momentum’s good and evil
Dancers look out.
Here is a phenomenon that I find particularly worrying with students who are on their way to excellence.
Momentum is a wonderful thing. When you have victories under your belt, it’s much easier to rack up more. The confidence aids in your ability to do something better -again- and you feel great about yourself.
Momentum is a horrible thing. With additional success, the sting of ‘failure’ burns more intensely.
Inevitably, the better you become at something the more it tries to become part of your self-view.
Resist this. In some areas of life it can seriously hurt you.
Sadly, I have watched dancers altogether quit because of their accomplishments. When things became tough, it was more important to salvage their self-view (ego) than to push through the difficulties.
To all of my readers and Paso dancers: in life, please don’t ever intertwine wins or losses with your self-view.
If you can smile when you win and smile when you lose, you will always smile…and win much more often.
Related posts:
I’ve decided that I just need to make a list of all the feelings that I get about my dancing, and link each one to a Paso blogpost about that.
Frustration–there’s a post.
Stall in learning and progressing–there’s a post.
Not enjoying myself in class as much as I should–there’s another post.
*sigh*