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I avoid things. When I feel overwhelmed, my first instinct is to put things off or ignore them, even though I know it’s not the most productive approach and I’ll just rot until I panic. I’ve always been this way, getting things done at the last possible minute but recently even at the last minute I haven’t been able to get the motivation to do things (including this assignment oop ._.ll)

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I think my childhood definitely changed me in many ways. I don’t believe I would be where I am now without my parents punching me as much as they did but sometimes there are certain aspects where I wish they were a little kinder.

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don’t overwork to the point where its unproductive

don’t stop before actually testing your limits

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pushing too far can lead to injuries that could have been prevented

sometimes not working to your maximum is smarter

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doesn’t really mean what I thought it meant. you don’t have to be uncomfortable to be “tough”, though being tough often means acting under discomfort. there should be a difference.

drill sergeant vs support

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Something that’s been kicking my ass since day 1 was double turns on pointe. At one point(e haha im funny) in my training I thought I was just born a bad turner and just sort of gave up hope. However during the summer something clicked and my doubles were more consistent, and I realize now that toughness doesn’t always mean just working hard, a lot of the time it also means being patient and waiting for the hard work to pay off,

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If I were to teach someone turns - first of all I wouldn’t. But if I did I think that a lot of people would find turns to be just as difficult as I did, but maybe for different reasons. Ignoring proper technique it can still be hard to remember which way is en dehor and en dedan. I think for a non dancer, it would be rewarding (?), like I would feel that way if I just learned a random skill. But I think it would teach them about how every “field” has its hard things and that perseverance is required no matter what you choose to do.

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“The first step isn’t to throw someone into the deep end of extreme stress; it’s teaching the skills necessary to cope with the situation”.

I feel like this stuck with me a lot. Looking back I feel like I was just raised in a high stress environment, and therefore had to learn how to cope from a young age. I feel like there are many flows with the way I cope with stress, I tend to suppress my emotions and push off the fact that I’m stressed, which leaves things to pile up in my life.

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Whenever I look back on any videos of myself I tend to gravitate towards reacting with negative criticism. And I think it’s normal to focus on things you didn’t do well but I feel like all my criticism toward myself is “unconstructive”. My “helpless child” seems to tell me “ew that looks weird, you’re not good at this maybe we should quit”. A lot of the times it’s also criticism about my body, that I need to lose more weight or something. And after that I just sort of feel…defeated? and for a while will give up on trying or at least not watch myself for a while and it gets in the way of me giving myself the actual chance to analyze and improve.

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Ambivalent Parent: tough love + support, the kind that doesn’t give up on you and has patience that I don’t have for myself a lot of the time.

Calm Optimist: gives me reassurance that not everything is going to hell

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just this entire playlist. its what i study to when i feel productive and calm and not wanting to blow my brains out. but specifically A Town With an Ocean View is my favorite

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1. literally just going to class every day

2. picking up choreography. sometime the brain don’t work

3. being present all the time

1. showing up for class even when I don’t want to gives me a sense of productivity and accomplishment

2. learning better ways to pick up/learn choreography

3. learning how to stay present helps me learn how to focus in other aspects of life

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1. my lack or arm strength - i’ve been hitting the gym lowkey…

2. weak ass immune system - building better habits with sleeping, diet, finding “me time”

3. can’t wake up in the morning - tbh just gotta thug this one out

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I know I can commit fully to movement once I decide to trust myself and just sorta go for it. When I stop hesitating and let go of second-guessing, I tend to mess up less than when I panic and overthink.

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One big takeaway from this chapter is that confidence doesn’t come from being perfect—it comes from showing up, working through challenges, and trusting that I’m capable of improving. Instead of seeing obstacles as proof of my limits, I can recognize them as the things that are actually making me stronger.

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The "Leading Yourself" exercise that stands out to me is the idea of breaking big tasks into smaller goals. It’s helped in the past sometimes but a lot of times tasks feel already broken down, there’s just too many to do and everything feels messy. I think I just need a better way of organizing my tasks and my time.

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I find that having us take time in class to reflect with others on what went well and what didn’t is really helpful and I’m always glad when we are allowed that time to do so because I often forget to reflect on my performance after class.

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Sometimes, I have a hard time identifying how I feel emotionally and why my body reacts a certain way. Like when I’m anxious, I don’t register it in my mind and i jest feel uncomfortable if that makes any sense. I’ve been working on verbalizing my feelings and sometimes, even if I’m still anxious or worries putting a name on my feelings make me feel a lot better around them

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i feel girlboss le sserafim my queens

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my bf lowkey…he knows what’s he good at without being cocky about it. or he’s just really good at faking it but fake it till you make it ig

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lowkey already do this on the daily, I find it helpful to organize my thoughts this way especially when I have a lot of stuff to do. I always imagine my life at the moment is a movie montage. It’s like when you watch a movie and the character does something stupid and as an outsider you see it but if it were to happen to you you’d probably do the same thing. So stepping out of my own life, narrating it, I feel gives me more control over my life

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non written:

sit for 10 minutes and don’t feel, just think. there’s going to be a lot of thoughts so try to pinpoint what your worried about without thinking about acting on any of them yet.

written:

continuing from above - what were things that you didn’t know you were worried about that was subconsciously nagging you from the backrooms of your mind? can it be resolved or would it be better to let it go?

