It is extremely important in life to always set goals for yourself: school, work, exercise, bills, etc. Setting a goal small is the best way to start out. It doesn’t feel like too much, but you can still be proud of yourself when you accomplish that goal and it gets you to your long-term goal! While setting goals, you want to be realistic. Do not set yourself up for failure right off the bat. You want to be able to keep moving forward and not be stuck in the same routine by not completing your unrealistic goal, so start small!
Specifically, when I started Aerial Dance, my goal was to just get in a new workout. It became an opportunity after that, and I started to pursue this as a hobby of mine – a hobby and a workout!? What a win! So, in order to get better in class, I needed to set some goals for myself. I knew absolutely nothing about these classes prior to signing up – other than I got to spin on a pole sometimes!
During my pole journey, I often thought about what goals I wanted to achieve. I continued to challenge myself all throughout beginner and intermediate to reach the goal of advanced – I even bought an in-home pole to practice on. I watched the videos that you can follow along to at home and made sure that I could do the necessary things to move onto the advanced class. I always compared myself to the others in class, because I have a competitive side and I wanted to make sure that I was on the right track of getting to where I wanted to be. Honestly, comparing yourself to others is not a healthy way to think, and being at the studio has taught me a little bit of that, so I started to focus on competing with myself versus the other people there. By doing that, I started to really accomplish the things I needed help with because I always wanted to be better than the last time I tried something.
After getting into the advanced class, and accomplishing my first big goal, I started on some more specific goals! I was so excited to learn beautiful new shapes and inverts, but a goal of mine was to start learning moves in the air that I can put together, meaning that I can do a routine without touching the ground. I am still new to advanced, so I am still practicing this. The hardest part is remembering each move and all of the hand, arm, leg, and foot placements! I will definitely get there, though. With the help of our great instructors and lots of practice, this goal is small and NOT too big!