I have never been a fan of chess. I don't enjoy games involving intense strategy or attempting to predict people. They stress me out. When I have happened to get roped into a chess game (which was probably like twice), I would overthink everything and worry that there was something I couldn't think of. Before I could get any piece to the other half of the board, I would get overwhelmed and give up trying to play strategically. At that point, I would just move pieces around and not think about it. I would shut down.
Luckily, I don't have to like chess, nobody really cares all that much if I don't play, and if I shut down in the middle of a game, it only means i'm not a great chess player. I can live with that.
Unfortunately this giant chess tournament called life isn't quite as inconsequential. If you shut down, your moves will effect more than just your Queen's protection squad (not actual chess lingo). If you give up and quit, the game keeps continuing, and other people have to figure out what to do with everything you left on the board.
I wrote before in a previous post about how from a young age, my whole journey as a dancer just kind of fell into place. Of course I had to make some choices now and again, but it wasn't exactly like I was thinking several moves ahead. Up through college, making those decisions was as simple as nodding my head and saying "ok" as my advisor basically told me exactly what I should take the next semester.
Then the game got a little harder. It wasn't that I never had a vision for my future. In fact I had thousands. I had so many ideas in my mind that I wanted to make happen. So many thoughts on how the game could go, but I had not yet been faced with how to make them happen. With all the options and all the theory in my head, my heart would pound every time I began to move my hand toward the game board. What if. What if I'm humiliated. What if it turns out I'm no good at this. What if, what if, what if. I've decided that those two words are life's cheap shot to try to get us to give up. Nobody wants to be the person who lets those words intimidate you out of playing the game. In fact, I think being that person has been my greatest fear. So much so that when I got to a place in life when I was suddenly faced with all the new "What If's", all I could do was hide.
And now I have put myself in front of the biggest "What If", so far, in my life . I'm on another continent surrounded by scenarios that make me feel uncomfortable and inadequate, trying to be a dancer where the term is not synonymous with profession to most people. It's like I said yes to playing chess against the master. And now I'm thinking, "what on earth did I get myself into?" But I'm in it. I can either make my moves or give up. But, like I said, if I give up in this particular game, somebody, whether they have to or not, is going to clean up my mess. Someone else will feel responsible for me in some way. And I don't know about you, but I don't want my legacy to be that I was only someone else's burden.
The good thing is, I think that taking on "the master" has given me some sense of reckless abandon. You always hear successful people say that you WILL fail at some point in your journey, but somehow it's hard to understand what that means when you've been surrounded by cushion all your life. But being here and totally unaccustomed to just about everything, I have almost no choice but to fail a few hundred times before I get it right. And I'm finding that it really is true what they say. It won't kill me - or anyone else - if I try. And even if I make a stupid move, I still get to learn from "the master" opponent. I get to see what some of the tougher struggles will be so that I can be prepared for next time.
But the most important thing I've learned from accepting this challenge is this: Things will take unexpected turns. Your opponent will make a move you didn't calculate into your original strategy. But these changes in direction often turn out to be even better than your original plan. It can become exactly what you needed to create a masterpiece. A dance improvisation exercise will often begin with a phrase of movement that you create on our own. You plan it out. You think it's just great because it came from you. But then your instructor gives you a new guideline. Do it all standing in place. Do the whole thing backwards. Do the whole thing upside-down (yes, I have gotten this instruction before). It sounds weird. It messes up your perfect, lovely creation. All of a sudden you have to use your brain and go through the whole thing piece by piece to adjust it within the new parameters. But, then you see it (you know, if you took a video), and maybe you realize that you've actually just come up with something so much better. Maybe not, but maybe through it all, you find, that there's actually another outcome out there in space that could work. And you don't have to let your original plan get you stuck. You can keep playing the game!
So this is the method that I have decided to employ. I mostly play the game step by step. I knew I wanted to dance here in Rwanda and find other people to dance with me. I had been working with one group and almost got to dance for a really huge event in town, but that fell through. But I had to dance somehow. So I made calls, sent messages, awkwardly wandered into buildings, asking who would be interested in working with me. Some went somewhere. Others are good connections for future reference. I wanted to work with all women, but then found that there were many men wanting to join in, so I gladly adjusted my direction and welcomed their enthusiasm. I was going to create a piece for an event that recently past, but some unexpected occurrences cut into rehearsal time, so instead another dancer and I quickly came up with an improvisation piece to show instead. Sometimes panic still sets in initially, but because I made that first move toward making things happen, I can keep remembering that something always worked out in the end, whether it's what I expected or not.
I'm no huge success story yet, so I'm not here to tell you that with this twelve-step program, you too can be the next Bill Gates or anything like that. But I can tell you that there are ways of getting over the humps and of continuing to play the game even when the odds don't seem to be in your favor. You can't change everyone and everything around you to fit to your plan, but you can adjust your plan to navigate around those things and continue moving. And when you continue, even if your direction has totally changed, it might just take you to an even more epic victory than you could have imagined. You just have to keep playing the game. If not for yourself, do it for those who love you and want to see you happy.
