There will always be people who are better than you at the exact same thing as you are currently doing. But that shouldn’t stop you from continuing, if this is what you love doing.
I want to share with you my experience of how taking the courage to do small, imperfect steps towards your goal can gradually lead to bigger results you never expected could come.
A distant dream
After all, even the opportunities for professional dancers are quite limited, and at a casting I would have no chance against them. I am a mathematician, professionally devoting myself to science and its popularization. And although I have been dancing since a very young age, it has always been a pastime activity — done simply for the joy of movement and at smaller community-run events.
The first attempt
During the strict fall lockdown all dance classes for the public were cancelled and I really missed dancing. At least I could practice in the lecture hall at work all by myself. I decided to shoot a couple of moves and try to assemble a video out of it.
Unfortunately, the very next week we were ordered to work from a home office, and there was no more chance to dance at all. All I was left with was a couple of imperfect shots on the camera. I was pretty unhappy about it; the shots just didn’t look any good. After some hesitation around the New Year’s Eve I nevertheless told myself `whatever, I’m going to edit a video out of it anyway’ and I tried. Never before did I edit a video, let alone the fact that it was from the shots that were made to ‘just try out the camera’.
But I decided that nothing is ever perfect when you try it for the first time. And even though the perfectionist inside me was screaming, I did send the video to a couple of friends as the New Year’s greetings.
Things started to happen…
Minutes later I received a message from a former classmate who now has a film production studio. She suggested that we could make a dance video together. I couldn’t believe my eyes! 😀
She sent me a couple of videos of what she had in mind and, well… they all look super professional… uhm, well, I was not sure that I could dance it at that level!
But we started working on the project, bit by bit I created a choreography and every day in the spring lockdown I trained at home, and later again in the lecture hall. I realized that my dance dream was becoming a reality!
Just the perfectionist inside me kicked in again, because a `professional video must contain an absolutely flawless dance’. And so, it took some effort to overcome it and to set the date of final dance shooting (I had been subconsciously postponing it) and to accept that I simply won’t be able to dance some of the movements any better in the foreseeable future.
Eventually at the beginning of July we published the finished video and you can watch it here!
I’m super happy about it and, yes, I can still spot some dance imperfections here and there, but woohoo, my dance dream came true!! I hope the video can also help you to a better day 🙂
Anything big starts with small steps
I believe that the path towards one’s dreams starts by taking real steps. Even if you cannot get it done to a hundred percent right now, produce the best you can at the moment. It’s a learning process.
There will always be people who can do it better, but this is your project. Make it uniquely yours and give it everything you have. You will get better at it with time and the small, imperfect steps will eventually lead to other, bigger opportunities. If this is what you love doing, go for it and make it happen. Because only what’s done is what eventually counts.
Good luck on your path! 🙂
P.S. And if you’d like to see the first, New Year’s Eve video, you can find it here. Quite a difference, right?
P.P.S. The dance video was shot and edited by Enikö Edelsbrunner from the Magic Lemur Productions, check out her other videos here.
Being a scientist and an educator, I love creating meaningful games for all those who are ready to trick their mind, experience adventure and discover more about themselves and the world around us.
I started Grow Trails, the interactive educational games for adults. Read my story.