Ah, the dreaded burnout, scourge of many a would-be dancer's dreams. Anyone who has taken on too much too fast can relate - and setting New Year's Resolutions is a prime time for that. Hope I reached you in time!
The secret to achieving the goals you set for yourself is not by barreling ahead, trying to get as much done as possible while that initial high lasts - you'll only be making it worse for yourself when reality catches up, as it inevitably will.
Goal is to prepare to make peace for what comes after that honeymoon phase - the grind - by setting smaller, more achievable goals, that put together can truly transform your dancing. Here's how I apply this philosophy in my own life.
Transcript:
Setting new goals is great, but the time and energy required to achieve them can often feel like we're taking on an extra two bags of groceries every time we go to the supermarket - it's heavy, awkward, and eventually we will drop that weight.
In our personal lives when this happens, we usually refer to it as burnout. But why does burnout happen? And what can you do to prevent it?
My name is Ian Crewe, and I'm an instructor at the Joy of Dance Centre in Toronto, Ontario. I'm also the creator of Social Ballroom Dance: Where you can learn your dance, at your place, on your schedule.
Now the challenge of taking on anything new - like for example, a New Year's resolution - is that it takes us outside of our comfort zone, and the further outside of our comfort zone we go, the more discomfort we will feel.
So for example, if you are occasionally going social dancing at a Latin club and you make the decision that you want to be the best dancer there, you may well be taking on more work than you have the energy for. And you'll end up burning out.
So therefore the secret is setting small, achievable goals, that can tiptoe you in the direction that you want to go.
Now let me clarify this with a story from my personal experience, and then I'll give you three solid tips that you can use in your own life.
When I first started blogging, I didn't know was going to turn into a online dance business; I just knew I wanted to increase my online presence so that people could get to know me better.
I started out with a blog and I posted to it once a week. Over time I started to write for other bloggers as well, and then I got into social media. With each step, I made sure that I understood what I was doing well enough so that I could get more comfortable and more efficient with it, before I moved on to the next thing.
Sometimes I did have to drop things in order to focus more of my energy on what was important to me. For example, I used to write for Dance Comp Review, but ultimately I decided I needed to spend more time working on my own website.
When I finally decided that I wanted to start up an online dance business, all that prior experience, all those little goals that I had achieved made that decision a lot less daunting than it would have been otherwise.
So that's how I used my smaller goals to achieve something much bigger. But now, how can you use that when you're pursuing your own goals and resolutions?
First and perhaps most important, pay attention to your stress levels. See, if you have a high level of stress when you think about taking on something, that is a red flag that it might be more than you can handle right now.
So for example, if taking on a half hour of dance practice every single day creates a lot of anxiety for you, try shortening that to 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes a day.
Break bigger goals into smaller, easily digestible chunks. Going back to our previous example, becoming the most popular social dancer at a club might be a lot to take on. But achieving a few more dances every time you go out - now THAT'S a starting point that you can reach for.
And finally make sure that you master, or at least get more comfortable with the target that you have in front of you before you move on to the next one. I'll give you another example from my life.
When I first started posting to social media, I started just posting once to Facebook daily and even less often to Twitter. My only goal really was to get more comfortable posting on a regular basis, and over time I became more familiar with where I could curate quality material, as well as tools that could make the whole posting process a lot more efficient.
And now I'm able to draw from a variety of different dance blogs and post through HootSuite, which allows me to schedule my posts in advance and send them out to a variety of different social media platforms simultaneously.
And the best part is it takes the same amount of time that it took me before when I didn't really know what I was doing. And that lowers my stress levels down, which means I have more energy now to either get deeper into social media, set a new goal, or to branch out into something else. And this of course is something you could do too.
So now I have a question for you: How do you manage stress in your own work life, and in your personal life? I encourage you to post in the comments below so that others can benefit from your experience and your stories.
And if you had any questions about today you can message me on my Facebook fan page, Ballroom Dancers Anonymous, or you can email me at ian@socialballroom.dance. Next week we are going to go into a strategy that we all use frequently to achieve our goals, setting a schedule that we can actually keep.
And if you liked what you saw today and you'd like to see more, you can either subscribe to my youtube channel and/or you can visit my website and subscribe there - if you do, you'll get four dance videos in the mail that will allow you to start exploring some online dancing yourself.
So thank you very much for watching, and I look forward to seeing you next time, and tell then, happy dancing!