, not just your dancing!
Visit www.amberhaider.com for more information and for contact details
Are you like most humans, who believe in Murphy's Law? Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong? And anything bad happens in threes? Bad things happening is contagious and will continue. Do you also believe that when things are going well that the other shoe is about to drop? That your luck will run out?
That kind of thinking is very human of us, but unfortunately isn't going to help us much when it comes to doing our best and wanting to be confident on the dance floor. When things are going poorly, what if we had the belief that all that means is that we are about to have a big turnaround? And that when things are going well, that we can't lose? That we are on fire! On a hot streak! We can't miss!
That is called the Shooter's Mentality and while we can't ensure the outcome that we want, adopting this mentality definitely puts us in the best possible position for success! Listen in to find out more so you can adopt this mindset for yourself.
This concept was first introduced to me in the book The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser.
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE for more help
Join my free Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom HERE for more great ballroom content.
Why don't you want to mess up? What is so bad about making mistakes? Why do you work so hard for a perfect performance?
"I don't want to feel embarrassed!"
Embarrassment DOES feel pretty terrible. But what if we weren't afraid of it? What if we didn't let that hold us back?
What if feeling embarrassed was actually a signal that you were doing something great? That you were actually in the arena making things happen? What if you could make peace with it and even decide that you didn't have to feel it if you didn't want to?
Find out more by listening to this episode and getting the upper hand on feeling embarrassed!
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE for more help
Join my free Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom HERE for more great ballroom content.
Listen in on the 4 questions you might ask yourself before a comp, and what went down for me at the Volunteer State Dance Challenge 2024.
Our brain offers up a lot of nonsense. Negative self-talk can be a common experience in the human condition. But it can also undermine our confidence. Listen in for an easy strategy to overcome the negative thinking and get back on track!
I forgot to mention that much of this content was based on concepts from the book The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE for more help
Join my free Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom HERE for more great ballroom content.
If you have ever been in the middle of a dance performance and suddenly felt your mind go blank, you might know the feeling of utter panic. You might feel lost, confused...horrified. And here you are in the moment and need to do something about it but your brain can't connect two neurons for some reason. You might find your way or finish the round clumsily and get past it.
But then you might proceed to beat yourself up and worry that something is horribly wrong with your memory, and everyone hates you and maybe you don't belong. Well, that escalated quickly. Brains do that.
Maybe we don't need to go digging for the reason or give it any more attention than necessary. Let's just call it...a glitch. We can't explain it. There's no real reason for it other than your brain is under some pressure and brains do weird things when they are under pressure sometimes.
Everyone gets glitches and the best thing to do is what my Mac Guy did when my computer got corrupted. Wipe the slate clean and move on as soon as p0ssible so you can give yourself fully to the next moment. Find out more in this episode!
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE for more help
There is a secret ingredient, that if you add to your dancing, will uplevel it in ways you never imagined. Plus, it's just more fun that way.
That ingredient is PLAY. In this episode, share with you the 4 main reasons dancers say they want mental strength coaching and how I think play is an underutilized tool.
Taking cues from the book, Play, How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, but Stuart Brown, MD, we share how play can enhance those 4 areas, plus as a bonus, share his 8 play personalities. Maybe you think you just aren't a playful person or that play means we aren't working hard enough. Well I'd like to change your mind about that. Listen in!
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Books referenced in the podcast:
Play, How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, but Stuart Brown, MD
If you have ever wanted to better yourself or do anything worthwhile, chances are you have felt that unseen force that seems to immediately get in your way. It's almost like no matter what it is, you have to earn it by getting past the guard.
Author Steven Pressfield terms this Resistance. In this episode I cherry-pick some of the concepts from a couple of his books to share in this Life Skills episode.
We describe Resistance, identify some of it's disguises or forms, why it's a good sign if you are experiencing it and then what to do to help overcome it. Enjoy!
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Books referenced in the podcast:
The War of Art and Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants to Be, both by Steven Pressfield
One of the most common things dancers complain about is being stuck in their head. They know they do this, and perhaps even their teacher tells them they need to get out of their head, but they don't seem to know how.
As I have thought about this something came to mind that I think will help with this overthinking problem. I wonder if we haven't quite figured out that a training mindset and a performance mindset are two different things. This becomes evident when we realize our overthinking in performances might be because we are just escalating our training mindset and taking it into a performance space rather that having a different mindset all together.
In this episode, we explore the differences and then give you direction on how to cultivate your performance mindset.
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Pick up The Inner Game of Tennis book HERE
What if you have prepared, practiced and feel ready, but then your performance goes poorly and you are beset with setbacks and errors? What can we do with that to help us remain confident in what we are capable of? Thank you to Nate Zinsser, the author of The Confident Mind for these three strategies to lock down setbacks and move forward constructively.
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Make it temporary
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Make it limited
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Make it non-representative of yourself
I explain each of these in this episode. Be sure to listen immediately!
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call.
These calls will not be free for much longer!! Get it while you can!
You should go buy The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser. It will reveal all my secrets but I don't mind because I know it will help you so much!!
You've done it. You've gotten yourself here. You are ready. This is my pep talk for you on the big day. It's gameday and it's time to shine. You can do this and I'm so proud of you!
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
"I don't want to disappoint my teacher."
"When this is all done, I don't want to feel disappointed."
Disappointment. So many of my clients put themselves through a lot of stress and anxiety in preparation for events, showcases, medal exams and competitions. When we dig a little deeper to see why we are so stressed, many of them end up saying something to the effect of, "I just don't want to disappoint ______." It's usually their teacher, but it also includes themselves.
Disappointment must be pretty bad for us to create all this negative energy in preparation for it. But is it?
In this episode we speak to two key points when it comes to disappointment. One is that we can't create disappointment in other people. And the second is how we need to make peace with people feeling negative emotion and that nothing has gone wrong if they do.
Listen in to see what I mean.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
In this episode we talk a little about The Emerald Ball 2024, dancing syllabus routines in open rounds, what judges say about that, and what to do with your backseat driver.
Your backseat driver is the voice in your head that pops up at the most inopportune times and gets in the way of what you are trying to do in difficult moments.
Listen in and see if you can relate.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
Where did you get the idea about how much it would take to accomplish a certain goal? Sometimes we look around and make a guess based on what we see, but often we are also REALLY wrong. It often takes a lot more than we thought to accomplish things we set out to do.
If you find yourself in this place, you could call it Effort Shock. David Wong brought up this term in his article, 'How The Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World.' It what he named that state when you realize it's not as easy as you thought. It doesn't help that The Karate Kid and Rocky made it look so easy to become so great...all you need is a montage of about 10 minutes.
In this episode, we talk about effort shock, define it, give some examples and then discuss what to do now, if you find yourself in this place. We talk about 3 options for going forward: work harder, quit, or make peace with what you are willing to give.
Listen in to find out what you might want to do next if you find yourself in effort shock.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
There are a lot of reasons that you might feel behind in your dance journey. Most of the time, that feeling is based in fear and scarcity and is largely unproductive for us to dwell on.
But there is one type of feeling behind that I think makes sense and will probably always be with you.
Listen in to see what I mean. This quick episode might bend your mind a little but I think you are ready for it.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
Ah, the extremes. Our brains just love the extremes. Good or bad, hot or cold, perfect or a failure. Two options is what a lazy brain likes because then we don't have to sift through other options.
But if you experience a lot of all or nothing thinking, you also likely have some depression, anxiety, or a whole host of other negative experiences.
In this episode, I introduce you to all or nothing thinking so that you can identify it in yourself, and then give you 5 steps to overcome it.
I think you'll find a more reasonable, 80% gets it done attitude can not only help you feel better and more motivated, but actually still lead to a lot of accomplishment and success.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
While we all know that life is sometimes not fair and we will all face a certain amount of struggle and negativity, we will act confused when we actually go through it. We say things like, "Why is this happening to me? What is going on? What is going wrong?"
The reality is that life is what I call, 50/50. It's good and bad, hard and easy, fun and not fun, etc. Everything has it's opposite and duality is a fact of life. When we resist what is and think that the negative things shouldn't happen, we actually increase the percentage of negativity that we experience.
Your are actually the one giving meaning to your experiences and deeming them negative or positive in the first place. If we can learn that hard things are a part of life, and not resist them, the power they have over us decreases. If can then take it a step further and even embrace the hard things that happen and learn from them, believing that everything that happens in our life is for our good, we actually can increase the positive percent.
The 50/50 is what makes life what it is. It's what makes us human. My recommendation is that you embrace it instead of fight it. In this episode I give an example from my most recent competition to illustrate the 50/50.
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
In episode 92 we imagined situations going perfectly in order to get solid, confidence building mental reps. No mistakes allowed!
But we all know mistakes and unexpected things can happen, and it's it best to prepare for them?
The answer is yes.
There is a time and place for perfect reps and there is a time and place for contingency plans. In this episode, I give guidance on how to do this constructively rather than catastrophize and hope for the best.
We incorporate the power of visualization into this as well to further strengthen our ability to carry it out in the moment.
You'll feel more confident than ever that you can handle whatever might come up. This means that we don't need to enter performances with so much fear of the unknown. We can rely more on ourselves and trust our ability to come through on the other side, proud of what we accomplish.
Many of the tips in this episode are based on guidance in the book The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser found HERE
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
Some people call it mental rehearsal, some visualization and others envisioning. Whatever you call it, high performers know it is a powerful tool to increase your level of preparation and even your skills.
Since the brain doesn't distinguish between someone happening in real life or if it's imagined, it's your chance to program your mind and body for what you want to execute. In this episode, we talk about what it is but also tips on how to make it more powerful. Then I give an example of what it might look like.
The main tips shared are the following:
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You are in complete control--the director, nothing happens unless you approve it.
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Make it positive--everything will go well and as planned.
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Take your time--use pauses to fill in more details to make it more real.
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Include all your senses-see, hear, smell, touch, taste
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Include genuine emotion--rehearse your emotions like any other sense.
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Use the first person or internal perspective--look out your own eyes rather than watching yourself from a distance.
Many of the tips in this episode are based on guidance in the book The Confident Mind by Nate Zinsser found HERE
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
Good grief! Politics in dance! Is there anything in this world that doesn't involve some type of politics?
This episode was prompted by a comment on social media where a dancer was lamenting that they could not be successful because of the politics in dance. What a powerless place to be, right?
The short answer is to let it go and focus on the things that you can control. But many of us need a little more help letting it go. So in this episode, we bring up some points that will help you come to terms with it and focus on what will really help you...be so freaking good that no one can deny your dominance!
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
For more free mindset help, join my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom
Words are powerful. The way you use them can determine how you feel and the energy with with you operate in the world.
As one example, when your brain offers you a lot of thoughts that start with, "what if..." it leads to feelings of uncertainty, doubt, defensiveness, etc. But if you switch "what if" with "even if" then something shifts. Even if...then I can...(or I will..., or I know...).
"Even if..." is more empowering and leads to us thinking of a contingency plan.
Thinking..."I can't..." could be replaced with "What if I could..." or "I am getting better at..." or "I am working on...."
What wording could you switch out to generate more feelings of confidence, calm, strategy, self trust, etc?
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
This week, my Facebook group, Joyful Ballroom hit 1000 members! We are celebrating with a giveaway. You should join!
In this episode, we visit some of the ways we hold ourselves back. The primary reason for that is ultimately our brain trying to keep us safe so we can survive the best we can. To do that, we need to avoid pain...even emotional pain. Most of what we try to accomplish today is going to probably lead to some pain, so don't be surprised that you're holding back in those instances.
To overcome this, consider that the worst thing that can happen is a feeling. So what if we could just get better at tolerating uncomfortable emotions? Then maybe we wouldn't have to fear or avoid them.
In order to put ourselves out there, we have to be willing to feel uncomfortable stuff. And to do that, I think we need a healthy dose of courage. In the last half of the episode we talk about how to get courage and then 7 steps for getting past holding yourself back!
Book mentioned in the podcast: The Big Leap, by Gay Hendricks.
This week, my facebook group, Joyful Ballroom hit 1000 members! We are celebrating with a giveaway. You should join!
To get personalized help, book a free Dance Strategy Call
In this episode, I bring you a life coaching tool called Emotional Adulthood. Listeners love the podcasts that they can apply to the rest of their lives outside of dance, so this one is for YOU!
When we are in Emotional Childhood, we are operating more like children in our emotional lives. It is characterized by a relinquishing of responsibility for how we feel and act. In this state, you would find yourself making other people responsible for how you feel. You are unhappy because your spouse doesn't text you enough during the day. You are angry because your children don't listen. You are fearful because of your parents or your childhood or something else outside of you.
It's not that these things don't contribute, they do, but in this episode I teach you how to be an emotional adult, take responsibility for how you feel and act so that you can be the person that you want to be more of the time. In emotional adulthood, we don't have to wait for others to behave in the ways we prefer in order for us to be happy. We take out the middle man.
I should warn you though...emotional adulthood isn't easy. But it's worth it and this tool can change your life. Enjoy!
For help figuring out this for yourself, might I recommend a free Dance Strategy Call
If you want a ballroom community with a hefty side of mental and emotional resilience, join my Facebook Group, Joyful Ballroom
This episode is all about how to actually settle yourself down when your nervous system has been triggered. Often when we stop and try to "take some deep breaths" to help bring ourselves back to reality, it doesn't seem to work very well. Sometimes this is because when we take this approach, we might actually be resisting our emotions rather than processing them.
In this episode I give you 4 steps (and an informal 5th step) to give you a framework to help inform your brain that you are actually just fine.
Here are the steps:
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Ask yourself if you are literally safe. (yes)
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Ask yourself if you FEEL safe (likely not, which is why you were triggered in the first place.
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Figure out why not (validate why you feel vulnerable)
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Actively relax tension away in your body (this is where breathwork fits in)
The informal step 5 is to check in to see if what we are asking of our self is actually too much. Likely, you are totally capable of it, but once in a while we need to know we have the out if we want it. But really, if you can take courage, you can get through it.
Taking these steps before you try to do breathwork makes it far more effective. Listen in for a short-cut to this strategy I offer near the end.
