You're Better Than You Think You Are

I found this old email I had written years ago to my younger sibling. I want to share these things that have been uplifting and inspiring to me.

I was talking to mom earlier today and telling her about this dance audition I tried out for yesterday, and she let me know how you were performing a piano recital that got a little overwhelming. 

Earlier this week in my dance class, my teacher taught us a lesson about stumbling blocks that we have. She gave us each a block and told us to write on it something negative that we often tell ourselves when we're dancing around others. I wrote "I can't do that" because I often worried that I can't do something quite as well as someone else and others will notice. My teacher then told us to try dancing with the block, and it was kind of hard sometimes - this was supposed to be symbolic of how holding onto those stumbling blocks we have actually makes things harder. Then she said that we needed to put the blocks down when we were ready and instead of saying "no" to the bad idea, we had to replace the negative thoughts with better thoughts. I replaced mine with "I am the only one who can dance the way that I do."

When I went to this dance audition, I was worried about keeping up with others who were much better than I was, but I told myself to just have fun and not worry about the pressure of getting accepted or not. The first half of the audition went better than it had last year, but when the third part came where I had to quickly learn to dance a more difficult piece, I was so scared about getting these karate-looking jumps right that I felt like just walking out of the room and giving up because I thought I couldn't do it. I remembered the lesson, though, whether or not I could do the jumps didn't matter so much as me showing how I can dance. It helped immediately and I was able to learn the jumps a bit better and my friends let me know how well I had done. I know I messed up a lot, but I gained a lot from giving it a chance than giving up.

So I hope you'll try to replace your negative thoughts with positive ones, because reality always is that you're better than you think you are.