Happiness and Self Sabotage

I’ve been doing some reading on happiness. I guess you could call it a self-motivated happiness project. I didn’t start it because I was unhappy, rather I felt like I was getting into a rather negative habit of self sabotage. Does anyone else feel this way?

I would feel down, which would cause me to spiral into a form of despair and loneliness… I’d exacerbate a problem and ultimately, it would begin to affect my outlook on my life. Instead of seeing the joy in dance, I would concentrate on the struggle, and it would make life much harder than what it really is.

Throughout my research, there’s one point that’s really stuck with me, and I find the concept slips very readily into the mentality I have toward dance. The theory revolves around the idea that incremental changes over a long period of time yield more success than large changes sporadically. While we all want to be able to leap into perfection, this is a very unrealistic way of viewing things – especially when it involves the physical form. Dancers need conditioning.

We employ these ideologies rather effectively when it comes to our bodies. We know that without regular stretching, you will loose a degree of flexibility. Don’t train your strength? – You’ll get weaker. We’re programmed to know of these consequences and often navigate these difficulties with a relative amount of realism.

When it comes to our mental and emotional conditioning, there are some of us that fall short. I come into this category. I’m a culprit in employing situational sabotage: picking reasons I can’t or shouldn’t go the extra mile because of (what I feel at the time) is a very legitimate reason. I’m not lazy – once I take on a task I will give my all and more, but I think my fear of failure, or not being “good” can cause me to make decisions that will, in the longer term, affect my overall happiness.

So I wait around, make excuses, and still get frustrated when things don’t change overnight. Employing the idea of incremental improvements, I acknowledge that if I work on small improvements in several areas, over time, I’ll come to a greater degree of growth. These increments are achievable, and therefore not disheartening – more likely to avoid the fear-into-self-sabotage process altogether.

As a further step from this, I also want to employ the idea of gaining experience. Want to gain experience faster? Increase the frequency in which you do it. You usually do class once a week? Try it five times in a week and see your improvement five times faster. You audition once a month? Imagine what you could learn if you underwent that same process once a week? It makes sense, this scale of improvement. Thus, I’m taking the approach of saturating myself in the things I want to get better at, and acknowledging the smaller changes. Doing, observing, implementing… rinse and repeat. I think about dance a lot, why not do a lot of it too.

I booked myself in for a number of auditions, rehearsals, performances, classes, workshops… I decided I wanted to go and see more shows, really come up with an effective conditioning program for myself… I wanted to not only improve my physical well-being, I wanted to focus on my mental and emotional well-being too.

It’s been a week of this sunny perspective and already I’ve started to notice changes. If I’m unsuccessful in an audition, rather than seeing it as the be-all-and-end-all, it’s just a minor setback amongst many other opportunities that are keeping me occupied. I’ve felt happier in general because I feel like I’ve got a greater balance in life, and because I’m doing what I love to do.

I remind myself that in all the research I’ve done, the most successful dancers were persistent. In their belief in themselves, in their motivations and mostly, in their actions.

Do you ever feel like you self-sabotage your happiness?