For help figuring out this for yourself, might I recommend a free Dance Strategy Call
If you want a ballroom community with a hefty side of mental and emotional resilience, join my Facebook Group, Joyful Ballroom
It can't be avoided. At some point, you will have a performance that just doesn't go well. You will have days where your dancing is just...off. Even if you do everything that you can to plan, prepare and mitigate issues, there will be times you just walk away knowing it just wasn't your best dancing.
And we have to live with that.
In this episode, I tell the story of my recent Nightclub night at a competition and how I just didn't dance well.
Then I offer some Dos and Don'ts to help you deal with it and get past it.
For help figuring out this for yourself, might I recommend a free Dance Strategy Call
If you want a ballroom community with a hefty side of mental and emotional resilience, join my Facebook Group, Joyful Ballroom
Many of my clients do what they do with their dancing because, "they just want to be a good dancer." But what does that even mean? Often they aren't really sure, they just know it's not what they are right now.
Why are we so resistant to believing we are a good dancer? What is the danger in believing that? Maybe it's not even a good idea to wish for this for ourselves, at least not in the way we do it now.
In this episode, we talk about why we might not believe we are a good dancer, why we are resistant to changing our mind about that, and take the time to define for ourselves what a good dancer is to us as individuals.
For help figuring out this for yourself, might I recommend a free Dance Strategy Call
If you want a ballroom community with a hefty side of mental and emotional resilience, join my Facebook Group, Joyful Ballroom
While we all say we want to feel more confident, we spend a lot of mental energy proving to ourselves why we are lacking and not good enough. We rehearse our shortcomings and remind ourselves of the mistakes we have made in the past. I'm not sure why we think it's a mystery that we feel doubtful and lack confidence.
In this episode, I teach you what a confidence bank is and how to build it. In short, rather than rehearsing and reminding yourself why you aren't good enough, you need to start taking an accounting of why you are.
Mining your life for all the efforts, successes and progress, and then keeping a literal record of it all, is how you get your confidence bank started. Then, as you go through your life and dance journey, teach your brain how to look for and filter out the positive experiences so you can use them in the future to remind yourself how capable, experienced and effective you are.
These kinds of experiences generate confidence, energy, optimism and enthusiasm, rather than the negative experiences that we usually catalog.
This episode, and the concept of ESP (effort, success and progress) are inspired from the book, The Confident Mind by Eric Zinsser
Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group can be found HERE
To book a FREE Dance Strategy Call, click HERE
Have you ever stopped to realize that nothing is really a problem unless you think it is a problem? This is why some things can really bother someone else but not bother you.
As I work with clients in my private practice, so many things that we think are a problem are actually just normal development. We just don't like how it's going. But it IS totally normal actually. If we can make peace with things not being a problem, we can reduce the negativity and judgment by at least half. And then all that we are left with is something that we want to improve upon. But the part where we make it a problem, is optional.
Plateaus are one of those things that are a normal part of development, that no one can escape, and yet we think we are especially deficient just because we are in one. But plateaus are normal. In fact, while it may seem like nothing is happening in our plateaus, nothing could be further from the truth.
The spurts of progress that we experience from time to time are only the evidence of all the work that happened in the plateaus. The spurts aren't the progress...they are the evidence that spilled out when that progress finally hit a tipping point where forward movement and integration can be seen in our efforts.
Listen in to hear what is happening in the plateaus that is so important. Let's make peace with plateaus.
*This episode was inspired by a section in the book The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser. Pick up a copy HERE
Joyful Ballroom is a Facebook Group community just for ballroom dancers. Go HERE to join and benefit from more free ballroom content
To book a FREE Dance Strategy Call, click HERE
Enjoy this interview with Irene Wong: mom of 3, entrepreneur, and 16 year pro-am competitor! She shares her journey on her YouTube channel, "Everything Ballroom, and co-owns Dancewear Works, a designer dress company supplying dresses and menswear to ballroom competitors. In her words, "I'm on a mission to make dancewear accessible to all."
In addition to her love for dance, she is also a proud distributor of Nu Skin products, which we talk a little bit about in this episode.
We talk in this episode about choosing a dress, creating a character that can help draw out your Alter Ego, and mindset shifts that can change everything.
The Dancewear Works website can be found HERE
Go HERE for the Everything Ballroom YouTube Channel
Irene's NuSkin website can be found HERE
(sign up as a VIP for a 20% discount off retail prices--no charge to sign up!)
Joyful Ballroom is a Facebook Group community just for ballroom dancers. Go HERE to join and benefit from more free ballroom content
To book a FREE Dance Strategy Call, click HERE
Few people understand what it really means to pursue dancing. We go through a lot of things and it changes us. I can't find the words to describe this episode, so just go listen and enjoy! Merry Christmas!
Join Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE for more help and free content to benefit your dance experience!
Book a free Dance Strategy Call HERE to take charge of your dance mindset for good.
Inevitably, when a client has had a lot of change in a short amount of time, they feel like they are "cured." They feel like they have a handle on their mind and emotions so much better, but then something comes up that triggers them.
This is a moment when they think they are backsliding. This isn't true at all. Listen in to this episode to hear how this is totally normal, you aren't backsliding, and in fact, that means you are right where you should be.
We want to be confident, right? But not too confident. Not arrogant. Not cocky. But also I want feel powerful and celebrate my success, but also still be humble.
Have you taken the time to sift through all these? You should because if you want to be confident and maximize your potential, you might be holding yourself back in the name of preventing arrogance or trying to remain humble.
Listen in for some ideas on this that mostly come from Craig Manning, Mental Strength Coach for BYU athletics.
Here are the 5 ideas we bring up in this episode:
Arrogance
Cockiness
Confidence
Passiveness
Pessimism
And then I guess there is one more thing you need to iron out: where Humility fits in with confidence. Let's unpack it in this episode.
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Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Take advantage of the 3-session Coaching Special HERE (through Dec 15, 2023)
This episode outlines one way to narrow your focus. It is a continuation of episode 77 and gives you a 3-part framework to narrow your focus---and WHAT to focus on--in situations like practice, lessons and competitions.
Before you get to the framework, you must do some data collection, also called evaluation. Evaluating will help you know where to apply your attention.
After you have the data you need, apply it to the following framework:
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Objectives--overarching things we want to accomplish/goals
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Skillsets--what skillsets are needed to accomplish said objectives?
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Cues-what 2-3 word phrases can you use to describe the skillsets you are working on?
Applying this framework is going to help you feel more productive, deliberate and empowered. You'll also get the added benefit of your progress getting supercharged!
Join Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Take advantage of the 3-session Coaching Special HERE (through Dec 15, 2023)
Get Focused Training Sheet HERE
There are some things that are relevant to your dancing and other things that just aren't. We tend to spend a lot of energy, time and attention on things that aren't relevant and it holds us back, delays progress, exhausts us and distracts from our performance.
In this episode we talk about focusing on what is relevant and NOT focusing on what is NOT relevant.
A quick list of what is not relevant might include:
--the past
--the future
--other people's actions
--other people's thoughts and feelings
A quick list of what is relevant to your dance might include:
--YOU
That's pretty much it. Your thoughts, feelings actions, what you are good at, your emotional regulation, goals, objectives, tasks, skills, self care, preparation, etc.
This episode helps you sort them out. The next one will tell you what to do to improve your focus.
I also fill you in on my Ohio Star Ball 2023 results, which, spoiler alert, were wildly successful!
Join Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
"Ugh! Why am I still so nervous?! Why won't those go away?!" Ummmm, well, because you are human and you care about what you are doing so they will probably never go away.
But I have good news: You don't need them to go away! If fact, with the right perspective you will see they are actually good and meant to help you!
At some point you associated the nervous feeling with something bad. But what if it doesn't mean that at all? What if it just means your body is helping you be energized for whatever come next? Because if it's a roller coaster, you don't wish those nerves away or make it mean bad things are coming. But if it's a dance competition, suddenly we make it mean we are in some kind of danger and our fight or flight system gets activated.
The reality is that you WILL feel it, but then you get to decide for yourself what it means.
In this episode I help you out by giving you a positive association for the sensations you feel so you need not fear your own system. Ain't nobody got time to fight or resist yourself, so let's teach those butterflies how to fly in formation!
Join Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Referenced in this podcast: The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser
It can be super hard to cope when you are without a ballroom dance partner. After all, this is partner dancing. We don't really want to do it alone!
In this episode I give you some ideas on how to cope, but taking any of those actions is going to be 10x harder if we are doing it from a defeated mindset. So first things first, be mindful (pun intended) of your perspective. The thoughts you think are largely responsible for the experience you are having rather that the situation itself. Thinking "my progress is stalled," "I can't do what I planned anymore," "I'm getting behind," is all going to create discouragement, hopelessness and powerlessness. Makes sense, but also don't want to get stuck here.
So try on some more useful thoughts, which I offer toward the end of this episode. But in terms of actions, here's a quick rundown of things you can do to help you stay motivated and plugged-in until you have a partner again.
- Stay involved in the community
- Keep setting goals
- Keep learning
- Let it be light and fun
Your progress has always been up to you. There is still a lot you CAN DO. You are not behind and somehow this is all happening in your favor. No matter what, you are becoming a better, stronger dancer through this process and taking personal ownership over your dancing will make you an even more effective partner!
Join Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
Learn more about the Koros App HERE, Dance vision HERE, and the Global Smooth System HERE
Coachability is probably one of the traits that will 10x your progress. After all, if you hire a teacher or coach to help you and then you push back, question and resist their expertise, what are we even doing here?
Yet I see it often...dancers in a lesson, questions semantics or the way they are teaching a certain figure or concept. A lot of time and energy is wasted on these kinds of interactions and it sows seeds of disrespect in the dynamic. No one likes to be hired for their expertise and then be told how to do their job. But this isn't just about how your teacher or coach feels. It's possibly slowing you down as well.
So for your sake, I'd like to tell you what it means to be coachable, what that would look like and what it looks like if you aren't coachable. Then I want you to test out letting down your guard and releasing control and see how your next lesson goes. Hear all about it in this episode!
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Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE
It's hard to put a lot of time, effort and money towards our dancing and then have a competition yield poor results and feel like an utter failure. It's not uncommon to ask the question, "Why are we doing this again?"
When this comes up with clients, I like to draw a pie chart and fill it up with all the reasons we are dancing and/or competing. If results is the biggest piece that takes up most of the chart, and there is but a small sliver for everything else, you will perpetually be jerked around by your results.
Instead, the goal is to fill the pie chart with all the reasons we do this so that the results is just one small sliver of the story. I walk you through some of the reasons I do this that have nothing to do with results to get you started.
After you listen, pop over to our Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group to share what fills your pie chart.
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You may not realize that you have a past, present and future self. Your past self makes plans, then your present self carries them out (or not) and then your future self gets to enjoy the results. At least, it's really interesting to think about it this way.
Consider that if all three are in alignment, you get a lot of results! But somehow, that's not how it works out. We often look back with regret with what our past self did or didn't do. When our past self doesn't eat the sugar, we get to lose weight. Wahoo!! But when our past self doesn't do what we planned, we are stuck without the great result and sometimes left with a crappy one.
The truth is there is only PRESENT you. Present you carries everything out. Present self is the key to everything. Every thing you plan out hinges on present self actually doing it when the time comes.
And present self is very subject to the primitive brain which very much prefers what is easiest and most comfortable, and has an immediate reward. They key to getting results is training the present self to use their prefrontal cortex to override the primitive brain more of the time in favor of what we want most for what we want now.
To unwind this, I give you three tools to consider.
Get conscious.
Tell the truth.
Hook up your future self.
Listen in to the episode to learn how to apply this in real time so you can get what you want more of the time...without sacrificing fun and enjoyment along the way.
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The ballroom industry has a component that is all about aesthetics. Your "look" matters. So if you don't like how you look in general, it's going to hold you back. Add on that a healthy dose of perfectionism and odds are you don't have the best relationship with your body. You might not have realized that you even have a relationship with your body, but you do.
Think about how you treat your body, talk to your body, think about your body and figure out how you would describe that relationship. If it's at all critical, toxic, or even abusive, then it's at the very least counter-productive and at it's worst, you are at constant war with yourself. Why would you want to do that?
In this episode, I offer the tool of body personification. We think of your body as separate from you, think of them as a person, give them a name and then gain awareness about how you have been treating yourself. This tool has the power to heal some of your body issues and start to repair how you see yourself. Believe it or not, your body image can drastically affect your ability to dance your best. Don't let this be one of the reasons you are held back.
Recently in Hawaii for the Hawaii Star Ball, my daughter and I went snorkeling. As I started snorkeling, I felt my nervous system being activated and it took longer than I expected for it to settle down. I started to notice how similar it is to dancing when you have an activated nervous system.
Listen in to see what I mean and for a simple process to start to settle yourself down if you are freaking out just a little.
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Breaking up is hard to do. Breaking up a dance partnership is no different. While the nature of a teacher/student dance relationship is business related and transactional, it can still be difficult and emotional.
In this episode, we talk about the reasons people choose to leave their dance teacher, why it's so hard and how to approach the conversation for the best outcome we can hope for.
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In this episode, we discuss 3 kinds of dance burnout that you might be experiencing. They go hand in hand, overlap and influence each other of course, but listen in to find insight and tips for overcoming your dance burnout.
Physical burnout is pretty self explanatory...but it might surprise you to learn that it's the least likely to be the problem.
Mental burnout is due to how you are thinking, or more importantly what you are thinking about and how you are spending your brain juice. Spinning on stuff that doesn't matter is sure to exhaust you in short order.
Emotional burnout has to do with how you feel. Have you lost motivation? Lack passion? Can't remember your purpose or why you are dancing at all?
Let's get cracking at overcoming burnout!
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I get asked this question all the time! All we want to do is just let go and dance, buy why must our brains think so much and get in the way? While I would love to give you a quick and dirty solution, the truth isn't so simple. The solution happens in a process and that process happens between comps over time. It might not be what you want to hear, but solving for the REASONS for the overthinking means you won't have to deal with it quite so much.
I see two big reasons people overthink.
- You have shortfalls in your preparation. There's no mincing words. If you haven't prepared thoroughly, you will be trying to make things happen in your body with your thinking. It just doesn't work as well as you want. You have to do the prep thoroughly enough that it is just in your body--automatic--so that you don't have to think about making it happen.
