Compare yourself... to yourself and recognize your own achievements!
A revealing year-end review
As part of my end-of-year reflections, I've prepared a short review of what my partner and I have achieved through our dance school during 2024.
Digging through our videos in preparation for this review, I came across our first demos* together in late 2022, when we had just launched our Brazilian zouk school.
Recognizing progress: a proud moment
And watching these videos made me realize just how far we've come in recent years.
All those hours of practice, study and lessons, all the subtleties we've discovered and integrated into our dancing, slowly but surely, through the many hours of dance we've accumulated week after week, and which make our dancing so much more pleasant and fluid... I could now see them right before my eyes!
You'll find a few excerpts from our 2022 and 2024 demos in this video montage. See for yourself!
Comparing yourself to others or to yourself?
The importance of taking a step back
It's often easy to compare ourselves to others and aspire to dance like them, or to get discouraged when we feel we're regressing, having to relearn our basics, or when progress is slow and not very visible...
Sometimes, it's worth taking a step back and thinking about where we started, what we've achieved since then, to better appreciate where we are today.
Moving backwards to move forward better
And sometimes, it takes us a step backwards to allow us to move forward more easily. In other words, all the little detours we can take, which sometimes seem like a waste of time, are often in fact a blessing in disguise!
To each our own path, to each our own progress
A unique perspective for everyone
We all have our own baggage of experiences that shapes our perception and reaction to the events we experience.
So it's not so much how we compare to others as how we compare to ourselves! What's important is our own progress!
Endless progress
When we stop wanting to learn, we somehow block this possibility of continuing to evolve, learn and progress on our life path! We can always choose to learn from our experiences, with the aim of progressing and improving!
I like to think of myself as an eternal student of life!
Your visible and invisible achievements
What makes you proud?
What are you most proud of in recent years?
When I talk about realizations, they can be visible (like my example with dance) but also invisible (like, for example, changes in the way we manage our emotions, our thoughts, our stress, our state of mind, etc.)!
Often, visible and invisible achievements go hand in hand, as is in fact the case for me with dance!
Need a helping hand?
Do you find it hard to see your work? Do you feel that you're "on the spot"?
I invite you to consider one-to-one coaching, where I can help you become aware of your achievements, but also of the elements that could potentially be holding you back.
Give it a try and you'll discover the co-creative power of coaching!
* The term demo here refers to the improvised dances we do at the end of a workshop to illustrate different ways of integrating movements seen in class into a dance.
