đź’Ś 3 words I would tell my younger self
If you could tell your younger self just THREE WORDS, what would they be?
No, not three sentences. 3 words. That’s it.
Some examples are: “Buy apple stock” or “Don’t marry Jennifer.”
Now, think about it for a minute. What advice or message would you send to your younger (or beginner dancer) self?
I remember when I was younger, and probably all the way into my early thirties, I was so afraid of making a wrong choice. I was terrified to send my life off course by making a “wrong” decision.
One time, when I was about 27 years old and trying to make a very big and difficult life decision I went to a psychic medium to help me understand what I should do. I wanted her to tell me what decision to make now so that I could guarantee my happiness and success in the future. Spoiler alert: she didn’t tell me what to do.
She (or rather, my guides speaking through her) DID try their darndest to help me understand that I was missing the point entirely. Second spoiler alert: I did not actually internalize their message until literally years later when I listened back to an audio recording of the session and was finally able to hear what they were saying. (People can only hear what they are ready to understand, apparently).
I’ll never forget this. They were trying so hard to get the message through to me that they took out a pen and paper and drew a dot on the paper. They said, “See this dot? This is you now.” Then they drew another dot some distance from the first and said, “See this other dot? That’s where you want to go.” They continued, “You think that you want to get there like this,” (drawing a straight line from one dot to the other) “but life doesn’t work like that. It’s more like this,” (drawing a long meandering squiggly line from one dot to the other). They told me in no uncertain terms, “You can’t make a wrong choice. Whatever you choose, you can’t fail.”
They could tell I was not readily accepting this new-to-me outlook on life. So they literally wrote me a permission slip. On the paper they wrote,
“Permission to follow my true heart.”
They could tell that I was not going to use this permission slip until I was ready and that some deep work needed to be done within me to make me ready. So they wrote me a release statement. The statement was,
“I release perfection and the belief system that things need to look a certain way in order for me to make a decision and move forward.”
FIVE YEARS AFTER I received these powerful messages from my guides I finally decided to end my marriage of 11 years. And yet, my three words to my younger self would not be “Don’t get married.” I would never tell myself to skip all those years, to try and grow in a more efficient way. I see now that I truly needed all that meandering squiggly-ness to get me where I am today.
I would tell my younger self something similar to what my guides tried to tell me when they said, “whatever you choose, you can’t fail.” I would want my young self to understand that growth is not a perfect process. That it’s ok to be messy. To disregard what others think. That efficiency isn’t the most important thing.
How would I convey all that in just three words? I’d say this:
“Release perfection. Live.”
I realize now that a big part of my purpose here in this lifetime as a professional dancer is to learn and teach this lesson. Dance is a vehicle through which I put this advice into practice. I know now that perfection is not the point. The idea that we can be perfect is stagnating, not motivating. Perfection gets in the way of creation and connection, it impedes learning and growth. And as much as I know this to be true, I have to remind myself of it every single day. Every time I practice dance and drum, every time I send a newsletter, every time I post on social media, every time I make a mistake. I have to tell myself: “Release perfection. Live.”
I hope you can internalize this message that I’m sending you. If not, that’s ok. We can only hear what we are ready to understand. This story from my life is proof that lessons like this have to be learned through our own personal experiences, they can’t just be told to us through words. So even though I would tell my younger self these three words, I know my young self would need to find out for herself.
Here is a brand new dance video from our recent show featuring members of The Cohesion Collective and Nafas Dance Ensemble, In the Lap of the Garden.
This piece, choreographed by Miriam Peretz, is called “Falak.” She writes:
The Farsi word falak has beautiful multi-layered meanings. It is used to describe the heaven and the cosmos, the universe, as well as one’s fate and destiny. The circular shape of the dafs (the frame drums the dancers hold) evoke the image of the sun, moon, and planets. The dafs symbolize the cyclical nature of life that connects us with the infinite universe.
I’m curious what three words you would tell your younger self? Send me a message and let me know!
Warmly,
April Rose 🌹
P.S.
If you want support in overcoming perfectionism so you can actually achieve your professional bellydance goals in a joyous way…
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