198. No Loss, Only Lessons: Redefining Success in Dance

198 - Losing

[00:00:00] It's the heat of competition season, long Saturdays in hotel ballrooms or school gyms, intense practices, trying to get ready for your next event in a matter of days. And during this season, many dancers compete all weekend, train all week, and then do it again the next weekend. This time of year is really fun. If everything is going according to plan, if you place where you want a competition, no one's sick or injured and life outside of dance isn't overwhelming. And of course, that's not usually our dance world during the winter months. Normally we have competitive ups and downs, people are constantly battling sickness or injury and we're trying to rework routines to make it all look good on stage.

While we're in this competition season, let's talk about losing. Welcome to Passion for Dance. I'm your host, Dr. Chelsea, and my mission is to create happier, more successful dancers through positive mental skills training. And what I want to talk about today is losing during this stressful season.

We all go through it, but we are, for whatever reason, rarely open about it. What do you do when you come off of [00:01:00] a regional competition or a national sendoff performance and feel like it was less than perfect, or if an early season convention and competition feels flat. Maybe it's the last chance before you head off to a national finals.

What if it's awful? How do you talk to your dancers when you, quote, lose? Or cope with it when you're the one on stage? I'm all for open and honest conversation. So let's talk about losing and why I'm actually not worried about that. There are three things I hate a lot more than losing. Maybe you feel the same way.

Welcome to passion for dance. I'm Dr. Chelsea, a former professional dancer, turned sports psychologist. And this podcast is for everyone in the dance industry who wants to learn actionable strategies and new mindsets.

I know what it feels like to push through the pain, take on all the criticism, and do whatever it takes to make sure the show will go on. But I also know that we understand more about mental health and resilience than ever before, and it's time to change the industry for the [00:02:00] better. This podcast is for all of us to connect, learn, and share our passion for dance with the world. 

When people ask me, what do you do when you lose? My simple answer is not to use that word, lose, or its twin sister, fail. We don't fail. We might not place where we want or rank as high as we wanted, but we learn. We might fall short of a goal. We might wish we had done more, but it's not about the placement, losing, or a sense of failure.

That's the wrong focus. It's how you talk about that loss that will change your own confidence or how your team comes together when it's over. Now I know not every dancer competes, but today I want to talk to those competitive dancers who are being ranked every weekend. And most of us who are competitive, hate to lose. I do too. I want the championship ring and the respect and the sense of achievement that comes with a big win.

But as much as I hate to lose, there are three things I hate more than losing. Three things that keep me focused on what [00:03:00] matters when my dancers have a difficult or downright embarrassing performance. And they also helped me when I was the one on stage.

And when I'm working with dancers, all three of these are an important part of our competition season open conversation in order to prevent a sense of loss or failure. So as a teacher, I hope you talk to your dancers about this and to all the dancers listening. I hope you take these in because it's not the loss you should worry about. It's regret blaming others or not seeing any growth. 

First, let's talk about regret leaving a competition or performance with a sense of regret that pit in your stomach that burns and won't let you sleep at night. It is the worst feeling as a coach or a dancer. I have definitely left a competition after not placing where we had wanted, but knowing we did our personal best, that sting goes away pretty fast.

You can watch the video back with a smile, knowing you did everything you could, even if the scores didn't go your way today. However, I've also left a competition [00:04:00] with that intense sense of regret. What if I had changed that part? What if I had made a different decision? What if I prepared them better? Those days as a teacher are so difficult. And what's worse is when my dancers feel regret, which tends to come when you have an honest reflection of maybe I didn't put in the work. What if we hadn't slacked on our strength training in the last few months? What if we hadn't complained about that early morning practice? What if we'd worked harder to bond as a team and get over our egos?

In my opinion, regret is far worse than losing. Losing is just a placement that's not first, but there are lots of those and that placement alone is just a number and a few judges opinions in one day. You don't have control over that, but you do have control over how you react to that placement.

And regret is a really hard feeling, but you can prevent regret. I believe we feel regret after a dance competition when we know there was more in our control and we didn't step up. When we have to face the fact that we didn't give full effort recently, or that we [00:05:00] should have reviewed choreography again and chose to slack off.

If we don't have the stamina to perform the whole routine, but have to face the music and admit we had the training opportunity, but chose not to go full out every time. Regret comes when you have to acknowledge that you said you wanted to give your best, but you didn't follow through. And so many dancers are afraid to have that honest reflection. If I'm not happy with how I placed, what was in my control? That is so much harder to face than the losing. 

I want to pause for just a second and say hello to any new listeners and thank you for being a part of the community. If you're new to the show today or found us recently, I have a special resource for you. It's simply the new listener resource and it has my best recommendations for other podcasts or books to [00:06:00] inspire you.

As well as all my current free resources that you can download, which includes things like the competition confidence checklist or journal prompts that might help you today. It's actually a simple Google Doc because I'm constantly updating it and sharing new things for dancers and dance educators. And I wanted a way to give you all the links in one place.

So you can grab your copy today and it will always update as new things are happening this year. You can get it at passionfordancepodcast. com. You'll see it right on the homepage. That's passion for a dance podcast. com. Welcome to the community. I'm so happy to have you. Okay. Let's get back to the show.

The second thing worse than losing is when a poor performance on stage, or one that just didn't score well, results in blaming. When I see dancers come off stage filled with regret and frustration, the next step is usually the blame game, including self blame.

Even if dancers have enough self control not to blame each other [00:07:00] out loud, you can feel the tension. They know if someone messed up a transition or fell out of a trick, when the team starts to blame and point fingers, it feels so much worse than the loss itself. It's the beginning of the end. It's also hard to overcome a sense of self blame, which I hear from so many dancers.