Keep in mind that while this is true, you won't be that prepared all of the time! You will always be in varying degrees of learning and automaticity so plan on it happening from time to time. That is what is appropriate and expected during certain times of your development.
- Some people overthink because we are trying very hard to control an outcome. We are trying to make a result happen and holding very tightly. It is laced with fear, anxiety, perfectionism and feels stressful. It's almost as if we are trying to prevent some catastrophe...that catastrophe being a poor result, losing, not making finals, someone being disappointed with us, our own embarrassment etc. We are trying to prevent some future negative emotion or outcome. And we just can't control that. But we sure try.
The long term solution to overthinking is two fold--
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Prepare more thoroughly. End of story.
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Stop trying to control the uncontrollables
In the short term, you have a tips to consider.
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Make peace with your prep. What you have is enough. Let go of trying to make it all happen with your brain. What you have committed to your muscle memory will be there without you haven't to make it happen. The rest you can drop for now and just dance. It's really fine.
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Generate a single focus to occupy your busy brain. Focus is different than thinking. Pick a cue word or two to keep your brain focused on. Choose a cue that incorporates some of the technical aspects you want to embody...like "shine bright," "smooth elegance," or "calm confidence." They help create an emotion but also will spread throughout your body to showcase some of what you are trying to do.
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Lastly, get into your body. Actually feel. Empty your mind and notice where your body connects with the floor and your partner. What is the connection like? How do your feet feel in the floor? Don't THINK about what your body is doing. Just feel. Just be.
The reality is that to stop overthinking and just dance, there really isn't much for you to DO about it. It's more about NOT doing, or doing less. It's about letting go and trusting. And you can totally do it.
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Have you ever had the experience of standing in front of 11 ballroom judges at a ballroom competition and having them hold up paddles with the number of placing they are giving you? In front of all the spectators and dancers and cameras and everything? No? Well I can tell you it makes you want to barf.
In this podcast I tell you about my experience at the NV Ball and qualifying for the Grand Prix and all I endured in making it happen. I'll spoil the ending and tell you we didn't win (shocker) but that isn't even the most important point.
Listen in for what I put myself through, how I got through it and what I learned about myself. I have a vulnerability hangover just from publishing this podcast but I'll just add to the list of hard things I am enduring lately. I'm here for it! Let's go!
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In this quickie of an episode, I encourage you to believe in your ability to feel negative emotion. Our society has made it easy to escape your feelings and so perhaps you have not seen enough evidence that you can totally handle yourself. Rather than fear your feelings, believe in your ability to feel them. Everything you want is on the other side of being willing to feel uncomfortable emotions. Let's go!
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If you are dancing and practicing and feeling like you suck, congratulations! This means that you are living at your leading edge. If you were only willing to stay with what you know and be in your comfort zone, you wouldn't grow into the magnificent dancer you are capable of being. If you feel uncomfortable it means you are willing to do what it takes to get better.
When you are working at this leading edge, you will need to shift into new gears. In this episode, I use this metaphor to teach you what it feels like to ask more of yourself and that you should feel so good if this is where you are finding yourself most of the time. Listen in and share it with a friend who also likes to live at their leading edge!
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Other pertinent episodes: Episode 54, Episode 40, Episode 34
Dancers can really struggle with results. I certainly know dancers who have told me they quit because they simply couldn't mentally handle poor results. There are a couple of reasons that I have encountered that I think make us uncomfortable with our results.
- You think results are objective, or at least they should be. In your mind you keep trying to make sense of it and make it concrete.
Your results are subjective. They just are. If for no other reason, they are Stop wanting them to be objective. Here are just some of the ways your results are subjective:
Who is in the round with you? How are you or them dancing that comp, that day, that round? Who is on the judging panel? Did the panel change? What are the preferences of those judges? When did they see you? Did they see you in a good moment or a mistake? Did they see you at all?
- You try to find deeper meaning in the results. You tie your worth to the results. If it goes well, you are good. If it goes poorly, you are not good. So the results are going to determine how you feel about yourself. That means there is a lot on the line.
Your value and worthiness as a human being is not dependent on your achievements. Your worth is set. It is not conditional on anything. It just is. Your achievements are just how you get to grow and expand and challenge yourself. They aren't what determines your value. Period. You don't have to earn it.
When it comes to your results...here are some ways you can use them for your good instead of using them against yourself.
Look for patterns. What is generally happening now in your placements, and are you moving into slightly higher placements more of the time? Are you making more finals? Are you getting a few more better marks? Are your marks somewhat consistent across the judging panel? What data can you extract and put to good use?
How is your competing going? Is your partnering getting better? Are you feeling better, more in control, and having more fun? Are you able to tell which of your dances are stronger?
Use your marks constructively. Don't beat yourself up with them. Don't look for deeper meaning. Extract some data and get back to work. Elizabeth Gilbert said, "Measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes and failures." Whether you succeed or fail, you will wake up the next day and go at it again. So focus on your craft and the results will take care of themselves.
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Being physically injured is hard enough without also having all the emotional fallout. In this episode we give voice to some of what we might experience emotionally with a dance injury, but then we also talk about coping strategies to help you get through it.
Here are the 6 points that you can consider to help you in your recovery from a dance injury.
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Acceptance. Accept that you are injured and that you have to slow down. Resistance to what is will slow your recovery. Stress, tension, impatience are all understandable but detrimental to your ability to recover. Accept what is and move forward.
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Partner WITH your body. Don’t go to war with yourself. Be careful how you treat yourself. Don’t be mad at your body or believe it is against you in some way. Take care of it. Do the self care. Do the active recovery like it’s your training plan. Rest, do Physical Therapy if you have it. The body heals when it heals so do everything you can do help it along. This includes loving it. Don’t overdo it. Speaking preventatively, don’t push through pain. The instant I feel like I tweaked something, I sub out my fitness classes and rest. I don’t mess around anymore. Don’t be a hero and try to push through pain. Preserve your health by being proactive when things are off.
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Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. When I had shoulder issues, I tried to come back prematurely a time or two but kept getting sidelined. Finally, I gave up my classes, scaled back and settled in for the long haul. It took 18 months, including nearly a full year of PT to get my shoulders back to a good place. Remember recovery is hard work. It can seem like you aren’t doing anything, but your body is hard at work. Healing is a hard job. You will feel lazy and tired at times not doing much, but your body is working all along.
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Do what you can. With dancing there are some things you can modify. With my shoulders, we would practice with lower hand positions so I wouldn’t flare up my shoulders. You might only be able to watch videos or performances. You can decrease practice, avoid injured areas, or learn by watching. For some people still being a part of the dance world helps, for others it doesn’t.
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Do other things. Take this time to pursue other things you care about that allow your body to rest. Be a whole person. What else to do you like? When dance is your only thing, and it becomes your identity, when we have a setback it can feel like we have nothing left. Don’t let that happen to you. No one things can define who we are. Embrace the time off if it comes to that. Find a way to keep your brain busy so it doesn’t ruminate on the injury. Find another outlet. Cross train.
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Tend to your mindset. Focus on wellness. I realized at one time I was focused on my illness. I was thinking about the pain I was in or that my shoulders or neck “still weren’t better.” At some point I read something that talked about the mind body connection and how powerful it is. So I decided to stop thinking about my illness and focus on wellness. I started talking about how much better things were getting. I would try to celebrate small milestones. I can’t turn my head but at least it doesn’t hurt anymore! I would speak gratitude for what was working well or what I could still do. I would say to myself over and over again in my mind that my body was doing just a good job of healing. I would visualize myself dancing or teaching my classes again with my full abilities. Imagine yourself coming back stronger than before. Tending to your mindset might include talking about it as well. Talk to a therapist or a coach (ahem). Explore relaxation techniques. A mind and body that is at peace heals much better and faster than one in a stress response. Watch that part of your brain that wants to tell a fatalistic, scare story, and don’t let it get carried away.
Nurture peace, wellness and gratitude to speed your healing.
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Ugh! Insecurity! It feels terrible. How can we make it go away?!
In this episode, I talk about what it's about, how to loosen it up for you and finally how to work through it. Here are the seven "steps" to work through it.
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Be aware it's happening. Be aware that there is a moment where your insecurity comes up and things shift in you. The knee-jerk response is to avoid or get away from it or blame it on something or someone outside of you. Awareness is where we begin. Do you know when it happens for you?
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Keep the ownership. Insecurity is often triggered by something or someone outside of us and so we want to give them the credit. But if it weren't that thing outside of us, it would be a different thing. If it wasn't that dancer, it would be another one. It's not them. It's us. It's our baggage. It's what we feel or believe about ourselves that is the problem and taking ownership of that fact is the way out. To fix this, you gotta look inside, not outside.
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Stop running away. Insecurity feels terrible and makes us shy away from the situations that trigger it. But the way over it is through. You gotta look it in the face. What is it about? What are we insecure about? Look deeper. What you'll probably find is that you don't feel like you are enough. Now what?
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Make peace with the fact that you are NOT enough sometimes. You fall short. You don't prepare. You say the wrong thing. You disappoint people or yourself. and believe it or not, this is good news. Pretending you are perfect and never make mistakes is what makes you feel insecure. When you make peace with the fact that you ARE less than sometimes, and everyone is that way, you won't mind so much if other people see it too. There will always be someone better, faster, younger, etc. This is FINE.
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Realize YOU are the one who determines if you are enough anyway. Surely someone has told you that you are enough or that you did a good job and you deflected it. You are not enough but you also ARE enough. Enough is 50/50. It's good and bad. It's a work in progress. And you are the one who decides enough is enough. It's not outside you. It won't come from anyone else. This is your work to do on yourself and your relationship with yourself.
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Be willing to run into the storm. Stop shying away from the moments that you feel insecure. Lean in. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Let it come up and then soothe yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Double up on self-compassion and move forward, insecurity and all. Commit to taking care of yourself through it and then tell yourself how proud you are of doing the hard work. Mess up and let people see it so you can see the world doesn't end. This is desensitization. It's exposure therapy. Tread carefully, but definitely tread. You can do it.
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Care what you think more than what other people think. It's okay that you care what people think and it's okay that you want their approval. But just care MORE what YOU think than what others think. Practice getting out of their head and tending to what is in your own. If what you think about you isn't good, that's where you need to give your attention...not trying to get other people to convince you of it.
This work is tough to do. It's uncomfortable. But it's life changing. You've got it!
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Some people are really uncomfortable with competition. It seems divisive and creates a hierarchy where someone has to end up feeling bad about themselves.
Some people avoid competition for this reason. Others compete even though they agree with his model, but are stressed and anxious the whole time because their self worth is on the line.
Another group competes but rebels against this model by not trying to their fullest. That way if they lose, it didn't count because they didn't try anyway.
But I wonder if there is a way to compete without the ego trip, but still maintain the intensity and passion of a good competition. There is a way. And once you hear about it, you will jump right on the bandwagon because it makes competing SO MUCH FUN!
Referenced in this podcast: The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey
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In this episode we ask the question, "Are you a player or a victim?"
We talk about what that means, why you might be stuck in victim mode, and some strategies to get yourself out.
Referenced in this podcast:
Ninja Selling by Larry Kendall
Conscious Business by Fred Kaufman
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Watching yourself dance on video can be excruciating! But it's a skill I think you should develop. In this podcast, I offer the reasons I think we hate it so much, why you should do it anyway, and how to approach the process to make it easier on yourself.
Reasons we don't like watching ourselves dance on video:
1. Our negatively biased brain makes is a negative experience
Your brain is great at pointing out what is wrong, where the flaws and imperfections are, and it does it in a disproportionate amount compared to the positive things you might see.
2. Video doesn't match perception
The video simply does not look like it felt. A 2-dimensional representation on a device is nothing like a living, breathing, 3-dimensional real world experience. Plus, you never really see yourself from the outside.
3. You aren't used to it
Going along with the previous point, you aren't used to watching yourself or seeing yourself in this way. And you make efforts to avoid it, so you never let yourself get desensitized to it. You watch your videos with critical or judgemental eyes, get uncomfortable, stop and then avoid in the future.
4. Comparing yourself to more skilled dancers
If you are like me, the videos that you watch on the regular are the ones that come through a social media feed or I find on Youtube. Those dancers are usually pros or dancers who are much further along than me. So I get this idea of how a video should look. Then I see my own videos. OOF! Yikes! If you are comparing yourself to them, you are going to come up short for sure!
While it is an uncomfortable experience for you right now, I want to encourage you to do it anyway. Here are some reasons why:
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Can't fix what you don't see. Video gives you a concrete picture of what is working and what is not.
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Increases the rate at which you improve. Because you can see what needs work, you can get to work on it. Turning a blind eye certainly slows down your progress.
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You can track your progress over time. This can serve as great motivation when you can look back at old videos and see all your improvement.
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Having videos makes it easier to recall for practicing. See point 2! You don't have to remember what you needed to work on and you have videos that you can reference and learn from.
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You get more comfortable watching yourself dance. Simply watching yourself dance on video desensitizes you and you settle in. You become more objective and aren't as derailed if you have things you see you want to fix. It also means that you are more comfortable with other people watching you.
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You learn to have a more realistic and balanced view of yourself and your dancing. You learn to look at the positive things as well as what needs work. You settle down emotionally and are able to get to work on what is next.
So how can you approach it so it is more tolerable?
--Watch with someone who is more objective than you
--Remind yourself that something is just lost in translation when it comes to video
--You are not alone. Most people don't like it. Let that be okay.
--Give yourself some distance. Don't watch the videos immediately after a performance. Let yourself settle down emotionally first.
--Do it more frequently to get used to it.
--Watch your videos several times. First to get your cringing out of the way, second to watch overall, third to look for what is working, and lastly to find 1-2 things to work on in the coming weeks.
--Approach your videos with purpose and intention. Use them as a tool and be prepared to have an action plan when you are done watching.
--Allow equal air time for the positive and negative aspects
--Get neutral. This is math. There are skills and tasks you are developing. Leave your ego out of it.
--A video is one snapshot of a moment in time. You are already different. Don't get stuck on that moment in the past.
This is such good work to do. It's worth it.
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"Why am I so negative all the time?!"
