Creating the Dance & the Life YOU deserve
In order to receive, you have to believe YOU DESERVE IT.
This is true for your Dance Path and true for your Life.
Sometimes, wisdom arrives softly but, mostly, it shows up, unannounced, as a thunder.
The realization that FULFILMENT is possible ONLY when we believe we deserve it hit me like a punch from a mad, brutal, professional boxeur.
What better way to open Joana Saahirah´s World Blog than with a bang that can wake you up for good?
Between my early start in Portugal, my career in Egypt and around the world, I´ve been in the Egyptian Dance business for almost twenty years. Yet, there´s a craft I've been working on for longer than that. It's called the Art of Turning Dreams into Reality. It's my thing - it has always been.
From an early age, I had a clear vision of what I wanted, I focused on it, and designed an action plan to make it happen. I did it naturally, without exterior instructions or support, presuming everybody else did it.
I was wrong.
As I grew up, and started to interact with other humans - grown-ups, in particular -, I was shocked when someone told me they had an impossible dream.
-Impossible, how? What is an impossible dream?- I´d ask, not getting the point. - There´s no such thing as “impossible” unless you´re physically dead and you want to come back to the world of the living. In that case, I´ll have to agree with you. And even then…
What I didn´t know, but I do now, is that in order to turn dreams into reality, you need more than a clear vision, focus, and an action plan. YOU NEED TO BELIEVE YOU DESERVE IT, that you´re worthy of it.
Despite my natural self-confidence and my apparently infallible formula, I too bumped into unbreakable walls: dreams that, for some reason, refused to materialize.
Now, after having faced this dragon in my own dance and life, it gives me the chills, just thinking about it: IN ORDER TO TURN A DREAM INTO A REALITY, I HAVE TO BELIEVE I DESERVE IT.
Truth can liberate us but, before it does, it can be damned hard to face.
When I observe a dancer, or a group of dancers, struggling with a goal - may it be nailing a choreography, performing, improvising, creating a dance phrase or working for fulfilment in any area of their life - , I´ll often ask them: do you believe you deserve it?
-Uh?
-Do you believe you deserve it? - I repeat.
A long silence follows.
The question unsettles most of us. It unsettles me, for God´s sake, and I´m the one launching it.
In a world of so much information, we tend to forget, or simply ignore, it´s the quality of our QUESTIONS that defines the quality of our LIFE. And dance.
Believing we deserve, that we´re worthy of something is one of those invisible magical wands most of us never considers. We´re not taught to do it and, in some cases, we´re told - by our parents, colleagues, teachers - the opposite. We may have heard, as I did while growing up, we´re not worthy, we don´t deserve good things, we´re bad girls/boys, we haven´t earned it.
If I was to die tomorrow and there was one thing, only one thing, I could leave to my students, this would be IT:
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the goodness;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the success;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the joy;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the love;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the success;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE the expansion;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE abundance in every shape and form;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE to shine in your dance, as in your life;
BELIEVE YOU DESERVE to be happy; to receive.
Beneath facades of self-confidence and business - of which I´m guilty as charged -, often reside layers of negative self-talk, fear of our own greatness and of happiness, lack of self-love, a deep and irrational conviction that we´re not worthy of the gifts life has to offer.
That breaks my heart. It boycotts our evolution as dancers, as human beings.
Learning Egyptian Dance is a multi-dimensional experience - it includes dance technique, choreographies, cultural background, musicality, interpretation skills, as well as several areas of self-development. None of those will work if you don´t look beneath the surface and check if the BELIEFS YOU HOLD ABOUT YOURSELF are contradicting the dreams you hold for yourself.
Listen carefully, write it down, and repeat it out loud:
I´M WORTHY OF ALL THE GOODNESS LIFE CAN OFFER. I DESERVE ( fill the gap with the dream of your choice).
Now, go ahead, and make IT happen. I believe you´re worth it. You gotta believe it, too.
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