Life Lessons From A Ballerina

My first year taking dance at university was spent in frustration as we toiled away on the monotony of perfecting our most basic postures and positions. We spent hours a day in technique class, working with partners to correct every minute detail. The boredom eventually passed and frustration began to subside, once I realized the value of returning to rudimentary lessons in order to solidify the foundation of our movement.

    Lesson #1:  Sometimes you have to go back to move forward.
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I wasn’t at the top of my class in terms of my technique, but working in pairs to assess our classmate’s form allowed me to develop a keen eye for physical detail as well as diplomacy when delivering corrections. While I don’t spend much time on dance technique these days, the 2nd - and more essential- lesson I gleaned from this time in school continues to be relevant today: Someone else can always see your flaws more readily than you can.

This is where the power of having a mentor or coach comes into play; in dance, in your career or in life. A coach or mentor can see the bigger picture and offer a different perspective to your own. This increased perspective is what allows us to improve ourselves and reach the next rung on the ladder towards our goals.

"Coaching is unlocking a person's potential
​to maximize their growth."
~John Whitmore

Many organizations have mentorship programs available for the purpose of growing yourself within your career. While some people may have a manager who is also their mentor, this scenario is unlikely as they fill 2 very different needs within the organization. If your place of work doesn’t offer a mentorship program, take time to seek out a mentor for yourself. Find someone you can trust to deliver honest and useful feedback, hold you accountable to your goals and offer advice when deciding on next steps. This kind of partnership can stay with you, as the foundation to lifelong learning, wherever your career takes you. Which brings me to my final lesson of my education in dance, lesson #3 …

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​There are always greater lessons to be learned, outside of just the activity at hand. 

​At 18, struggling through my university education, I didn’t know that my experience there was preparing me for life beyond the dance world. Similar to this, you might not realize that the professional development being offered at work can serve you in more places than just the office. Employers care about developing you as an employee, and that’s a great thing. But when it comes to other aspects of your life as a parent, spouse, neighbour, sports coach, volunteer, or community leader, YOU have the opportunity to transfer your work skills and apply them to the benefit of yourself and those around you.

Being in the position of helping people with their own personal development, I’m inclined to offer a biased opinion, that the value of investing your time and money into personal development pays off in spades! Maybe your ROI comes in the form of a promotion at work, or maybe it comes from healthier, happier relationships with family and friends ... what if the only outcome was an unwavering confidence in yourself and your ability to learn new things. Wouldn’t that alone be worth it? 
We live in the information age, which at times, can be daunting and even overwhelming. But if we allow ourselves to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge available to us, we might surprise ourselves with how much we could learn and grow. 

"The value of a college education is not the learning of facts
but the training of the mind to think."
~ Albert Einstein

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