Ever noticed how you are being negative about your negativity? This episode addresses negativity so you can make peace with it, get over it, and move on with an intentional, more forward moving mindset.
The stages you might go through as you work on this are the following:
Stage 1: Unintentional or unconscious negativity--You get swept up in it and it carries you away. You don't even notice it has happened. But you probably feel drained a lot of the time. You are your negativity are ONE.
Stage 2: Aware but judgmental--You see it. You become aware of your negativity, but then you judge yourself for it. You wish you didn't do it. You blame circumstances for it. Notice how you're still negative? Your just aware AND negative.
Stage 3: Non-judgmental Awareness-- You notice it but stop judging it. You might feel curious about it. You are more an observer of it. You stop resisting it but you don't indulge it either. No getting carried away. More neutral feeling.
Stage 4: Intentional Thinking--This is where you decide intentionally how to respond. You get to decide who you want to be, how you want to think, feel and act in the situation. You will still experience negativity, but it won't be driving the car. You will be in control of it more of the time.
Listen in for real world examples of what it looks like to put this into practice.
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A small competition might seem like a waste of time and/or money because you might not have a lot of competitors to compete against. But not so fast! In this episode I want to share just 4 reasons I love small competitions.
While I wouldn't do exclusively small competitions or make that the main gig that I do, there is a lot of value to be had in a small comp and you can totally leverage it and use it as a tool to benefit you.
Reason #1 I love small comps is small and/or uncontested rounds. Uncontested rounds give you the opportunity to let go of the result and experiment. This is a great time to test out some techniques you have been working on, trying to be more expressive, or just letting go, because we don't have to worry as much how it will affect our score or result. See podcast #18 for more about uncontested rounds.
Reason #2 that I love small competitions is that you get more exposure to judges--or rather, they get more exposure to you. They can watch you for a longer period of time (maybe a whole minute rather than a fraction of that) per round, plus more of the day. In a large competition where there are multiple couples and even semi-finals to finals, you are one of many people they have to watch and consider. In a round with just a few competitors, a handful at most, they get a better idea of you as a dancer. If by chance you DON'T want that, we need to talk on a Dance Strategy Call because we might need to bolster your confidence and comfort with being seen!
Reason #3 to love a small comp is that it's great for relationship building. This is partially about exposure, like in point two, but also, there is just more opportunity to talk to people--judges, organizers, other studios, other dancers--simply because there isn't the distraction of SO many people. At a bigger comp, judges may socialize and spend more time with people they know and are excited to see (as they should!), but at a small comp, I find they are more agreeable to chatting, having a small exchange, and/or talking with you or your teacher about your dancing. I literally had a recent multi-year national rhythm champion sitting next to me at my table last weekend talking to me about my dancing. That would not be likely to happen at a big competition. Building a community and building relationships in the dance world deepens your experience of it. These are your people. They love what you love and understand what this world is all about. It's good to have a stronger foothold in it, if you want, to enrich your experience. That might not be true for everyone, but it is for me.
Reason #4 I love small competitions is simply that when you compete, you get better at competing. Full stop. Whether it's small or big, you simply can't replicate a comp in a practice setting. You have to be in that environment. You have to have those experiences. More dancing makes better dancing and more competing makes for better competing. It's that simple. It's never a waste. And at the end of the day, you are always competing with you and the last version of you. Use the comp as a tool for making yourself better, no matter the size. See episode #38 for more on Being the Boss of Your Comp
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In the book The Inner Game of Tennis, we learn about the concept of Self One and Self Two. Anyone who has tried to get themselves to do anything can relate to this concept. There is a Self One who instructs and a Self Two who carries out the action. The relationship between these two matters a lot. This is especially because Self Two is actually VERY capable of learning and applying things very quickly so long as Self One doesn't slow it down by micromanaging it. Which Self One really likes to do.
Listen in to find out why this is important and how to improve the relationship with yourself so you can progress MUCH faster.
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The River of Misery is what I call that transition place between where you are now and where you want to get to in your life.
Becoming a new version of yourself, or even just a better dancer, requires some hard work. Your brain has to work harder to break old habits and patterns and create new ones. So it tries to stop you and keep you where you are.
The River of Misery feels like work.
And there’s a lot of back-and-forth. There will be good days, and successes, but also times where old habits and patterns reappear. If you don’t know that you are in the River of Misery, you might think you are backsliding or doing it wrong, or not committed. You might beat yourself up for not doing it perfectly 100% of the time. But that’s all part of the process. That’s how it goes. And if you know that, then you can be proud of your successes, and discount your failures. You can forgive yourself sooner and continue to move forward
That River of Misery, that process, is the refiners fire that creates the new you. It’s the reason growth is so satisfying. It’s the reason you feel accomplished and gain confidence. You can’t skip over it. So embrace it. Because when you get there, you’ve earned it.
And that doesn’t feel like misery.
It feels AMAZING! And it’s totally worth it.
Not to worry, I’ve got your back. I know how to handle it because I’m working through it too.
Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE to get help with your River of Misery.
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We talked about the darkside of perfectionism in podcast #51 recently, and so now it's time to talk about how to overcome it.
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Watch yourself. Pay attention to the parts of perfectionism that you like and those you don't. Sift through them so you know what parts can continue to serve you and what parts we want to change. For example, let's keep working hard, wanting to be really good and excellent and also paying attention to details and trying our best. But let's maybe let go of the harsh inner critic, the intolerance for anything less than perfect, and the impossible standards that no one can meet.
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Quite your inner critic. You can still motivate yourself with your self talk but let's try to change the tone. The task-master that is particularly nasty or harsh isn't necessary to get good work out of you. Does is work? Sure. But it sounds and feels terrible. I think whatever we think criticism does, love does it better. Take the time to change your inner voice and it's tone. If you aren't sure what it should sound like, consider what you would say to someone you love and care about to encourage them. Or think of someone else who does this well and follow their example.
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Increase your tolerance level for mistakes. Diffuse them. They are not a big deal. There is only so much you can guess and figure out ahead of time. Some holes are only going to be revealed in the moment of truth. This is not a character flaw. Nothing has gone wrong. You need these moments to help us find what we need to still work on. Making the mistakes a big deal backfires. Not beating yourself up in the moment allows you recover faster which will lead to more success.
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Focus on the process instead of the result. Adopt a growth mindset. Perfectionism is focused on the outcome–the end goal. Give more focus to the process of growth. We are never done, perfect, finished. We just improve. We are always growing so open yourself up and get comfortable with being on a path of progression. A growth mindset acknowledges that we will always have room to grow. This is not a personal failing.
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Let it be fun. Let it feel good. There will be times you feel defeated, disappointed, sad…that is normal. But most of the time let this be fun. Enjoy it. When the result will determine our worthiness or value, then all of it becomes stress and pressure-filled and high stakes. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Laugh more. Laugh off mistakes. Take more risks, let loose a little. Don’t hold so tight to making it all just so and getting just the right results. Enjoy the ride.
At the end of the podcast, I tell you how to ACTUALLY put this into practice in the moment, so don't cut out early and miss the practical application!
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My first interview! Yay! I'm thrilled to bring you this chat with Forrest Vance, an icon in the Ballroom Dancesport industry.
Forrest Vance is a highly accomplished dancer, teacher, coach, consultant, choreographer, and adjudicator with a career spanning over four decades. He holds all levels of certification and examinations in American and International styles in multiple dance instruction organizations like FADS, NDCA and more. His extensive experience in the industry has made him a valuable resource for top professionals, prom-am and amateur couples.
Forrest's impressive dance career includes numerous championships in American Rhythm and Latin categories, including five-time undefeated USA American Rhythm Champion, Fred Astaire seven-time American Rhythm Champion and 2 time international Latin Champion. 4 time Canadian American Rhythm Champion, and many others. He has also been recognized with several awards, including the 2010 Hanlon Ford Award and the 2012 Professional Hall of Fame Award.
Apart from his dance career, Forrest is the successful producer of "Not Strictly Ballroom" instructional dance videos in Ballroom, Latin, and Country Dancing, and organizes and hosts The People's Choice Dancesport Competition in Scottsdale, Arizona.
In this episode, we talk about his history in the industry, what he likes most about it, and the importance of staying positive in your dance journey.
People's Choice Dancesport Competition
To learn more about Forrest Vance, check out his WEBSITE
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Perfectionism seems so useful. It seems good. It's all about excellence and being the best we can be at something, right? Kind of. There are good parts of perfectionism--the hard work, attention to detail, concientiousness, and high motivation. When perfectionists do accomplish things, it is pretty impressive, right?
But the parts of perfectionism that are NOT good are the ones that differentiate perfectionism from simply healthy striving. In this episode I give seven hallmarks of perfectionism. It's not an exhaustive list, but some of the things I see a lot in my perfectionist ballroom dance clients.
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Procrastination-While it seems like perfectionists are high performers and that they would get a lot done, often the opposite is true. Needing the product to be exact and perfect leads to procrastination because it's never quite up to our standards. That, or we get overwhelmed by what needs to be done to make it perfect and we delay or don't do it in order to feel relief from the pressure and overwhelm.
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When is enough, enough? Perfectionists don't know when to stop. We can always improve things and make it better, but when does that end? Others may see what we have done as awesome and great, but we can still see it as flawed and not good enough. We don't have a realistic sense of what "good" is. Constantly trying to make it better can lead to overworking and exhaustion...aka burnout.
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Burnout is common in perfectionists. We do a lot of work and then possibly don't put it out into the world. Or when we finally do, it has gone through so many drafts that we are just plain exhausted. Also, perfectionists are slim on praise for themselves. They don't offer the congratulatory pat on the back for a job well done very often. It's really hard to keep up the good work when the rewards are few and far between. So we kind of have to quit for a while, recharge, and then try again. This happens much less often when someone can feel good about their work and move on quickly from setbacks.
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Low self-esteem is a hallmark of perfectionism that is sometimes hard to spot. But all perfectionism stems from a need to prove oneself as worthy, either to oneself or to others. But when the voice in your head is mostly critical and unyielding, it makes sense that you wouldn't feel very good about yourself and persistently see yourself as less.
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Perfectionism can lead to an emotional roller coaster. Lots of stress, pressure and anxiety up front and depression on the back end. When this keeps up chronically, it can lead to mental, emotional and physical ailments as well.
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Hindered creativity and innovation–Just ask a dancer who is trying to dance perfectly and also be creative and expressive and you will see why perfectionism gets in the way. Fearing failure means we are less wiling to take risks, less willing to try new things.
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Strained relationships. Perfectionists hold themselves to high standards and often those around them. In dancing this can be especially apparent in partnerships. The perfectionist may view the other person as lazy or like they don’t care as much. This lead to frustration, resentment (on both parts) poor communication and problem solving, and more conflict when a perfectionist is unyielding.
The good news is that high performance can exist without the dark side of perfectionism. You get to keep the healthy striving, high motivation, attention to detail and lots of success--without the fog of negativity and criticism.
Perfectionism feels noble but it's a pair of handcuffs preventing you from becoming all that you could be. It's not making you perfect. It's making you small and scared. Let it go and see what happens.
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Saying you have so much potential seems like such a nice thing to say. But have you noticed how it can also mean that you aren't good enough now? That if you could just be better then we could be satisfied?
Dancers spend way too much time focusing on what they lack. They look to the future and what could be and then feel bad about where they are now. This is a huge disservice that you are doing to yourself because it puts you in such a weak position. It puts you in a one-down position and one of deficiency. Not a very powerful or confident place to operate from.
You will always have growth you want to accomplish. There will always be things you are striving toward. But that doesn't mean where you are now is lacking or deficient. In fact, if you were to look back and see where you have come from, you would see just how "enough" you are. You would see all that you have gained and all that you have to offer now in this moment already. This is the whole premise of the the book The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.
When you focus on the gap between where you are now and were you could be, you may feel more frustrated, insecure, resentful and hopeless. Giving attention to the gain helps you see just how valuable and skilled you are now, which is great emotional fuel to launch forward with.
Listen in to hear how this applies to a dance partner search, competition mindset and other areas in your life where you are seeing yourself as less when you could see that if you just owned and embraced who you are how you could start taking the world by storm.
The Gap and the Gain, Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
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When dancers are thinking about how to train, I think it's pretty obvious what the standard methods are. Take lessons, practice on your own, participate in outside coaching, do some group lessons, workshops, social dancing, and perform or compete regularly. Not a mystery.
What I want to talk about today are ways you can train that you might not have thought of. These are ways that you can use your regular life experiences to help change you as a person from the inside out. They can make you stronger, more resilient, and give you an edge over the dancers around you.
1) Get in great shape--there are lots of ways to do this. Listen in for the ways in which I think apply to dancing specifically.
2) Get under pressure--find ways in which you can be put under pressure and have eyes on you while you do it. It might surprise you to hear that I don't want you to do this and succeed all the time. One key to this is to have eyes on you while you mess up and make mistakes. Why would you want to do that?! Listen in to find out.
3) Be bad, a lot--in connection with point #2, finding ways to be bad and make lots of errors will make your progress exponentially faster. You won't be bad all the time. In fact, you will be fantastic a lot of the time. But fear of making mistakes is holding you back. To overcome it, you have to normalize it. I teach you how.
4) Do your inner work--you must learn to disconnect your value from your results. Not just in dancing, but in life. Your value has nothing to do with your job, how productive you are, your accomplishments, how your family and friends view you...none of it. You can sit on the couch eating donuts and you are not less valuable. Do the work of knowing your worth and your value so that you don't have to use dancing to prove it. You have nothing to prove. Listen in to hear how this work affects your dancing in positive ways.
There are many areas of your life that you can use to give you huge gains in your dancing that seem to have nothing to do with dancing at all. Perhaps you have more ideas and experiences you could share? Share them in our Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group HERE.
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In this episode, I introduce the tool known as the Alter Ego. This concept came from the book The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman.
This is a useful tool if you have limiting beliefs about what is possible for you, if you have a story about yourself that you just can't shake, or if you have tried and tried to show up differently at competitions but you just can't seem to do it.
Many high performers, famous people, etc, have used an alter ego to help them reach new levels by tapping into parts of themselves and creating a version of themselves that is far more effective at doing what is required in a high pressure moment like a ballroom dance competition. Listen in to learn about this tool and how to apply it.
