Dance

I was recently told I was a good dancer. I can't do dance steps or ballroom dances, but just dancing the way people do freestyle. I have reason to think the compliment was sincere, since it came from two separate people who, though they might want to be in my favor, aren't given to gratuitous compliments. My partner doesn't say I'm good at things that I'm clearly bad at, and the other person, her cousin, can be a bit hyperbolic and eager to please, but wouldn't invent something totally off the wall. Even discounting it a bit, I think there some element of truth there.

Being told that caused a shift in my thinking. I wanted to think it was true, so I decided to make it true (if it isn't already), and approach dance in a different way than I have before, practicing at home and learning to do specific things I want to do. I'm thinking of my body in a different way to, as an instrument as it were. I've been getting down to what I want to weigh, which is about 160lb, from 165. I can also be thinking about clothes in a different way, thinking about the way the clothes fit the body instead of just whether I like the color of the shirt.  

It's similar to what I do with music. Once again, I know that my piano teacher would never tell me something was good when it wasn't. But since praise can be constructive too, in the sense that you will want to repeat that experience, do what got you the praise once again. For this to work, though, you have to trust the praise as earned, and think self-consciously about what you did right.

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I was thinking that, say, if you wanted to write a graphic novel or become a good hip hop dancer, you could probably do it.  [Or substitute whatever you want here.] If you have had the idea of doing it, then you can. You wouldn't get the idea if you had never read a graphic novel and didn't like the form. If you didn't have ideas about what you liked and didn't like, and the kind of approach that was attractive to you. You might be insecure about your drawing or your narrative ideas, or have any number of the typical self-doubts that people have. But actually, you can do it.

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The principle that "you can do anything" does not apply to competition.  You can run a marathon, let's assume, but I can't tell you that you will win a marathon or tennis tournament or dance contest or concerto competition, or that your book will win a prize. That's simply because other people can also achieve anything they want, not just you. I can tell you you can bake a pie, but not that it will win the pie bake off.

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The first step in achieving results in competitive activities is to be very proficient at very basic skills, and knowing exactly how good the competition is. For publishing articles, for example, you have to realize that even graduate students can be struggling with basic high-school level skills, like writing well-formed paragraphs or having an introduction that fulfills all its rhetorical functions. I refereed an article by a very well-known scholar that had a clunky title, like "Theme and Structure in ..." I accepted the article but made him change the title. It was published and made a substantial contribution to Lorca studies.