The Emotional Bull Ride

I did competitive latin american formation dance for a while.

In case you’ve never seen this, it’s a group of 8 couples performing a 6-minute routine of a variation of latin american dances and all the movements are synchronized and have to be in exact shapes that keep changing throughout the performance.

Physically, it’s the toughest thing I’ve ever done. And it was an incredible experience performing in front of hundreds of people with all the others in my group.

The thing is, it hasn’t been only the physically most demanding thing I’ve ever done, it’s also emotionally a lot more challenging that you might think.

Because you have to train your brain to focus in the exact moment that you need it, you need to do your thing but also keep constant attention because you have to be vigilant about what’s happening during the performance. When someone makes a mistake you need to react instantly and adapt to keep the group together.

And as it often happens on those tournaments, things change. The whole day you prepare for a certain timetable, to get you “in the zone”, and warmed up in the exact right moment.

And then, there is a delay, something changes.

Something unexpected might happen during preparation or even during the performance. A strap of a dress might rip, you might slip, your partner might be more nervous than expected, and a million other things.

What you must learn to do on those tournaments is to keep absolute focus, no matter what happens.

Until it’s over.

Unexpected things happen all the time and if you’re not able to shut them out emotionally until the show is over, you will hurt your performance.

The audience yells and screams at you, yes, and when you’re out there performing you feed off of their energy but at the same time you shut yourself off completely. 

You’re in a bubble.

There’s only this exact moment and it’s only about what you have to do right now. 

Because if you don’t you don’t perform well.

Or even worse, you might slip, or make an obvious mistake.

In writing, although it’s not as clear as in a tournament when “the show is over” it’s a good advice also to train yourself to keep your focus.

When something happens that you didn’t plan for, accept it. Adapt if you can. 

Don’t whine, don’t get angry.

It doesn’t change anything and it just makes it harder to get back to your state in which you can create, be inspired.

Because now you have accumulated all that anger inside you that you need to get rid of first.

So…

Writers are also athletes in a way. Athletes of the brains. 

We sell emotions.

So we better become good at controlling them.

Want to go deeper on how to control your emotions to be more inspired?