Far more details are provided in the book, which I highly recommend you read!
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Everyone wants more confidence.
What is confidence anyway? Everyone likely has their own definition of what that looks like and what it means.
I recommend that if you want more confidence, you get more specific about what you mean by that. Get a good idea in your head so that you know who it is you are trying to be. What is that confident version of you thinking, feeling and doing?
But maybe more importantly, why are they able to show up that way?
I see confidence as two different types. There is the confidence that comes from experience and repeated successful attempts at something. And then there is self-confidence which we can have even if we have no evidence that we will succeed. I think that self-confidence is what everyone is really seeking. Listen in to hear a break down of how these are different plus where arrogance fits in to this discussion.
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Sometimes when you have been working on your mindset, you can find yourself in a time when it doesn't seem to be working.
You can be trying all the tools and concepts and trying to change things, but it feels hard and you might think you're doing something wrong.
Well, you aren't. But you might just be resisting your emotions and using mindset work to try to bypass them. How will you know?
Well if the mindset work and trying the tools isn't working, and you find yourself saying things like "I don't want to feel this way..." then you might be avoiding your emotions.
Emotions can't be escaped. They keeping coming back until you pay attention to them. So if you are feeling stuck, let's check and see if you are avoiding feeling some feelings.
There are actually 4 things that we frequently do to deal with our emotions.
1)Resist- The thing we most often do is resist emotions. We push against them. We stuff them and hold them down. This is actually the thing that makes emotions so uncomfortable--the resistance of them. The emotions themselves dissipate relatively quickly if we aren't resisting them. But resisting them intensifies them.
2)Avoid--We avoid emotions when we pretend they aren't there. We eat, drink, over-scroll the internet and watch porn, among other things. This is less intense than resistance so you kind of trick yourself into believing you're getting past it in some way, but you're still not dealing them.
3)React--Reacting to emotions is most easily seen in anger. Throwing things, yelling, etc, are reactions to anger. You are demonstrating your anger moreso than processing it.
4)Allow--Allowing emotion is the quickest way to get past emotion, but it's the last thing we want to do. Allowing feels a little like a letting go, a surrender. But it feels vulnerable maybe, and so we don't want to do it. We don't want to face it. Allowing feels like accepting it, relaxing into it, finding out what the emotion is trying to tell us. You have to be willing to approach the emotion rather than get away. This is what we want to do most of the time with our emotions.
The irony is that when you accept emotions, and are willing to feel them, the quicker they go away. But then if you welcome them, you don't need them to go away. It's a paradox. The less you want them and the more you push, the longer they stay and the more they intensify over time.
Listen in to find out how to ACTUALLY process feelings.
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How many of you have had the experience where you have just finished a performance of some kind, and you run up to someone who watched it and asked, “What did you think?” and then they proceeded to make a negative comment? "Uhhh it was fine. Wasn’t your best performance but it was pretty good."
Tough feedback is hard. We’ve all had it. Even those people who you think are so good and so skilled, have had hard feedback. So what do we do with that?
I want to speak to this and give you some guidance.
1. Just have your emotional response. Getting hard feedback does not feel good. You are a human and it can hurt to hear something like that. Some people have learned to let it roll off their back, and in the work I do with private clients I teach them how to get there, but don’t expect that you are going to hear something tough and not feel something. Only sociopaths don’t feel emotion.
2. Consider the source. Is this person an expert? Did we hire them to help make us better or is this just a random person making a comment? Is this friends and family? Is this someone close to you who thinks they have the right to be critical? Is this someone who is always critical? Does this person care about your well being, like really care about you? Because hopefully an expert or coach that we have enlisted to help us can deliver feedback with a healthy dose of what you are doing well and not only what we need to adjust. Hopefully they can also deliver bad news with grace, but not always. So keep in mind if you have asked them to deliver this to you…which leads to point 3.
3. What is their intention? When you have hired an expert, or they are your coach..you have hired them to help you improve. So they are definitely going to bring up what needs work. Be prepared for that. You have a choice if you are going to take it personally or not, so I recommend you don’t. It’s just data. It’s a puzzle we are putting together and they are helping us with the pieces. Don’t make it about you and get stuck in drama.
If this is not someone you have hired, let’s say it’s friends or family or even another dancer. What is their intention? When you asked for feedback, maybe they were thinking you wanted to know how to make it better. Maybe they didn’t realize you just wanted to know if they enjoyed it or not. Were they trying to help? Were they trying to be an insider? Were they trying to be an expert for you?
Are they a Candle-blower Outer? Some people see you happy, energized, successful, or doing something they aren’t willing to do…or are jealous of you and they just kind of want to blow out your candle. Sometimes these people offer feedback even without you asking.
Listen in to the episode to hear what recommendations I have about what to do next.
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Subtractive thinking is one of the simplest things that you can change to have a big impact on your mental toughness. Subtractive thinking are just thoughts that take away from you. They start with words like, "I can't..." "I'm not..." "I don't know how to..." "I'm not able to...".
These thoughts are sneaky because it seems like you are just telling me the news...just describing what is. But these simple, tricky little thoughts can start a cascade of problems that lead to a train wreck if you aren't careful.
We discuss what mental toughness is, how it is different than confidence, what subtractive thinking is and how it is that it can erode your confidence and chink away at your mental toughness, and finally how to change it.
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The person who loves walking will walk further than the man who loves the destination.
Everyone loves a good result. Everyone loves the fulfillment of a finished product. But if you don't fall in love with the process, the odds of you getting that finished product are vastly reduced. And if you don't reward yourself along the way, you'll quit prematurely.
The best strategy I can offer to you is to learn to love the process. You can love the results too, but it’s loving the process that will get you to those results that you want.
Love the contrast of feeling weird and awkward when new figures are introduced compared to how it feels when you have practiced that choreography a thousand times and can do it with your eyes closed.
Learn to embrace the frustration of a new level. Learn to love the feeling of having to dig deep when you are tired and have had to dance so many quarterfinals and semi finals and finals.
Learn to embrace that what you are actually doing is developing. Learn to love that you are never done. Learn to love reps. Learn to love drills. Learn to love being unfinished. Learn to love the feeling of being a beginner, over and over again. Learn to notice when something has gone from unnatural feeling to familiar to mastery. Notice when you got better today, just a little bit. Try to notice that the needle is moving in the right direction. Love the feeling of your body changing and your abilities changing. Love the preparation. Love the practice. Love the work. If you do that, the milestones will come. The results will come. It’s inevitable. They will happen as a side effect. And you are training yourself to love it all along the way, not just at the end.
For more help, book a free Dance Strategy Call HERE.
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How do you dance freely and expressively and also think about all the things you are supposed to be doing with your body? The short answer is you really can't. The part of your brain that has to think through things and concentrate to make them happen is minimal. We want to delegate as much as we can to the part of our brain that does actions automatically without much thought. The more we can delegate there, the better. That's what you call muscle memory or automaticity.
You engage in automaticity when you are driving and can carry on a conversation while also putting on lipstick. You have driven so much, that you don't have to think about it. You OVERLEARNED it. Overlearning is when you learn how to do something and can do it well and then keep doing it. You keep repeating it. I just call that reps, or repetitions. Reps are the way to overlearn and develop strong muscle memory so you can reach automaticity in your dancing. How do you do that?
Well there are 4 stages you go through.
Stage one--Acquire Knowledge--This is where you first are introduced to something. You have the intellectual knowledge, but are only beginning to apply it. You haven't translated it into your body yet. It feels clunky and stiff. It feels like you can't make your body do what you want it to do. Your brain is working hard to try to connect to your body and make it do what it wants.
Stage two--Apply Knowledge Inconsistently-- In this stage, you are applying knowledge but it isn't consistently in your body yet. There is a lot of transition happenign here and this stage can take a long time. It will take a lot of thinking hard at first and concentrating to get your body to perform the actions. But over time, some of them become automatic. After a while, the percentage shifts and more and more is automatic and we can use less and less of the pre-frontal intentional part of the brain. You might experience a lot of impatience at this stage because you are getting it and feeling better about it and just want to have it down perfectly.
Stage three--Apply Knowledge Consistently--This is where you translated the knowledge into your body and you can execute it consistently. You can rely upon it. You feel more confident in some areas because you have performed them successfully repeatedly. You have a lot of muscle memory in this stage but it can be a little deceiving. This is because you may not realize there is one more stage.
Stage four--Apply Knowledge Consistently Under Pressure--You know this stage. This is when you can practice on your own and execute it but when you try to do it for your teacher, you can't do it as well. Or you can do your routines well in a lesson consistently but then things might fall apart more on the competition floor. This stage requires overlearning and we just plain don't do that work very often.
You don't need to be in stage 4 to be successful or even feel confident. The biggest problem lies in us expecting to have the ease that we have not quite earned. Listen in to find out how to have more confidence in where you are at and find out if your expectiations are really the problem.
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Don't roll your eyes at the subject of self-talk.
Your self-talk is a large part of your everyday experience and has a lot to do with your ability to get the results that you want in your life.
Self-talk is the voice you hear all day. It can be used for good or evil. When your inner voice is on default, how does it sound? Do you even know? If you start to pay attention, you might come to realize just how poorly you treat yourself.
That inner voice is a pretty good indicator of the relationship you have with yourself. Would you say that you have a supportive, loving relationship with yourself, or are you in an abusive relationship?
Listen in to find out why your self-talk matters, how to improve it, and how to leverage positive self-talk to get the results that you are wanting in your ballroom dancing.
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Sometimes I call it MATH and DRAMA In this podcast I am calling it TASK vs EGO. These are two mindset states that we as dancers tend to be in.
In the case of a task-oriented mindset, we are focused on what needs to be done. There are certain traits associated with this mindset that turn out to be very useful. You persist at tasks longer, you enjoy the process more, and you perform better under pressure...among other things.
In an ego-oriented mindset, you focus more on yourself--how you look, what other people think of you, and what the results mean about you. This mindset is so easy to slip into but it can be so detrimental. It is also an exhausting roller coaster of emotion.
In this episode I want you through both states and why you want to be in one more than the other. Listen in and see where you fall on the spectrum.
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The brain is so good at identifying problems. This is good since it helps us survive better as humans. However, we tend to get stuck in our problems. We become problem-focused. We stay stuck in the fact that we have a problem, talk about it, find evidence for it, etc, when we could just move to a solution.
One issue might be that we are lamenting that we have a problem in the first place, as if we shouldn't have them. But life is always going to have problems. You can't escape it.
So rather than thinking about our problems as PROBLEMS, I think of them as OBSTACLES. All you need to get around or over an obstacle is a STRATEGY. What are we going to do about it?
Listen in as we go through some specific problems and use our useful problem-solving brains to find a way around it.
Struggling with brain freeze during a competition?
Getting disoriented on the competition floor?
Not motivated to practice on your own?
Still comparing yourself to other dancers?
We have you covered.
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Rather than go into your comp feeling nervous, defensive, and worried that something bad is going to happen, I recommend you get into a more empowered headspace.
You can do that by giving the competition a job. A competition is there for you to use as a tool. You can use it for your purposes. This will give your mind something productive to focus on which will help prevent it from spinning out and at the same time, make you feel like you are acting on the comp instead of it acting upon you.
Here are 5 things to decide ahead of time to get you into the right mindset.
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Why are you competing in general? You don't have to. Why have you decided to? How can you make sure you acknowlege those desires?
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Why are you choosing to do this competition? How can you use it for your purposes. Big and small competitions can have different uses. You can also use certain rounds, styles, days, etc to accomplish different things. Think through all of that so you know the plan when it comes time to step on the floor.
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How will you measure success? Make sure most of them are in your control. What will you consider a win that isn't only about results?
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Decide ahead of time how you will think/feel as you go through the comp. How do you want to approach things? What mindsets and thought patterns would be most useful for all that you will be doing?
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Decide ahead of time how you want to think/feel at the end and how you will treat yourself. What will that look like? Choose wisely and productively.
To feel jealous is human. But then what? Because feeling jealous can feel pretty terrible and sometimes it feels hard to let it go.
In this episode, we unpack whether you are feeling jealousy or envy toward other dancers (hint: they are not the same thing!) and what that means for you.
Envy is more of a 2-person emotion where someone has something that you want. Jealous is more of a 3-person situation where you already feel like you have something but feel a threat of losing it to a rival. In dance we can experience both.
We unpack what those situations might be, but also what to do about it? There is a world where you don't have to experience so much jealousy and envy. Here's a hard truth you'll need to come to terms with. Jealousy and envy seem like they are about people outside of you, but it's always about you. They were the trigger, but what is happening in you, what can you learn from it, and how can you heal so that it doesn't keep holding you back?
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As I have worked with ballroom dance clients, themes have emerged. Today I share 7 areas that you can take a look at to measure how you are doing with mental strength in your dancing. This isn't a complete list and I'm sure it will evolve over time, but it's a good place to start.
Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 to get a baseline, then start improving in some of these areas. Periodically check in and measure again to see how you are coming along.
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Self Talk--Your self talk is not frivolous. Your inner chatter has the power to shape who you are. It can help you reach your dreams or hold you back. Because the vast majority of your default habitual thoughts are negative, it's important that you direct your thinking. You will know you are getting better in this area because you are being a better friend to yourself. You start treating yourself better and getting more results in your life.
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Comparison--It's normal and human to compare yourself to others. But it's best if you immediately drop it as soon as you recognize you are doing it. Comparison will almost always leave you feeling like less and putting yourself in a one-down position. Not a lot of good comes from us when we feel this way. You will know you are improving when you think less and less about what other dancers are doing. Your goal here is to truly, deeply recognize that other dancers have nothing to do with you.
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Self-Belief/Confidence--Everyone wants more confidence. But since confidence comes after-the-fact when you have earned it, I think what we really want is self-belief. We want to know that we are going to be okay before we have any evidence for it. We want to know that we are in good hands with ourselves. You will know you are getting better in this area when you experience more self trust and while you might feel nervous about new experiences you will take more risks and try more new things.
