Weekly Challenge for 9-17-12

I’m back!  Vegas was wonderful, as always, though it didn’t go quite the way I wanted.  Oh, well.  That kind of stuff happens, and that’s what this week’s challenge is all about.

Excuses, excuses

What do I mean by excuses?  Well, we all have them, right?  We want to do something, and we can’t, because we either don’t have enough money, or enough time, or any number of other things.  Sometimes these are just excuses, but sometimes they are genuine obstacles that we can’t (at the moment) do much about.

How do we tell the difference?  That’s not easy, and that’s where the challenge comes in.  For inspiration, check out this article.  In it, the author describes a troupe that gets together enough funds to rent a van to make it to the Las Vegas Bellydance Intensive…from Montana.  How inspiring is that?  The old cliche, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” comes to mind.  If you want something bad enough, you’ll make it happen, no matter what stands in your way.

If you want something bad enough, everything keeping you from it is just an excuse.

So what’s the challenge? First, you need to sit down and figure out what it is you want, and what it is that’s preventing you from doing it.  Want to become a professional dancer?  What’s stopping you?  Write out a list, and brainstorm anything and everything you think is preventing you from being a professional dancer, even if it’s silly, petty, or stupid (to your mind).  Be honest with yourself, and don’t judge (too harshly).  Want to master layering?  What’s stopping you?  Do you not practice every day, or is it that you just can’t wrap your head around how one part of the body can move at a different pace than another?

Then go down your list and take a good, long, hard look at it.  Again, be honest.  There will be some things that are genuine obstacles, things you cannot change no matter what.  Having small children soaking up much of your time is probably an obstacle, not an excuse.  Circle those.  Then take a look at what’s left, and those will likely be your excuses.  What are they?  What can you do to remedy them?  I cannot repeat often enough how important it is to honest with yourself.  Lying to ourselves about what we can or cannot change in our lives is one of the worst things we can do as human beings.

Don’t have enough money?  Try a bake sale, or a Kickstarter campaign, or even ask your parents.  Don’t have enough time?  How much TV (or YouTube or Hulu…) do you watch a week?  Carve out just one hour a day away from the tube and see what you can do with that time.  Can’t seem to master a move?  Practice it every day, no matter what.

Every day this week, try to eliminate one of those excuses.  If it’s one that’s particularly difficult or insidious (addicted to Facebook?) then give yourself the entire week to work on it.  But see if you can’t get rid of one a day.  Once you get rid of your excuses, all you’ll have left are your obstacles.  We’ll work on those later.  Right now we’re just eliminating the ideas that hold us back, prevent us from doing what we want.  Excuses hold us back, limit ourselves, and make us feel like we’ll never achieve our goals.  But they are just that…excuses.

No more excuses!

Hold on to that list and use it often this week.  Refer to it and see if you’ve been eliminating those excuses.  And who knows, maybe one or two obstacles will pop over into the excuse category and you can get rid of that, too!

Want even more inspiration?  Grab some tissues and check this out.  What’s holding YOU back?