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.

1. 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.

2. 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--

1. Prepare more thoroughly. End of story.

2. Stop trying to control the uncontrollables

In the short term, you have a tips to consider.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

1. 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?

2. 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.

1. 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.

2. 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. 

3. 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. 

4. 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. 

5. 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.

6. 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.

1. 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?

2. 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.

3. 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?

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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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