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Motivation--In this area, I am speaking about how good are you feeling about your dancing? Do you feel drawn to it? Do you want to do the thing? We don't have to feel excited about it all the time, but if you are feeling dread, wanting to retreat, and feeling lots of frustration, overwhelm or burnout, it's likely we need to find more joy and feel more motivated. You will know you are doing better in this area when you are generally feeling more drawn to dancing. You want to do it. You are drawn to it.
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Anxiety/Stress--As you measure this area, a 10 would be that you are really happy with how you are handling your stress and/or anxiety. It is not our expectation that we will never feel it. You will always have some stress or anxiety. But it can be greatly reduced when we more closely monitor our thoughts and get pickier about how we think. Get better at allowing the situational stress and not creating unnecessary extra suffering. You will be getting better at this when you don't fear these emotions and feel more in control of yourself in higher pressure situations.
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Attentional Control--Whatever you give your attention to has the power and you have to manage your mind around. There are too many things that we give attention to that are not relevant. Ask yourself often if what you are concentrating on is relevant. Things that are out of your control--other people, the future, the past, etc, are often things we spend unnecessary energy on. Practice keeping focused on relevant items and you will experience having more energy and feel yourself being distracted less and less.
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Meaning of Results--If you are making the results mean something about your worthiness or value, you will be on an emotional roller coaster. Giving results less power in your mind will greatly reduce your stress levels and allow to you deliver your best performances.
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Goals have the power to either stress you out or motivate you. Some people avoid setting goals all together and some live for it. In this episode, we talk about why a goal might be stressful and how to choose more motivating goals.
The most surprising this about this episode, though, might be that the purpose of the goal isn't to actually accomplish it. Listen in to find out how that could be.
So many of us don't want to look bad. It makes sense. None of us want to feel embarrassed or look silly. We don't want people to judge us or think less of us. But when it comes to dancing, if you are willing to look bad, you will suddenly find yourself getting very good very quickly.
When you avoid looking bad, you will avoid situations where people will see you stumbling or faltering. This will include practicing any time other people might be around. This also might include things like group classes or workshops or even competitions. Notice how when you don't want to look bad, you deny yourself opportunities to get better. It doesn't mean you WON'T get good, but consider all you are missing out on when you avoid these types of situations.
If you can make peace with being bad, you will let yourself be seen. I'm not going to lie, it will be uncomfortable. Especially at first. And we hate feeling uncomfortable. But if you are willing to look bad, you will let yourself be in rooms where everyone else is better than you. This is actually good. If you are in a room where everyone else seems better than you, then you have SO much to learn from them. You have so much growth you can accomplish and your mentors are right in front of you. What if you decided you were going to be the most improved dancer? What if you embraced being new or bad or behind and just let that be while you worked your butt off no matter how uncomfortable it made you? Can you see how your progress would skyrocket if you did this?
Be willing to be bad so you can be good. Trust me on this.
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One of the most common things I hear from clients is, "I just don't want to make a mistake," or "I don't want to f*** up," or "I don't want to mess up."
Another friend in our Joyful Ballroom Facebook Group asked how to get over a bad performance.
These concepts are similar and I want to give you some help around this in this episode.
The reason we are terrified of making mistakes is because of what we are making the mistakes mean. Some people make mistakes and it's no big deal and they get over it. But some of us grab on to the mistake, inflate it in our mind, declare failure and infect the rest of the performances. This tells us it isn't the mistake that is the problem, but what we are making it me.
We might be making it mean that everything is ruined. Another reason is we believe that one mistake leads to another so it's like we've started a domino effect and if everything isn't ruined, it will be soon. We also might be making mistakes mean something about us and our worth or value as a dancer or a person in general. If that is the case, your performance just became very high stakes. A mistake would spell doom.
To get over mistakes, I recommend a couple of things. First, just commit to having a short memory. Forget it. Immediately. That moment is gone and the only way it infects the next is if you bring it along. Shelf it. You can always come back to examine and make improvements. But it will do NO good to dwell on it.
Secondly. make the mistakes small in your mind. Minuscule. Make them mean nothing. They don't mean anything about you. Depersonalize them. Diffuse them of their power over you. All that happened was you expected one thing and something else happened. That's it. It was a fraction of a percent of 2 minutes and you're declaring a failure. Even if we messed up 10 percent, 90 percent was still as expected. Why is that a failure again? Mistakes are no big deal.
Lastly I recommend that you DO NOT make a flawless performance your expected standard. That is impossible and you are setting yourself up for failure. Plan for a performance that is better than last time. Plan to minimize mistakes and do all the preparation you can to minimize them. But don't plan or expect you won't have mistakes. Everyone has them.
Here's the best news I can give you. The less power and focus you give to mistakes, the less of them you will make. Focusing on them and making them big increases the chances you will make more of them. So let's just let it go, shall we?
Self doubt and self belief cannot occupy your mind and the same time.
Where self doubt can come on as a reaction to what has happened, and then cause you to spin out of control, self belief doesn't happen by chance. Self belief is a choice you make. Whereas confidence can come after you have successfully accomplished something, self belief needs no evidence. It is a choice you make when there is no evidence to prove you can do it. It's a belief in you...in your ability to perservere and make things happen. It's a belief in your resiliency and effort. It's a belief that as long as you keep trying, you will accomplish the thing.
Listen in to hear how self doubt activates the fight or flight response and begins a downward spiral, and how to leverage self belief to turn the spiral around and produce much better and effective action.
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Pain is inevitable in life. We keep trying to avoid it but it doesn't work.
In this episode, we sift through clean and dirty pain so you can see what pain is worth dealing with and what part is unnecessary. The good news is that the unnecessary pain is created by us so we can stop generating it.
Clean pain is constructive and necessary and moves you through an experience. It makes sense and we don't need to fear it.
Dirty pain is pain that you superimpose on top of the clean pain and it includes stories of shame and blame about you as a person. We get stuck in this pain and it doesn't move us through the experience like clean pain does. It keeps us stuck and spinning and is of no real use.
Under the dirty pain is the clean pain we should process.
I outline how to process the clean pain, or in other words, what to do about it.
Mentioned in this episode: Simone Seol
It helps to know you aren't alone. In this episode, I reveal many of the things that have come up in dance strategy calls and sessions with clients.
Enjoy these confessions of amateur ballroom dancers!
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When we want to motivate ourselves to do better, how do we do that exactly? Most people I talk to use a "whip". They try to be hard on themselves, punish themselves for shortcomings, and use forceful or negative self-talk to get themselves moving. We seem to prefer fear, judgment, shame, and guilt to do the job.
These are terrible motivators, however. They only work in the short-term, feel terrible, and at some point, we need to get away or take a break from it. So we quit. Then when we are ready to start again, we get the whip out.
There is an alternative. If you want to get a donkey moving, you can whip it from behind, or you can lead it with a carrot. I'm suggesting we try the carrot. The carrot in this case would be love, compassion, encouragement, gratitude, appreciation, patience, excitement, joy, and many others. Even commitment and determination are better than judgment.
You might think that this means you will go soft and not try as hard. But effort, excellence, and drive are independent of the motivators. We can still treat ourselves kindly and strive for excellence. In fact, it works so much better! When we motivate with the carrots, we can sustain it because we enjoy the process so much more. We are willing to give even more of ourselves when we feel encouraged and hopeful.
You might not have a lot of evidence that this works and so you might be hesitant, but I would ask you how well the whip is working. Might be worth trying something else for a change. It looks like this...being kind to yourself, encouraging yourself, picking yourself up when you fall, having patience when things are hard, and also holding yourself accountable to your goals...not slacking off or indulging behaviors that will have a negative effect on your dancing. Indulgence is not the same thing as love. Keep that in mind.
Love works better than judgement. I dare you to try it.
The key to managing your mind might just be found in this concept: you kind of have two brains.
You have a primitive lower brain that is responsible for your survival, and a higher prefrontal cortex that's responsible for planning, organizing and higher levels of cognition. You need both of these parts of your brain.
Your lower brain makes sure you stay alive by tending to the most important things: seeking pleasure, avoiding pain and conserving energy. The problem with this part of your brain though, is it can feel like you are at the mercy of it. It can be more emotional or fearful, and can sabotage all your plans you make with your prefrontal cortex. Your lower brain looks out for threats and danger because it means to protect you and keep you safe. In the modern age we live in, this often looks like emotional threats--being judged, ostracized, embarrassed, or any negative emotion really.
Your prefrontal cortex can think bigger. IT can plan for the future and make your life better. And part of it's job is to manage the lower brain so that we don't just stay in our cave and stay safe.
Managing your brain is about learning to manage the relationship between these two parts. Most of us are operating with the lower brain making a lot of our decisions, or at least sabotaging some decisions we have made. When you are managing these two parts well, you will be operating from your higher brain more of the time. The lower brain will never go away, but it can be relegated to the backseat while your reasonable, logical, more developed higher brain can run things.
Between a stimulus and a response, we can insert a pause. It's in this pause that we can make a different choice. When you notice you are needing to regulate yourself, take the pause and do 4 things.
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Become aware of your emotional state--Know what you are thinking, feeling, and doing. What brain are you operating from?
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Acknowledge what your lower brain is trying to do--It means well. It means to protect you. It makes sense that when you feel in danger, it clicks on.
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Assess--Are you actually in danger? Are you safe in this moment? Do you need saving and protecting?
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Talk yourself down--Tell yourself all the things you need to soothe yourself. Calm yourself down. Support yourself. Think positive thoughts that settle you.
What we are talking about here is emotional regulation. It's noticing how you are feeling and learning how to get out of an automatic reaction and get yourself to a place where you can choose how you want to respond. This is a practice that you can learn how to do, and get better at in a relatively short amount of time.
How do you become a different version of yourself? How do you actually change?
This episode is the third in a series about that very subject. In episode 24 we learned how to identify our patterns that might not be serving us. Episode 25 talked about how to interrupt that pattern, and this episode is all about living into the new version of you.
In between a stimulus and response is a pause. That pause is where we can choose to show up differently.
We talk in this episode about using the Self-Awareness Model from episode 24 to create the future self.
Consider the result that you want to create. What actions would you need to take to get that result? What emotions might you need to generate to fuel that kind of action, and lastly, what mindset or thought process would you need to adopt to create that emotion?
You are going to imagine it ahead of time so that when the moments present themselves, you have a plan for how to execute.
You won't do it perfectly, so we also talk about what that is going to look like as you practice becoming your future self.
There will always be people who are better than you. They are more talented, they learn faster, they seemingly succeed more than you and everybody else. Our brain thinks this a problem. But it's a problem you can't solve. You can't make it so there is never anyone better than you.
I offer you three tips to deal with this.
1--Accept it. Accept that there are people better than you. It's a fact. Resisting it won't make it go away. Fighting it will backfire. Just accept it.
2--Ask yourself, "SO WHAT?!" What does their talent, abilities, success, have to do with you? It's not rhetorical. Answer the question. Why is that a problem FOR YOU? You are making it mean something. What are you making it mean about you and your success?
Are you making it mean that you are limited? You won't get what you want? That you're flawed? That it means it's going to be harder for you? So what? Do you still want this?
3--Question what you are believing. That meaning you just gave for why this is a problem for you--question it. Is it true? Really, really true? What if it is? Are they really the reason you might not get what you want? Be honest.
Additionally, I offer that there are 3 stages you might move through as you deal with other people being more talented than you.
Stage 1--Ignore them. Don't watch, don't pay attention, let it go over and over again. Whenever your mind wants to focus on them, redirect it. "They aren't relevant to me."
Stage 2--Redirect your focus to yourself. Make it all about you. Focus on your skills, growth, development. But also focus on what makes you amazing. What are your talents? What are your strengths? How have you grown? How far have you come? Use this stage to understand at a deeper level your own strengths, talents and abilites. This will prepare you for stage 3.
Stage 3-- Let them inspire you. Once you know you are ENOUGH and have plenty of talent of your own, you won't be so threatened by the talent of others. Then you can learn all you can from them. Soak it in! Find what they are doing that works so well and try to apply what feels like you. How fortunate you are to have someone to inspire you to more. This is not a problem! It's strategy!
Lastly, notice how when you focus on them, believing they are better, that you are held back or that something has gone wrong for you, that you feel smaller. You retreat a little, you feel defeated and jealous, and none of it is doing anything good for your dancing.
But when you see you are talented, skilled, always learning and growing, believe you are good enough, be inspired by good dancers around you, and understand you will never miss out on something meant for you, that this positive energy WILL add to your dancing.
Your choice for how you want to approach it. I know what I would choose.
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The greatest tool in your arsenal for personal change is "the pause." When you interrupt an old pattern and pause, you give yourself a chance to make a different choice.
In this episode, we follow up from the previous episode where we talked about the model and how to gain self awareness. Once you are aware of your patterns, it's time to interrupt them.
As you do this work, you can expect to go through 3 stages.
In the first stage, you will essentially pause at the end, after the fact. You will have a circumstance happen, and you will think feel, and act so quickly that a pause wasn't possible. In this case, you will still want to take a look after the fact. What happened? Why did you show up that way? What were you thinking, feeling and doing? What was your model? How might you approach it differently next time? Where could you have interrupted yourself?
In stage 2, you will see the models happening while it is happening. You will see that you are showing up in a way that you might want to change and a lot of times you will be able to interrupt yourself and make a different choice. Sometimes you will interrupt your actions and choose a different behavior. Sometimes you will recognize a strong feeling and be able to interrupt in that moment. Other times you will hear a thought come into your mind and see it for what it is, just a thought. Sometimes you will see it happening and still won't be able to change it in that moment and that's okay. You always have the ability to watch and study so that next time you will have thought through how you might show up differently.
Stage 3 is when a circumstance happens and you will be able to pause right then and choose intentionally how you want to think, feel and act in that moment.
A pause is simple and powerful. Interrupting patterns is the beginning of becoming the person that you want to be. If you want to behave differently at competitions, begin by knowing what is happening now, learn from it, interrupt your old patterns and then begin living into the new way you want to handle it. More about that in the next episode.
Start with just one area--one that seems easier to change--and practice interrupting yourself. You won't need to go through each area one by one, because as you work on one area, it will create a ripple effect through the other areas. You aren't just changing your actions, you are changing your brain. You don't exist in a vacuum and when you approach one area differently, the others will begin to follow suit.
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To hack yourself and become the person that you want to become, you need to do three things.
