I signed my 11 year old daughter Lucy up for a tap class. It was one day, 1.5 hours with a teacher she knows. I told her I was going to sign her up. She was totally fine with it…
Until the day before the lesson when she looked at the schedule and she saw it was a Junior Advanced/Senior level class. She immediately start stressing out about the caliber of dancers who would be in the class with her. She had visions of all the amazing senior tap dancers at the studio walking in and paradiddle’ing circles around her. (Paradiddles. It’s a tap thing. Look it up.)
She didn’t want to go. She asked if she could not go. I said no, she had to go to the class because we paid for it, and it was a suitable class for her.
I told her she’s a good tapper. She’s a smart dancer. She can pick things up. She can follow along. And the teacher knows her. I told her the teacher may push her in the class, but she wouldn’t set her up for failure.
Before the class I asked Lucy “what’s the wrong worst that can happen? When you take the class, what’s the worst that can happen? Maybe you screw up a few steps. Who cares? That’s what happens when you’re learning. No one in the class is going to care. No one is going to stare at you with laser eyes until you burst into flames and end up a steaming pile of goo in the middle of the floor. It’s just one dance class. All you can do is walk through the door and try.”
With that she left the car and walked into the dance studio. I sat in the car thinking, why does that sound familiar?
Who cares if you screw up…
What’s the worst that can happen…
No one is going to care…
All you can do is try…
Then it hit me… it all sounded familiar because that’s what all of my friends and family say to me whenever I have one of my “what am I going to do with my life” freak outs (which are happening frequently these days). It sounded familiar because I’ve been on the other side of the advice for the past four months.
Isn’t it amazing how good we are at dishing out advice, but we can’t take it in when it’s said to us? And don’t get me started on our inability to say it to ourselves. Why is it so hard to say “Amy, what’s the worst that can happen? What is the absolute worst thing that will happen if you try something and you make a mistake along the way? Is someone going to stare at you with laser eyes until you burst into flames and end up a steaming pile of goo in the middle of the floor? Most likely not. So take a deep breath and just try.”
Because if Lucy can do it, I should be able to too.
