Ballroom State of Mind

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 thinkin...

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 overthink...

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...

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....

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 th...

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. Y...

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...

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 a...

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 no...

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 Book a Dance Strategy Call HERE Join Joyful Ballroom HERE

Watching yourself dance on video can be excruciating! But it's a skill I think you should develop. In this podcast, I offer the reasons I think we hate it so much, why you should do it anyway, and how to approach the process to make it easier on yourself. Reasons we don't like watching ourselves dance on video: 1. Our negatively biased brain makes is a negative experience Your brain is gre...

"Why am I so negative all the time?!" Ever noticed how you are being negative about your negativity? This episode addresses negativity so you can make peace with it, get over it, and move on with an intentional, more forward moving mindset. The stages you might go through as you work on this are the following: Stage 1: Unintentional or unconscious negativity--You get swept up in it and i...

A small competition might seem like a waste of time and/or money because you might not have a lot of competitors to compete against. But not so fast! In this episode I want to share just 4 reasons I love small competitions. While I wouldn't do exclusively small competitions or make that the main gig that I do, there is a lot of value to be had in a small comp and you can totally leverage it an...

In the book The Inner Game of Tennis, we learn about the concept of Self One and Self Two. Anyone who has tried to get themselves to do anything can relate to this concept. There is a Self One who instructs and a Self Two who carries out the action. The relationship between these two matters a lot. This is especially because Self Two is actually VERY capable of learning and applying things very qu...

The River of Misery is what I call that transition place between where you are now and where you want to get to in your life. Becoming a new version of yourself, or even just a better dancer, requires some hard work. Your brain has to work harder to break old habits and patterns and create new ones. So it tries to stop you and keep you where you are. The River of Misery feels like work. And there’...

We talked about the darkside of perfectionism in podcast #51 recently, and so now it's time to talk about how to overcome it. 1. Watch yourself. Pay attention to the parts of perfectionism that you like and those you don't. Sift through them so you know what parts can continue to serve you and what parts we want to change. For example, let's keep working hard, wanting to be really good...

My first interview! Yay! I'm thrilled to bring you this chat with Forrest Vance, an icon in the Ballroom Dancesport industry. Forrest Vance is a highly accomplished dancer, teacher, coach, consultant, choreographer, and adjudicator with a career spanning over four decades. He holds all levels of certification and examinations in American and International styles in multiple dance instruction o...

Perfectionism seems so useful. It seems good. It's all about excellence and being the best we can be at something, right? Kind of. There are good parts of perfectionism--the hard work, attention to detail, concientiousness, and high motivation. When perfectionists do accomplish things, it is pretty impressive, right? But the parts of perfectionism that are NOT good are the ones that differenti...

Saying you have so much potential seems like such a nice thing to say. But have you noticed how it can also mean that you aren't good enough now? That if you could just be better then we could be satisfied? Dancers spend way too much time focusing on what they lack. They look to the future and what could be and then feel bad about where they are now. This is a huge disservice that you are doin...

When dancers are thinking about how to train, I think it's pretty obvious what the standard methods are. Take lessons, practice on your own, participate in outside coaching, do some group lessons, workshops, social dancing, and perform or compete regularly. Not a mystery. What I want to talk about today are ways you can train that you might not have thought of. These are ways that you can use...

In this episode, I introduce the tool known as the Alter Ego. This concept came from the book The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman. This is a useful tool if you have limiting beliefs about what is possible for you, if you have a story about yourself that you just can't shake, or if you have tried and tried to show up differently at competitions but you just can't seem to do it. Many high performers...

Everyone wants more confidence. What is confidence anyway? Everyone likely has their own definition of what that looks like and what it means. I recommend that if you want more confidence, you get more specific about what you mean by that. Get a good idea in your head so that you know who it is you are trying to be. What is that confident version of you thinking, feeling and doing? But maybe more...

Sometimes when you have been working on your mindset, you can find yourself in a time when it doesn't seem to be working. You can be trying all the tools and concepts and trying to change things, but it feels hard and you might think you're doing something wrong. Well, you aren't. But you might just be resisting your emotions and using mindset work to try to bypass them. How will you know? Well if...

Schedule a free Dance Strategy Call HERE How many of you have had the experience where you have just finished a performance of some kind, and you run up to someone who watched it and asked, “What did you think?” and then they proceeded to make a negative comment? "Uhhh it was fine. Wasn’t your best performance but it was pretty good." Tough feedback is hard. We’ve all had it. Even those people who...

Subtractive thinking is one of the simplest things that you can change to have a big impact on your mental toughness. Subtractive thinking are just thoughts that take away from you. They start with words like, "I can't..." "I'm not..." "I don't know how to..." "I'm not able to...". These thoughts are sneaky because it seems like you are just telling me the news...just describing what is. But these...