First, learn your current patterns for how you show up in the world.
Second, you interrupt the old patterns
Lastly, you build the new and live-in to the person that you want to be
This podcast focuses on discovering your current patterns. I teach you the best tool for self awareness. Once you are aware of your patterns, you can change them. The Self-Coaching Model (created by Brooke Castillo) is the tool you need to hack yourself.
The Model has 5 parts.
Circumstances
Thoughts
Feelings
Actions
Results
Circumstances are outside of you and factual. They are the situations of your life.
Circumstances trigger thoughts. Your thoughts are the meaning that you give to the facts.
Your thoughts create feelings/emotions.
Your feelings fuel your actions (or inaction).
Your actions create results. Or rather, your thoughts, feelings and actions create the results that you get in your life.
The circumstances are out of your control, but the rest of the model is within your control to change.
Spend the next week looking for your models. You are living them out everyday. Watch them happen. Look for the patterns and habits you have for the way you think, feel and act, and then in the next podcast we'll talk about how to interrupt your patterns!
This is the first in a series of mindset basics that apply to everyone.
The first concept/tool I want to offer is that what you think isn't true. We all think that our thoughts are just true. But they are not inherently true. Two people can experience the same facts and come to different conclusions entirely. Each person would think their version is the truth. And it is. To them.
Thoughts are not facts.
Facts are facts. Everyone would agree that the facts are facts. There would be no dispute. The temperature being 99 degree F is the fact. Whether or not it is a hot day is not a fact, but a thought. 99 degree F is not hot to some people.
This matters because the thoughts that we think will create our experience and therefore our reality. What you think, you believe and then go on to create. You might think you have no choice in the matter, but you do. While your brain will offer you many, many thoughts in a day, you can direct your mind, choose thoughts intentionally, and choose to create a new reality for yourself.
Key concepts in this podcast are:
Thoughts are not facts
Thoughts are not inherently true
Facts are neutral
Brains think in stories
Your stories will feel true and valid
Your stories are not necessarily helpful
It doesn't matter if your story is true, it matters more that it is useful or not useful to the result you want to create
We don't want to create an incesssantly positive experience
Negative emotion is necessary and useful and we will sometimes choose it
Circumstances do not create your experience, you do
Things will happen, facts will exist, what you do with them is what matters to you
It's time to just speak some truth into you.
So many dancers get so hard on themselves and start to forget just how amazing they are. So in this episode I just want to cheerlead you for a minute.
It's short and sweet but I want to show you just some of the ways that you are truly exceptional.
In this follow up podcast episode to #16 Interference, we discuss what to do about the interference you experience in your dancing.
In episode 16 we introduced being aware of what interference are a problem for you, how they affect your life and how you show up, and began dis-identifying, or de-personalizing, with them.
In this episode, we discuss what to do next.
Step one--Awareness--Become aware of what interferences are a problem for you and how they affect your dancing.
Step two--Commitment-- Assess your commitment level. Do you really want to change this?
Step three--Belief--Assess your belief level. Do you think you can actually change these things?
Step four--Be willing to be wrong. In order to change it, you have to be willing to let go of what you believe now and be wrong about yourself and how this works for you.
Step five-- Decide who you want to be. You show up in certain ways now, but to show up differently, decide intentionally what you want that to look like instead.
Step six-- Begin living into the new you. If you want to approach it differently, you've got to approach it differently. We start in the small moments and have a ton of patience and compassion as we start transitioning into the future version of us
Know that when you start to unlearn old patterns and relearn new ones, there will be a transition pattern where you go back and forth. Sometimes you will still default to old interferences--feel self doubt, anxiety, fear, indulge in comparison and worry what people think. Nothing has gone wrong. You aren't doomed. Just try again the next time. Just like when you are learning new techniques in dance, sometimes you will get the new figures, and sometimes you won't and for a while you will get them inconsistently before they start manifesting most of the time. Just keep working on it. Focus on living into the person you WANT to BE rather than focusing on what is or has been. You've got this!
When a competition is approaching, my friends will ask me, "Are you excited for your next competition?" And while I am usually excited, it is mixed with a hefty side of "I don't feel ready." I kind of laugh and say, "I don't feel ready, but I'll take what I got and see how we do." Truly I am not too upset about this. I used to think it was a problem to not be "ready."
I finally decided one day that I will probably always feel not ready. I don't feel ready because in the back of my head I always know that there is more to be done. I am not done developing, and so I will always know there is room for improvement. In fact, I will never bring a fully ready, fully polished, complete dancer to a competition. I will always be a work in progress. I am certain that even the pros feel they have areas they can improve upon and are striving to reach them.
So I like to think about dance competitions like track meets. Kids who go to track meets are never "ready." They always have a short amount of time to prepare and then just go and compete with whatever they have. The track season is only 2 months long around here, 3 at the most, and can you imagine if they just prepared for 3 months and then had one meet? That kind of doesn't even make sense. They get way more benefit out of competing every week as they go.
So it goes with us. We prepare in whatever time we have, and then we go to a competition. We bring whatever we have. Your brain will tell you all the things that you don't have, but your job is to redirect to what you do have. What has improved since last time? What are your strengths? In what ways are you prepared? And also, remind yourself that it's okay that there are some things that haven't fully developed yet. That is the way of it. That's to be expected.
After you compete, you have a whole new set of data you can use to inform your next steps. There are some things that you can only learn in competition. Some things cannot be replicated in a lesson or any other environment. And the only way to get better at competing is to compete. You take that data, you apply it, work some more, gain some new skills, and then compete again. Just like those track kids.
You don't need to be ready. You probably won't feel ready. But that means you are right on track. Don't let "I don't feel ready" be the reason that you hold yourself back. Honestly, in my opinion, competing is where you will gain the most improvement the quickest. It's the best teacher there is.
There are lots of things to fear in the ballroom world. Some things my clients offer up in sessions are: forgetting choreography, losing timing, messing up, falling down, fainting, not making finals, not placing, not winning, scoring poorly, judges marks, disappointing coaches and teachers, wasting their time.
But I want to simplify this for you. The thing that you really fear isn't any of the above. The only thing we really fear is a feeling. If you dug a little in any of the above, you'll find that at the heart of it, the worst thing that can happen is a feeling. An emotion.
Anything you want in life is because of how you believe it will make you feel when you have it. Similarly, anything you avoid in life is because there is a feeling you don't want to feel.
This is very good news. Feelings are just vibrations in our body. They are temporary. And we create them in the first place. All of this means they can be managed. And while we don't have to love negative emotions, we certainly don't need to fear them. Think of all the things we do and worry about all to avoid feeling bad.
You create the feelings yourself when you give meaning to the outcome. Whatever happened, you decide what it means with your thoughts. It's in the way that you think about it. However you frame it will largely determine how it feels. And many times you will still choose to be disappointed or feels shame or embarrassment. Because negative emotions aren't meant to be banished. They have a purpose and many are clean emotions that help us cope and move through situations.
Since the worst thing that can happen is a feeling, and you can create feelings yourself, then the only thing you really have to fear is YOU and how you will treat yourself in the end.
That is all in your control. Choose to not use results against yourself and you won't have much to fear. This will relieve so much unnecessary stress and pressure from your experience! Listen in for more.
You might be tempted to think of uncontested rounds as a waste. You might think they don't count and that the first place win isn't real. I want to push back on that. There are ways to think about uncontested rounds that will serve you much better.
First, consider that if you are dancing uncontested that it means no one else you age, at your level was willing to show up and do the hard thing of competing. This makes you a rarity in this case. If another team doesn't show up for a match, and you did, they forfeit and you win. You get the win. Your first place counts. It counts because you still practiced and prepared and showed up when no one else did. You still danced as well as you would have otherwise, did you not? Did you dance less? Did you try less hard? Doubtful.
Uncontested rounds are valuable. Every time you compete, you get better at competing. Every time you step on that floor under the pressure of spectators watching and judges judging, you get better at competing. In the case of uncontested rounds, this is a good time to focus on your performance quality. You get to focus on your presentation, your smile, your partnering, etc, without the same pressure as trying to be perfect in your technique and try to beat other competitors. It's an opportunity to dance a little more relaxed and show your brain it is possible to dance and compete and feel a little pressure about it. At times you may even find yourself as the only couple on the floor. This is akin to a showcase and is excellent practice at having all eyes on you.
When you discount uncontested wins, it's part of a bigger problem--diminishing your successes. Many of us were conditioned by a motivation source that included fear, anxiety, and low self worth. We were raised with the idea that we need to feel we are bad in order to motivate us to be good. That is one way to do it. Buy when you diminish your successes, you make them less desirable. You create a situation where no success will be enough. This will make your successes unsatisfying.
When success feels good, you will want more of it. It IS possible to celebrate and think you're awesome AND still get better. It doesn't always lead to complacency. Celebrate more. Take every win you can get. You earn each one. Learn all you can from uncontested rounds and use them to your benefit. Whether they are a waste or not is totally up to you.
In this episode, we share 3 mental skills you can develop to be more resilient and mentally strong at competitions.
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Attentional Control-- You are responsible for directing your attention and then holding it. Whatever you give your attention, you give power. Additionally, whatever you allow into your attention, you will have to manage your mind around. Constraining your attention, then, is probably the greatest factor in how you feel at competitions. Know what helps you and what doesn't. You might decide to not even look at heatlists ahead of time. If knowing who is dancing, how many people you are dancing against, or other details, will throw you off or stress you out, don't look at them. On the other hand, if surprises throw you off, you may choose to have all the information so that you feel prepared and know what to expect. In the long run, you can learn to let more input in and be more resilient no matter the circumstances. But if something is a problem, try giving it less attention and importance.
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Focusing on the present--One place to practice directing your attention is to the present moment. When you bring the past into the future, you may be bringing negative emotion into the present. Past competitions, even previous heats that didn't go well, don't need to come with you into the future. You can practice resetting quickly after setbacks. The past isn't often relevent to the now. We just keep bringing it forward. This can bring guilt, fear and worry into the present. You gotta have a short memory. Focusing on the future creates anxiety when you think about how you are going to do, what your results are going to be, what judges are going to decide about you, etc. Because the future is unpredictable and uncontrollable, it feels unstable and our brain can't grasp on to anything. This generates anxiety and fear. Keep your mind in the present moment--what you need to be doing NOW. Focus on skills, partnering, making decisions about the now, making adjustments to the now. Practice keeping your attention in the present.
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Emotional Regulation--It's your responsibility to attend to your emotions. When you need soothing or settling down, you have the ability to do that. You might just not be very practiced at it. When you need to be amped up, or cheerlead yourself, you can do that too. It's important you address stress early on, because if you wait until you are having a breakdown, it will be much harder to turn it around very quickly. We all have a threshold where we "go over the edge" with stress and we want to keep ourselves away from the edge. This means noticing our emotional state and addressing it earlier on with stress reducing techniques, self-talk, and attentional control.
Put these three things into practice in your every day life. Applying it to your everyday as well as your dancing will make it a part of you and you will start to feel more in control of yourself in higher pressure situations.
If all you needed was talent and training to execute your highest performance, we would all be wildly successful. But something is getting in the way. That something being us. We create interference.
In this episode, we explore two categories of interference, internal and external. Internal is initiated from us, and external involves other people and other things outside of us.
Internal interference includes things like self-doubt, fear, anxiety, guilt, hesitation, self-pity, over-thinking, toxic perfectionism, impatience, indecision, criticism, and victim mentality. Most of these are emotions that we create ourselves with our thinking and mindset.
External interference includes things like comparison, mind-reading, unsupportive spouses, studio drama, people-pleasing, what other people think, including teachers, other dances, coaches and judges, and using competition outcomes against ourselves. These serve as distractions and derail us from our productive path. In the end, they are also internal as we use them to create an emotional state that affects us like the internal interferences we discussed earlier.
For now, I want you to first identify your pet interferences and notice how they affect your dancing. Secondly, your job is to dis-identify with them. They are not an inherent, unchangeable part of you. If you believe that, you will never be able to overcome them.
In future episodes I'll tell you what to do about it. But for now, figure out what yours are, see how they affect you, and start to disentangle yourself from them.
When you are headed home from a ballroom competition and everything went pretty well, and yet you feel down, I have some ideas about what might be happening. In this episode I give you three reasons this might be the case.
- Biological Pain
In her book, Dopamine Nation, Anna Lembke, MD, describes a mechanism where after the brain releases dopamine and other pleasure related neurotransmitters, it will then create pain to counter it in an attempt to return the body to homeostasis. The pleasure and pain centers overlap in the brain and are related to one another in this way.
This is not your fault, very human, and is just the brain doing what human brains do. There is not much to be done other than let time pass and not judge yourself for feeling bad even if it doesn't make sense to you.
- Expectation Pain
Sometimes we feel pain post-competition because we had expectations that weren't met. If we have goals and want to perform to a certain level, and then we don't, we will be bummed about that. Maybe even mad. It isn't bad to have expectations but sometimes we have expectations that aren't approprtiate, or aren't in our control at all. Notice what expectations you might have had. Were you asking more than you were capable at the moment? Did you expect an outcome that was in someone else's hands? Also check to see if you had other expectations about social engagments, interactions with your studios or coaches that didn't materialize. Again, it's okay to have expectations, but some of them might need to be communicated to others so that everyone is clear on what to expect. Other expectations you might need to drop all together and be more flexible or go with the flow, especially when it comes to social situations.
- Thought Pain
Much of the pain we create for ourselves comes from our own minds. How you feel is determined by your thoughts. Think good, positive, empowering thoughts and you will feel good. Think negative, self-punishing, judgmental thoughts and you will feel terrible. Some thought pain is clean pain that is cleansing and helps you process and event and move past it. Other pain is dirty, keeps you stuck and spinning and doesn't lead to healing. Disappointment and sadness can be clean pain. Making your results mean that you are a failure, a bad person, or are an embarrassment won't benefit you and will actually be a detriment to you in the end. Beating yourself up might lead to change sometimes but it also usually leads to burnout, and it's a tremendous waste of energy. Be picky about how you think. Be picky about how you choose to view your results. Choose intentionally what you want to think about your competition results. Then get back on your feet sooner.
