Opening Yourself to Review, Assessment and Goal Setting.

No one wants to be stagnant, but few are comfortable pushing past the familiar and safe. Everyone wants to be creative, yet the distinction between new and imitation is hard to discern. Few want to be reviewed, yet many want to succeed.

What can be done? If you are not used to self assessment, step outside yourself and acquire some input. Dancers and other artists rely on this. They need an 'outside eye' to guide their creativity, and make their expression reach an audience.

1) Learn to 'read the air' of your immediate surroundings. Pay close attention to the response of others around you. Notice their body language their facial expressions and their comments (if you are lucky that they elicit something more than polite neutral remarks). Notice if others engage with you or check out. Dancers tune into the stillness of their audience and the tone of the applause.

2) Do not expect others to recognize the mini-achievements you make until they amount to a collection of progressions. Until then, watch for the tiniest of personal break-throughs. Pat yourself on the back when you notice the slightest advancements. Be careful not to admonish yourself for not being 100%. As a side note, you are supposed to face adversity and difficulty; so that when you can, you will truly be able to help someone else along their life's challenges. Dancers are famous for being critical of themselves, yet learn to persevere past their inadequacies to achieve exceptional feats.

3) Ask for feedback and advice. Then be sure to incorporate some or all the input, otherwise you will not be given much more in the future. Some give helpful considerate input, others just seem to lend criticism. Do not get discouraged. Sift through the well-intended, but negative comments as much as you do with the cheers from your fans. Find some sensible ground to navigate your course. Dance teachers, coaches, critics, and audience members may all have different tastes and opinions, but dancers learn to navigate the discrepancies and nurture their art form.

4) Take a chance. Be an individual. Often the crowd culture will hold you back. Do not be afraid to look funny, fail, or find new acquaintances to support your goals. Some of the greatest mistakes are in fact successes: chocolate chip cookies, popsicles, silly putty and more! Skepticism is one way friends and family 'protect' us from failure. There is no such thing as failure if you learn from it and get back on course. Dancers learn that if you stumble, you make it part of the dance. You can apply a similar philosophy to your life.

Conversely, if you are comfortable with self assessment, and can do it without beating yourself up, notice when you are sometimes on target and when you slip. That is the place where you are likely to make a break-through. Start there with your efforts. Progress is on its way, but it needs to be nurtured and carefully guided. Weed out the distractions and stay the course. Impatience is a common obstacle. Small frustrations, too, can steer us away from a success that is often right around the corner.

Aim for consistency. Achieving a goal is the first step; the ability to live the goal requires the ability to repeat it. Pulling-off a quadruple pirouette once is exciting, but worth nothing unless a choreographer knows the skill is reliable. Practice, practice, practice! Turn your 'can't' into 'could.' Be an example to others to make it stick. Sometimes teaching someone else reinforces your ability. Soon you will have confidence in yourself and not only will you achieve goal #1, but you will have experience to apply to future goals.

At first, do not seek the goals that are not near your capacity to achieve right now, but do not lose site of them either. Wanting to be a professional dancer is out of the question at the age of six, but a goal such as that is achievable. Consult with a school that is known for nurturing those dreams and helping their students realize them. Then, allow these goals to take shape or evolve into a new dream as you go through life. When you open yourself to review, assessment, and goal setting with others, you close yourself off from isolation, struggle, and the likelihood of a rougher road.