47 . HELP ME!

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Welcome to Episode 47 of the Salsa Kings LIVE podcast

Help me! What do you do when you don’t know how to do something? What do you find something too difficult or beyond your understanding? A lot of it is how you talk to yourself. Everyone needs help, but there’s a massive difference between asking for help and being self-defeating or asking for someone to do the work for you. Every instructor has heard excuses for not taking classes. Some will cite their ignorance in dance as to why they won’t take the class, but the whole point of a class is to address that ignorance and be with others who share our desire to learn. No one is a master immediately. Some have more talent or aptitude, but that is no match for the learned experience.

What is the difference between asking for help and asking for someone to do it for you? A lot of it has to do with the state of mind. If you are thinking you cannot do it or are outside of your comfort zone, you will very likely want to get out of it. You will want to take the path of least resistance. However, this is your prime opportunity to learn. You can’t grow unless you push yourself, and when you find yourself in these difficult positions, that means you have an opportunity to grow. Even if your growth isn’t ideal, you are still learning and growing a bit. 

The trouble is your brain is inherently defensive. It will go into fight-or-flight in an attempt to get you to a ‘safe’ place, even if that place is a stagnant one. It’s up to you to work towards your higher impulses and realize that being in a place of discomfort means you aren’t in danger -at least not in this case- but rather that you are learning and growing. Our battles these days aren’t over food or survival, but to better ourselves, and we need to overcome the ancient instinct of discomfort so that we can become the person we want to be.

It’s easy to be discouraged or to simply give up, to believe that we need help or are beyond help. However, if we can get past that and truly work to become the people we want to be, we will get the help we actually need and become the people we want to be. 

“It’s easier to control things we already know… By instinct, our egos are always going to try and protect us from the unknown, even if the unknown is good for us. This is where you override that mental process and you know for sure that this is something you want to do, regardless of the feelings of discomfort and so on and so forth. Push yourself through that. I guarantee you it is only temporary.”