It's when dancers are self deprecating and say things like, oh, I'm so sorry. I sucked at that. I can't believe I did that. That was terrible. If one dancer starts it as soon as you walk off stage, then usually no one else feels like they can celebrate how they did, even if they were happy. So instead there's this weird bond created over blaming and shaming and disgust in the performance.

And there is no way a culture of blame will allow a team to make improvements before the next performance or achieve any goal whatsoever, or have fun for that matter. That's why the conversation about blame should happen before you compete. Talk about how we are one team with responsibility for ourselves and [00:08:00] each other.

We are each accountable for our efforts, mistakes, successes, and attitude. If the team has a culture of accountability, there's no need for blame. Everyone is responsible, knows their teammates did the work, even if a mistake is made because something will happen, there is no blame in a team of accountable dancers.

I'll share a short story from my coaching days. We had a Preliminary round in our biggest competition. And one of my senior dancers of this high school team fell out of a trick and she is not that dancer. She doesn't do that. She's the consistent one. She would never skip a workout or go less than full out.

She's not the one to ever make a mistake. So while we waited to find out if we made it to finals. I was curious how that dancer and the team would handle it. And I tried to step back and let them go through it. I think in my early years as a coach, I would have had a team that either made her feel bad about it, or if nothing else didn't support and encourage her to not beat [00:09:00] herself up or even just pretend like it didn't happen.

But thankfully this is after years of coaching and trying to implement my own mental skills program and we had a team of accountable and confident dancers So that senior immediately told me after she came off the floor why she thought she fell out like physically what happened, and what she would do about it in finals so that it wouldn't happen again.

That was the end of the conversation I saw her teammates tell her they were confident in her. Don't worry about it It was basically a non issue and a sense of calm remained, and thankfully we still got into finals with that mistake and she was able to nail it the second time. And I think a large reason why was that she was an accountable dancer during all of the months preparing for competition, again, doing the workouts, doing the strength training, putting in full out effort every time. So there was no blame from her or her teammates. 

I hate blame. It serves no one and it destroys. Everyone. And that means blaming yourself [00:10:00] too. Don't blame yourself for a loss either. You can always look at the lessons to be learned, but if you've been showing up doing your best week after week, then get off the blame train. You're doing good work. 

The third thing I hate worse than losing is when there's no improvement and not even the smallest growth 

For competitive dancers. We have the chance to do the same routine multiple times. And often all I really hope for is consistent improvement and not at everything, every time that's not realistic. I'm just looking for growth. It might be growth in technique or in staging. It might be growth in confidence or in preparation.

So if we quote, lose two competitions in a row, that's not necessarily a problem. If there was solid improvement from the previous time on stage, it's when I see a routine from one competition to the next, or even practice one week to the next week. That looks like nothing has changed. That's when I get frustrated.

And the problem is we're hard on ourselves as teachers, and dancers are [00:11:00] hard on themselves too. All we remember is the placement at the end. Or the video that we watch. And perceive a zillion mistakes, the sense of failure, when the turn section is slightly off, or someone put a hand down in an aerial, we tend to skip over the improvements and not recognize how much growth has really happened.

So if you come off a loss this season, remember to watch the video one time just for the positives, notice the successes, the improvements, the things you're proud of. Then you can go back to nitpicking and set your daily goals and make it better for next time. There is no loss or failure. If you've truly put in full effort and come as prepared as possible, then there is lots to be proud of. And you can take any feedback as an opportunity for growth, get back in the studio and do the work for next time.

All right. I want to reiterate that I understand some people are driven by competition and it's thrilling and it's motivational and it's exciting and they want to win. I'm not saying that you can't have that [00:12:00] drive. You can want to win. You can want to be a champion and have huge goals and push yourself.

But if you get caught up in the final results of a competition, if that starts to get in the way and it makes it hard to return to the studio, or you don't feel good about yourself, consider your definition of success. Is a win the only way you can be successful? Is it only when you get the external praise, the social media fame, or the sense of perfection on stage?

Well, you can't control what others think. There is no perfect in an art like ours. So decide for yourself what makes you feel successful. That's in your control, your effort, how much you talk to your teammates and your teachers, the positivity on and off stage, what you focus on so much more.

If you take control of your focus, your effort and your actions, that is a successful day. Then there's no losing only lessons and growth and a sense of personal accomplishment that isn't tied to the competitive [00:13:00] outcome. This is also why I talk a lot about identity in dance and making sure your identity isn't just as a dancer. That there has to be more to it, people who care about you, other ways you enjoy spending your time, other aspects of who you are outside of being a dancer. That allows you to separate from the loss, to be able to take the feedback and go back to the studio and do the work and be proud of yourself and the effort you put in no matter the outcome.

If you have questions about this, if you agree or disagree or anything else to share, please reach out and connect with me, I'd love to talk about it. You can find me at passionfordancepodcast.com/voicemail. I'd love to hear from you. You can share whatever is on your mind about this topic or any other mental skill

it's passionfordancepodcast.com/voicemail. And until next week, keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.

 Thank you for listening to Passion for Dance. You can find all episode resources at [00:14:00] passionfordancepodcast. com. And be sure to follow me on Instagram for more high performance tips at doctor. chelsea. parati. That's P I E R O T T I. This podcast is for passionate dancers and dance educators who are ready to change our industry by creating happier, more successful dancers.

I'm Dr. Chelsea, and keep sharing your passion for dance with the world.