A dance crush is a real thing. There are many reasons this can happen and for the most part it is harmless and doesn't have to be a problem. In this episode we discuss some reasons why it happens and why it's totally normal and even expected.
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The dance teacher is the professional and shows up as such. They have an investment in you staying on as a client and will treat you well to make that happen, as they should. They put their best foot forward and are (hopefully) on their best behavior. They are nice, encouraging, and bring out the best in your dancing.
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There is physical closeness. There aren't a lot of people that we let inside our personal space. A dance teacher gets that special privilege. Culturally, everything we do with a dance partner is similar to if we were dating someone. Being close, touching hands and such, expressing emotion all are also found in romantic relationships.
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Sometimes we just want what we can't have.
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You love dancing and so do they. You are working toward a common goal. You respect their talent and expertise and they may respect yours as well. The lead/follow dynamic can be attractive when the other person is in charge.
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Dancing will produce the feel good endorphins produced in physical activity. Oxytocin, the cuddle hormone, can be produced by being close to another person, touching them, and feeling connection, bonding and trust.
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The brain can get confused about where the acting ends and real life begins. It can't tell the difference between these signals and the ones given off in romantic relationships. This is called transference when the brain starts seeing the partner as a romantic situation rather than a working situation.
None of this is your fault, and it is mostly harmless, especially when you realize why it happens.
It becomes a problem when it interferes in your outside relationships, when the feelings get in the way and distract from the dancing, and when feelings are unrequited and result in an awkward exchange, embarrassment and often the end of the partnership.
To keep the boundaries clear in your mind, you need to be the one to frame this relationship so that your brain understands what is really going on here. Rather than leaving your brain to guess, you need to tell it.
--Remind yourself of the true nature of this partnership: it is paid. You have hired them to teach you to dance. That is the literal nature of your relationship.
--Just because you have chemistry on the dance floor does not mean you have chemistry in real life. You only know them in this container. And remember, they are being their professional self because they are at work!
--Reframe your feelings so that you see it as the DANCING that makes you happy, rather than the partner. It's dancing you love. It's dancing that produces the good feeling hormones and we can assign the feelings to the activity rather than the person.
--Notice other relationships that you have in which you respect and admire someone you are around a lot. You feel good around them, work well together, care about one another, but you don't have to DO anything about it or act on any feelings you have. You just enjoy each other's company and work together toward some common goals. It could be a friend or a coworker. This can be the same.
The dance crush is common and doesn't have to be a problem. The key to get clear in your head about what is really going on and then consistently remind yourself of the boundaries of the partnership. It requires discipline to keep your head in the right place, but when you do, you get to enjoy the partnership for the long term and avoid complications that can end a beautiful thing.
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Anxiety is a common topic as I coach ballroom dancers, but also in society as a whole. In this episode, I bring up 6 ways we inadvertently increase anxiety in the dance world, along with a remedy for each one.
- Having anxiety about your anxiety
This introduces a fight or flight response and doubles your anxiety. Making anxiety a problem and focusing upon it also distracts you from your task at hand--dancing. To overcome this, REFRAME anxiety so that it isn't a problem. It's normal and expected in this situation. Expand your vocabulary to include other words like nervous, uncertain, apprehensive, hesitant, etc. Consider that adrenaline also feels like anxiety. Learn to work with it instead of wishing it away. This will actually lessen it's effect.
- Jumping mentally from the past to the future
Allowing past mistakes haunt you will create anxiety. Bringing negative past events into the present and then extrapolating that it will happen again in the future doesn't stop it from happening. But it will make you feel worse. As much as you can, be in the present moment. Focus on what you need to be DOING and try not to use your imagination to predict doom and gloom. The past can stay in the past. There is only here and now. Keep your focus there.
- Looking too far into the future
This increases anxiety when you set goals that are too far into the future. The gap between where you are now and where you want to be can generate frustration and anxiety when that gap is too large. This feels overwhelming and puts pressure on you to be further along than might be appropriate. Shorten the gap and bring your goals closer. What is just the next step? It should feel challenging, but doable.
- Setting unrealistic expectations
Even with short-term goals, we can increase anxiety when we set expectations that are too high. Setting appropriate objectives means they will stretch you, but not overly stress you. Check to see how it feels. Then scale it back until it feels possible and motivating.
- Focusing on the outcome
When we focus too much on what is going to happen (win/lose), we stop living in the present. Focusing on the outcome is a problem when we make the outcome mean something about us. If our self esteem depends on whether we win or lose, the personal stakes go way up. This will generate pressure and anxiety. Return to the present and focus on what you need to DO. Do your job in the present with full attention, and the outcome will take care of itself.
- Trying to control the uncontrollable
Trying to control the outcome is not in your power. Other things that you can't control include all the people. You can't control what they think and feel. Not the spectators, the judges, your partner, coaches, other dancers, etc. Putting you mind on them will increase your anxiety. Maintain focus on what is in your control--YOU. That's it. You can control your preparation, your thoughts and feelings, your attention, your food, water, rehearsals, etc. Giving your attention to things you can't control is a waste of your precious energy.
Go to https://amberhaider.com for more info
Sometimes getting started and simply taking action is the best way to get unstuck. Seems like a no brainer but it can be hard to overcome the part of our brain that just likes us to stay the same and stay right where we are.
In this episode, we talk about 2 reasons you aren't getting started/are procrastinating. The first is the Motivational Triad, and the second (related) is our reluctance to feel negative emotion.
Getting started can help in 3 ways.
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Getting started creates momentum
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Getting started generates motivation
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Getting started helps to overcome the fear and resistance keeping up stuck
We talk about some do's and don'ts for getting started to make it easier on yourself and wrap up with a couple of techniques to light a fire under you.
Find out more about how to work with me at amberhaider.com
Feeling behind is a normal and common feeling for dancers. Unfortunately for most of us, it isn't useful. When we feel like we are behind, we tend to feel self-pity and disappointment. These kinds of emotions aren't motivating. So ultimately, believing you are behind can lead to you dedicating yourself less and eventually quitting. We don't want that!
When you are feeling behind it's because you are measuring yourself in one (or all) of three ways:
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Measuring yourself against a standard of skill or progress
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Measuring yourself against a timeline or deadline
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Measuring yourself against another person
Listen in to hear how when we break these down and really examine them, that they don't make a lot of sense and won't produce the results we want.
Banish feeling behind. Don't measure yourself in this way. If you must measure yourself, do so by looking backward and seeing how far you have come.
Making decisions is a powerful skill you need to change your life in short order. It's the quickest way to get unstuck. In this episode, we talk about the problems with being indecisive, why we don't make decisions, and why we should get better at this starting today!
Problems with being indecisive:
–energy suck
–give brain power to the back and forth instead of action
–open-ended to do list of decisions to be made
–exhausting
–keeps you stuck, no forward momentum
You’ll know if you’re in indecision
–confusion
–I don’t know statements, I don’t know if I should…
–overwhelm
–procrastination
–Not moving forward, feel stuck
Why don’t we make decisions?
–We think there is a right or wrong decision (morally?)
–Don’t want to do “wrong” or make a mistake
–Don’t want to feel negative emotion
–Making the decision will require we actually take action, which is risky
–Perfectionism
–Want to skip trial and error
Brain secrets:
Confusion and Indecision are a smoke screen
Brain wants you to stay the same and stay safe
Motivational Triad: Seek pleasure, Avoid pain, Conserve Energy
Decisions
–free up mental energy
–give you momentum
–Get you unstuck
–Live consciously
–Tell you what you need to know
What to do??
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Pick a decision
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Write it down
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Make the decision
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Make the decision right
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Prove it to yourself
An unsupervised brain will cause lots of problems for you if you don't tell it what to do. So before every ballroom competition, it's wise to get your head on strait. Just take a little time to set yourself up for success by setting your intentions ahead of time. In this podcast I give you 4 prompts to help you do some pre-competition self coaching. Each competition will look a little different, but this is a good place to start.
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Why are you doing this competition? What will you define as success for this particular competition?
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Are your expectations appropriate? Is what you expect for yourself in line with your current preparations and capability?
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Be clear about what is within your control and what is not. Focusing on what you can't control will create anxiety for you. The only thing you can truly control is you.
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Decide ahead of time how you will feel. Decide for each juncture on the competition experience. How do you want to feel in the leading up phase? How do you want to feel during the heat of competition? How do you want to feel afterwards, no matter what?
Food for thought:
--Remember that the time for prep is done. By the time you are getting to competition, there is nothing more you can really implement at this point. So be willing to let go a little and believe that you are ready. What you have prepared up to this point is enough. It's perfect, in fact, for where you are now. You will put what you have to the test and learn what you need to do going forward to get better.
--Try to empty your mind of all the tiny directions you give yourself. Trust your body to do what it has been practicing. Over-instructing yourself can cause problems. If you must instruct yourself, pick a couple key words but don't over do it. Get out of your head a little more and into your body.
--I like to remind myself this is all for fun. I am in my 40's and just started dancing a couple years ago. I tell myself that I am play dancing. This thought won't work for everyone, but it works to settle me the crap down so I can enjoy myself. I dance so much better if I am enjoying myself. I do this for fun and so I insist it be fun.
--After all is said and done, always be kind to yourself. Never use dancing against yourself. Dancing is here to grow and expand you. It's not meant to hurt you, punish you or create any internal battles with yourself. So no matter the outcomes, always extend yourself grace and be kind. You can take this seriously, compete fiercely and win a LOT without self-recrimination.
https://amberhaider.com
I'm all about setting goals and trying to achieve them. But for some reason, when I start on a new goal, sometimes I set rules around it that make it even harder than necessary to accomplish. In this episode, I offer a work of warning to look out for when you are sabotaging yourself by making your goals harder. I give some examples from my own life so you can avoid making the same mistakes. When I made my goals easier to accomplish, it paid off in way more ways that I could have even predicted.
https://amberhaider.com
Comparison is the thief of joy. Whenever we compare ourselves to another person, have you noticed that you rarely come out on top? When you decide you are one-down, you feel negatively about yourself and it creates negative results for you. There is really no upside to doing this.
I think it's normal to compare ourselves to others since we are a tribal, social species and we care about our standing in the group. For this reason, I don't think we should judge the fact that we do compare ourselves, we just need to know how to manage it and not make it a bigger issue than it needs to be. I also think that for this reason, we probably will never get rid of it all together.
In this podcast, I talk about the variety of seeds in the world to show you how fruitless it is to compare yourself to another dancer. There literally is no comparison because the variables between you are so plentiful.
When comparison comes up for you, I want you to be able to remind yourself that it's not relevant to you and be able to dismiss it more readily.
Now, there is one situation in which "comparison" might be ok but we will call it modeling instead. If you can look at another dancer and see what they are doing differently than you, but use it as data, as information, and use it to help inform your dancing and improve it, then have at it! Modeling can exponentially improve your dancing. The key is to not use the information you gather against yourself. If you aren't able to do that, then, for now, look the other way.
Go to https://amberhaider.com for more info on how to get direct help from Amber Haider Coaching
There are many ways to evaluate after a competition, but here is a simple 3 step, easy to remember way to evaluate.
Evaluation is key to getting better. The more you evaluate your dancing, the quicker you can figure out what you need to address next and the quicker you will progress. Don't skip evaluating your comps!
First, look at what went well. Do this FIRST. Be profuse, don't hold back, be as detailed as possible. Show yourself what went well so you can repeat and solidify it.
Second, loot at what didn't go well. Don't be profuse. Don't belabor it and don't overdo it. We just need to look long enough to figure out what we are going to do about it, which leads to step three...
Step three is to figure out what you will do differently. What did you learn, and how are you going to apply it going forward?
Simple!
For more information on how to work with Amber Haider one-on-one, visit amberhaider.com
Imagine you are the driver of a chariot pulled by 4 horses. If you do not train those horses, and if you don't pick up the reins and guide them, you would be pulled in different directions and experience a chaotic nightmare. Now imagine those horses are your mind. Are you driving the chariot or is your mind driving you?
This analogy is meant to show you how learning to train and manage the "horses" in your head take some effort, but it can be done. The goal is to manage your mind and regulate your emotions. If you can learn mind management and emotional regulation, there is nothing you can't accomplish.
Excerpt from The Practicing Mind, Thomas M. Sterner is mentioned
https://www.amberhaider.com
If you don't like practice, you won't want to do it; it's that simple. This episode offers three ways we make practice undesirable and how to approach it instead.
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Judgment --If you punish yourself, judge your dancing and focus on what's not going well, you will not like practicing.
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Impatience--Thinking you are supposed to be further along than you are, waiting until the finish line to be happy, and preconceived expectations lead to frustration, anxiety, disappointment and depression.
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Making practice work--If you like an activity, you call it play. If you don't, you call it work. Thinking of practice as drudgery or a nuisance on the way to an end goal will make it undesirable and you won't want to do it.
Listen in for solutions.
Book reference The Practicing Mind, Thomas M. Sterner
Practicing dance can feel so hard sometimes. We know how important practicing is to ballroom and technique development, but when our growth slows down, practicing seems less fruitful. But this isn't the reason you have backed off. It's because of how you are THINKING about practicing. In this episode, we examine what you might be thinking that is holding you back and how to let go of those limiting beliefs.
Once you identify your limiting thoughts, here's some questions to ask yourself to show yourself that not only are these thoughts not helpful to get you practicing again, but they are usually downright false.
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Is it true
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Can you absolutely know it's true?
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What does this thought get you/result in?
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How would the experience change if you didn't have this type of thinking?
Watch yourself think, let negative thinking go, choose what you DO want to think and then repeat over and over again. The more you do it, the better you get at it...just like practicing.
You can expect your dance journey to go through the following stages:
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Rapid Growth--new, fun, low pressure, focused on improvement and learning
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Growth Slows--becomes more formalized, start competing, become outcome focused, more pressure
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Growth Stops--we perceive less success, gradually give less effort and commit mini quits until we really quit.
The sweet spot is right between stages one and two. That's where we will keep our dance journey focused!
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It's important to know your "why" for dancing and return to it often. When the going gets tough in your dance journey, zoom out, get perspective and reset yourself in alignment with your why.
Go here for more info on ballroom mental strength coaching with me, get on my email list or find my social media handles!
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