Learning how to dance

I had an aha moment this week about dancing that I wanted to share. We recently signed up for a hip hop class because our friend is running it and we wanted to support her.

I really struggle with the (hard for me) routines and I was telling the instructor after our third class, that I was enjoying it but finding it super challenging. His response made me stop in my tracks. He said that by the end of the year I won’t believe how far I’ve come. Whoa hang a minute, I’m outta here in 4 weeks. What do you mean a whole year? Then it dawned on me. I have done dance classes throughout my life and do you know how long I’ve stuck with them? Just the one term (6-8 weeks) and I’ve never gone back to any of them because I reason that I had done the lessons, I wasn’t any good, it was time to go home. But what our dance teacher said made me realise that expecting to become proficient at dancing after 7 weeks was silly. Of course I needed do keep going. The only way I was going to get better was to keep doing it. I am someone who often quotes, “the more you do, the more you can do” but I had completely overlooked this way of thinking when it came to this long-desired-skill.

On a side note, the rest of the class is full of twenty-somethings and they tell us it’s inspiring to have us in the class. One said that she hoped to be “like us, trying new things when she is our age”. To which I replied, “honey, how old do you think we are?”, and she kindly and cleverly replied, “30’s, 40’s”.

So there you go, not only has making the decision to go to hip hop dancing to support our friend turned into an aha life moment but on the side we’re inspiring young people.

Oh and of couse, dancing is good for fitness and is great for mental agility – all pluses at “at our age”. So many great reasons to dance.