Stop Trying, Start Doing

To aspire to be something is to have this hope to someday live your dreams and be doing what you love. But it’s not that easy; you can’t just say that it will happen without any effort, you can’t just believe it will happen without taking any risks, you can’t just expect it to happen without doing something that you’ve never done before. You cannot get to where you want to be in life without doing things that scare you; this past year at one of my dance conventions, a choreographer gave us a very serious speech about reaching to your potential and going after your dreams. The one thing that I will never forget from that was when he said, “Stop trying, and start doing!” In this world we aim for perfection or success, never failure or mistakes; so when there is something that we are to do and we know we don’t have or won’t have the perfect result, we hold back by creating fear in something so simple where we’re then left without knowing what could have been. All because we think we have to be perfect in order to succeed; what this choreographer was trying to get into our heads was that nobody in this world will ever do something so perfectly, there will always be room for improvement and always be someone out there better than you. But that shouldn’t stop you from doing anything, it should push you to go harder and find yourself in the process from making mistakes and not being perfect.

I remember at my Laker Girl Scholarship Audition, I went into it with the feeling that it was going to be easier than most of my other auditions that I have experienced. Bad idea to even think about it that way; it was a very technical and precise one minute routine that I learned in approximately seven minutes and performed in front of Lisa Estrada, head management of the LA Laker Girls, with the mentality that they would rather see me do what I can and fail, than try to succeed at something I know I don’t “perfectly” have.

By actually “doing” something, you’re showing that you aren’t afraid to fail and that you want to succeed. By “trying” you go after what you want, but you’re setting yourself up to fail rather than succeed. So basically what it comes down to is how do you work around your fear of success? Honestly how can successes in something you dream of, be scary? It shouldn’t be but we all have the fear of it, because what comes before it is failure. Failing at something should pick you up and only get you further than where you were before, by doing what you love over and over again, you no longer are trying. You are persevering and wanting whatever it is that you aim for. So stop trying, and start doing. I would rather go out in front of hundreds of people and perform a dance combo that I just learned ten minutes ago and completely fail at it rather do it perfectly because it shows who I am, and it shows I am not perfect. I only do what I know and to my best effort until I can push myself to be better after I fail. When I try at something, I show fear all over my face and through my body; when I go out and do something, I own it like I know what I’m doing which is what will get me five steps ahead of those sitting in the back with fear, trying to succeed. I want to succeed and I am going to succeed, is easy to say and when you know it’ll be hard to DO, that’s when you know you have to fight your fear and bight the bullet. Do it, and fail; rather than try to succeed.