Your move.
Luckily, I don't have to like chess, nobody really cares all that much if I don't play, and if I shut down in the middle of a game, it only means i'm not a great chess player. I can live with that.
Unfortunately this giant chess tournament called life isn't quite as inconsequential. If you shut down, your moves will effect more than just your Queen's protection squad (not actual chess lingo). If you give up and quit, the game keeps continuing, and other people have to figure out what to do with everything you left on the board.
I wrote before in a previous post about how from a young age, my whole journey as a dancer just kind of fell into place. Of course I had to make some choices now and again, but it wasn't exactly like I was thinking several moves ahead. Up through college, making those decisions was as simple as nodding my head and saying "ok" as my advisor basically told me exactly what I should take the next semester.
Then the game got a little harder. It wasn't that I never had a vision for my future. In fact I had thousands. I had so many ideas in my mind that I wanted to make happen. So many thoughts on how the game could go, but I had not yet been faced with how to make them happen. With all the options and all the theory in my head, my heart would pound every time I began to move my hand toward the game board. What if. What if I'm humiliated. What if it turns out I'm no good at this. What if, what if, what if. I've decided that those two words are life's cheap shot to try to get us to give up. Nobody wants to be the person who lets those words intimidate you out of playing the game. In fact, I think being that person has been my greatest fear. So much so that when I got to a place in life when I was suddenly faced with all the new "What If's", all I could do was hide.
And now I have put myself in front of the biggest "What If", so far, in my life . I'm on another continent surrounded by scenarios that make me feel uncomfortable and inadequate, trying to be a dancer where the term is not synonymous with profession to most people. It's like I said yes to playing chess against the master. And now I'm thinking, "what on earth did I get myself into?" But I'm in it. I can either make my moves or give up. But, like I said, if I give up in this particular game, somebody, whether they have to or not, is going to clean up my mess. Someone else will feel responsible for me in some way. And I don't know about you, but I don't want my legacy to be that I was only someone else's burden.
The good thing is, I think that taking on "the master" has given me some sense of reckless abandon. You always hear successful people say that you WILL fail at some point in your journey, but somehow it's hard to understand what that means when you've been surrounded by cushion all your life. But being here and totally unaccustomed to just about everything, I have almost no choice but to fail a few hundred times before I get it right. And I'm finding that it really is true what they say. It won't kill me - or anyone else - if I try. And even if I make a stupid move, I still get to learn from "the master" opponent. I get to see what some of the tougher struggles will be so that I can be prepared for next time.But the most important thing I've learned from accepting this challenge is this: Things will take unexpected turns. Your opponent will make a move you didn't calculate into your original strategy. But these changes in direction often turn out to be even better than your original plan. It can become exactly what you needed to create a masterpiece. A dance improvisation exercise will often begin with a phrase of movement that you create on our own. You plan it out. You think it's just great because it came from you. But then your instructor gives you a new guideline. Do it all standing in place. Do the whole thing backwards. Do the whole thing upside-down (yes, I have gotten this instruction before). It sounds weird. It messes up your perfect, lovely creation. All of a sudden you have to use your brain and go through the whole thing piece by piece to adjust it within the new parameters. But, then you see it (you know, if you took a video), and maybe you realize that you've actually just come up with something so much better. Maybe not, but maybe through it all, you find, that there's actually another outcome out there in space that could work. And you don't have to let your original plan get you stuck. You can keep playing the game!
So this is the method that I have decided to employ. I mostly play the game step by step. I knew I wanted to dance here in Rwanda and find other people to dance with me. I had been working with one group and almost got to dance for a really huge event in town, but that fell through. But I had to dance somehow. So I made calls, sent messages, awkwardly wandered into buildings, asking who would be interested in working with me. Some went somewhere. Others are good connections for future reference. I wanted to work with all women, but then found that there were many men wanting to join in, so I gladly adjusted my direction and welcomed their enthusiasm. I was going to create a piece for an event that recently past, but some unexpected occurrences cut into rehearsal time, so instead another dancer and I quickly came up with an improvisation piece to show instead. Sometimes panic still sets in initially, but because I made that first move toward making things happen, I can keep remembering that something always worked out in the end, whether it's what I expected or not.
I'm no huge success story yet, so I'm not here to tell you that with this twelve-step program, you too can be the next Bill Gates or anything like that. But I can tell you that there are ways of getting over the humps and of continuing to play the game even when the odds don't seem to be in your favor. You can't change everyone and everything around you to fit to your plan, but you can adjust your plan to navigate around those things and continue moving. And when you continue, even if your direction has totally changed, it might just take you to an even more epic victory than you could have imagined. You just have to keep playing the game. If not for yourself, do it for those who love you and want to see you happy.
Your move.
Sounds like a recipe for growth Nina Ruth. Keep the Master in mind and go for it! The only way to success is through a series of failures! Look at the great successes throughout history! You are doing great!
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