Discipline is a word that everyone talks about as something vital to live a better life, like it is the most important tool to achieve anything you want. I am not talking about perfectionism, I am talking about going and doing what you are supposed to do every time you are supposed to. I am talking about building habits that eventually will have your back. I am talking about training your brain to persuade the apathy and hesitations of not wanting to do the thing. Thursday is my writing day, it is the day where I have found my way to write for about an hour, usually a bit more, and I try my best to bring to life an idea that has been ruminating in my head, my heart and my guts. Some days there is a topic that I know will flow, and I am 100 percent sure that I will fill this page. Even though I find myself with a handful of ideas to write, there are days like today where I am not quite sure I have anything. Yet somehow the fact that I have been writing for enough Thursdays means that I know I will finish this page, without doubting myself too much.
How can I know that I will finish writing these 1221 words? There are many reasons, some more obvious than others. Let’s start by saying that I like thinking, writing and learning, not in that specific order. In regard to this activity, I know I have been preparing myself to write about this. A lot of the content I consume will help me to back up my ideas. As a dancer and an elite performer, I have enough experience doing drills, way more tedious than connecting ideas, like learning the proper movement of the hips for Salsa at a specific pace and length. Every time you repeat the movement you learn, you may not be aware but your body adjusts, straightens and releases what is necessary to improve or to change. My thinking is my way to create short bursts of ideas and writing is the thing that joins them together, creating insights that allow me to build my own philosophies about specific topics. I have structures in place in my days that allow me to stay focused on the task at hand. This is not necessarily true for everything I do. I am working on a different front here. Regarding writing, I also have a great source to bounce my ideas off, my friends and students. People I can always count on to bring a nice conversation about things beyond the mundane.
Not perfect, I am used to standing in front of the camera, in front of people, I love to show my work. It is still frightening, but not as frightening as it used to be. I trust repetition above perfectionism, despite having a brain that is very observant and detailed with many things. Over the years I have been developing this structure to create. When I prepare myself or any of my students for a show. I always do it in stages, the first stage is to create a first draft, this first draft is all about respecting the flow and avoiding the pitfalls of self-criticism and perfectionism. I do not allow myself, I trust my idea despite how silly or incorrect it might sound, an equivalent in writing would be stopping for spelling mistakes. I practise listening and flowing with my intuition, my first idea. I create 4 to 6 sessions in which I only create new parts of the routines with what I am and the ideas that I think are important for the routine. The second stage is editing and learning, a lot of the steps require tuning or changes, yes, and I try my section to keep learning and practising as the most fundamental task as we make changes. I like the approach of divide and conquer for both learning and adjusting. Then we will try our best to make it one full structure. From here I will say 80% of the job is done, normally depending on the level of my student or the requirement of the client I will invest more time and effort to get it as good as possible. But it is never 100%, especially for someone like me, who likes a little bit of chaos, chaos is a big word, but it actually represents that part I can’t explain that makes me myself. It is like when reading someone, you can actually read his or her accent. Like that person is reading the words for you. I would not like to get rid of that. More importantly, sometimes 80% is great when you are looking just to show up.
Showing up is what makes me the person I am, I am not the dancer that I am because I compete in some of the world’s most prestigious competitions, winning several awards, not because the Australian Government catalogued me as a person of distinguished talent, but because day after day I show up to teach dancing, 10 to 20 hours per week. Where I learn to break down the movement when I repeat the specific movements in order to help my students. I have created structures around me that allow me to be disciplined. Structures in the shape of a coach who gives me guidance to improve my work, my classes and consistent performances. Performances that allow me to see who I am, like everytime one of these blogs gets posted. I can really show you a part of what my whole being is today. In a way, discipline has become part of my life, not something that I strive for, yet something that is part of the work and actions that I take every day.
The thing that keeps appearing in every single piece of writing I create is awareness, honing the skill of awareness, this is particularly important for discipline. I create a set structure that keeps me doing what I do, yet without awareness it could become a miserable set of actions. Thanks to awareness I can focus on listening to the music that is playing while my body clicks with another human while we dance. Did you think about something else? Of course, I meant dancing, it is obvious that I become much better with awareness. Whatever the practice of your choice is, praying, mantras, slow breathing, sitting down to meditate, or making sure that you just listen to the audiobook or the person that you are talking to. Make sure that you create space to train awareness because this gift of being present, so redundant, is all we have and in this case it allows me to write to you as I enjoy the flow of my being in these little mechanical buttons. Awareness matters because it brings you back to your moment, to your task, to the things that you think you need more discipline for, yet it allows you to finish, for another Thursday, this beautiful practice that brings me to tell you my points of view with my Australian – Venezuelan accent.
Gracias for reading,
Pedro