Concentrate on what you need to do, not what other people are doing.
It was incredible. They were incredible. I marvelled at their slick, fast spins and kicks and - I kid you not - back flips! I almost leapt up with excitement. The routine ended with all of the dancers diving to the floor in a caterpillar motion.
We whooped and clapped. We being the adult street dancers who had arrived early and were invited in to watch.
"Wow, how good are they!" I said to Richard, the guy I'd met last week, as we exited and walked to the other dance studio.
"Yeah," he said, "Now we've got to follow that."
Fortunately the talented little blighters left the building before our class started. Our instructor, JP, taught us another eye-wateringly quick routine, this time to The Enforcer by 50 Cent. "Fiddy cent," said JP, correcting us. "Fiddy."
I had never heard The Enforcer before, but it didn't half have a good intro; big sound, lots of bass. I was already nodding to it.
The routine was a corker. It felt good, and looked it too, from what I could see of the other dancers. What's more, my timing felt sharper than the week before. But a familiar problem arose whenever JP shouted, "From the top!" I would start well, then halfway through I'd forget the next move and be left scrambling to catch up.
I got annoyed with myself. I knew that I could do the individual moves. I knew I could piece them together in short sequences. Why couldn't I remember the whole thing?
I realised that I had spent the entire lesson watching and copying JP. When he wasn't dancing, I was lost. What I should have done is learned the moves from JP, then practiced them by myself without watching anybody else. That way I would have learnt the routine by heart.
"Let's film this and put it on the Face of the book," said JP, running to the door five minutes before the end of the lesson.
What? Film it? Put it on Facebook? Are you mental? We've only just learnt it. And some of us can't even say that!
JP returned with a colleague who whipped out a smartphone and asked the class if anyone objected. A few of us in the back row glanced nervously at each other, but nobody refused. And so, holding our hands in front of us, and facing the floor, we waited for our cue.
This is what happened... on the Face of the book.
Did you spot me? Yep, I'm the prat at the back in the orange T-shirt. Boy am I glad I was obscured for most of that.
If that experience has taught me anything, it's that I need to practice. I need to concentrate on what I am doing, not what other people are doing.
Maybe I need to stop hiding at the back and step forwards.
What is your wish of the month? Have you been taking small steps forward?