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i listen to this when i feel sad and lie on my bed pretending to be a heartbroken princess (not really)

but in my head i literally just hear “zenzenwakarnai. zenzenwakarnai.” (two dollar two dollar)

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I do think self-talk is a really effective tool, but only when it feels real—if it’s forced or doesn’t match what I actually believe, it doesn’t do much for me. The tone that works best for me depends on the situation. When I’m dancing, I respond best to calm, neutral self-talk—something like, “Stay with it, keep moving,” instead of overly positive or critical thoughts. If I start telling myself, “You’ve got this!” but don’t fully believe it, it just feels fake.

That said, there are definitely times when a more challenging, almost "negative" voice is useful. If I’m hesitating on something new—like a movement I keep messing up—sometimes a little internal tough love helps. I’ll catch myself thinking, “Are you really going to let this beat you?” and that actually pushes me to commit instead of second-guessing. It’s almost like I need a mix: steady encouragement when I need to focus, but a little internal challenge when I need to break through hesitation.

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I tried the “practicing boredom” exercise -just sitting with no phone, music, or distractions for 15 minutes. I actually used to do this a lot, it was during one summer I tried to get my shit together by sleeping at 9 pm and waking up at 6 am everyday and meditating every morning (I got inspired by a Chinese period drama…) and while I did notice it helped me clear my head it wasn’t super sustainable to me because maybe I just have ADHD or something but after like a couple minutes I would start daydreaming or sometimes I would fall asleep. However I might pick up this practice again because it gave me time to relax and organize my thoughts (if there were any to organize).

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What I’ve learned from this chapter as well as life recently is that taking care of your mental health is just as important as taking care of your physical health. When my mental health started to crumble this semester I didn’t know how to deal with it since I’m used to just repressing my feelings but this time shit got so bad I couldn’t repress it. I learned that I need to learn to address my feelings in a calm manner and feel them for what they are before things start blowing up in my face.

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One takeaway I had is that we often limit ourselves by sticking to what feels safe or comfortable, but growth happens when we push past those limits.

I know I’m someone who avoids challenges because I was afraid of failing or looking bad. But when I think about times I’ve actually improved—whether in dance, school, or anything else—it’s always been because I pushed myself beyond what felt easy. It’s always not until the end when things “click” but I always have to remember that I’m not going to ever “get it” unless I put myself in the “uncomfortable position.

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I decided that my “new environment” would be staying at my boyfriend’s empty apartment. It’s honestly much heater than my dorm and looks nicer too, and doesn’t have constant leaks on concrete floor…

I found that it actually improved my mood quite a bit. It’s nice to come home to a wall with posters, an organized desk, and a rug as opposed to grey square that probably has black mold.

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My takeaway from this chapter is that a small shift in lifestyle can change a lot for my mental health. I didn’t even think to switch rooms until I read this chapter and honestly I’m really lucky I had the “resources” to do so. I think for the future when I don’t have a second option for living quarters, spending some time to redecorate, clean, and organize my room might do wonders to my depressive episodes. Plus I’ll feel like I’ve accomplished something and that might help me out of a slump.

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I decided to “interview” my boyfriend, and I say interview in quotes as this was just another conversation about my anxiety and him telling me that I’m not going to be a homeless college dropout. Our conversation was mostly centered around the need to belong, and how I felt out of place no matter where I went. For one he’s older than me and has more experience in college, but he’s also someone I view as extremely smart. I’m switching majors and my new major requires quite a bit of STEM classes, and my boyfriend is an ECE (engineering) major and thus has taken many of the classes before. And when I express being worried about the difficulty of the classes he told me they were pretty easy and I thought, “yeah for you. Because you’re better at math than me and smarter than me”. I told him straight up that what he said wasn’t really making me feel better, in fact I felt more unqualified and dumb. But he pointed out that I was being too hyperfixated on my grade in a very narrow subject and that I was “mathematically not dumb as I had scored higher on exams than class average in engineering calculus”. He told me that even he felt out of place at his internship, in class, in interviews. I realized that stressing over how I compare to other people is quite useless tbh and an unhealthy habit; my academic value isn’t placed in how well I do in a STEM class but rather how I decide to approach problems. Because there will always be someone who you think is “better” than you.

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this chapter I feel really resonated with my current situation. The idea of finding meaning amidst my pain wasn’t really something I had bothered to think about until now, and I’ve realized I’ve allowed myself to shut down long before I have actually reached my “breaking point”. I’ve come to realize that the reason I shut down mentally and physically wasn’t because I was “weak” or “lazy” but because I was discouraged. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly I was discouraged about since my future (at least foreseeable) wasn’t really directly affected by any of my current hardships but it began a spiral. I also now think, since I’m approaching the end of my first year in college, that my sense of purpose was previously solely defined by what university I got admitted to. Thus after coming to university, I had yet to find a “new” purpose. Is this what they call a quarter life crisis? Anyway I’m planning to use this summer while I’m still relatively less stressed to really find and heal myself before the new school year.

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It’s not a specific thing I worked on but the idea of intentionally talking to myself or other people and the idea of going through things in my life with a purpose. All the small exercises in this book has forced me to think about why I feel a certain way instead of just spiraling into impending doom. By even processing my feelings to write down for an assignment, I’ve been forced to organize my head into at least a cohesive sentence which I find has helped me feel less anxious about a lot of things.

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Something that I will try to continue to do is take time to stop and think, and assign meaning to myself and validate my feelings. For so long I’ve been afraid to confront my feelings, probably because I was taught to suppress them which only turned small things into spiraling anxiety. I don’t think I can exactly “fix” myself anytime soon, but I think that allowing and forcing myself to process my thoughts will help me from reaching multiple mental spirals. I’m still expecting to get mental breakdowns but I’m hoping to get to the point where I can prevent small things from sending me over the edge.