November 2, 2009

Activist warns women to be careful with your self-talk

I've been slowly reading Tony Robbins’ Unlimited Power. I've had it for years but decided to give it another go. I didn't really take to it the first time I read it. It's a combination of the Law of Attraction and Neuro-linguistic programming. I’m reading the section about self-talk and how it influences the result of your actions. I witnessed a crystal clear example of self-talk tonight.

I'm a Salsa dancer. I've been dancing for about 7 years. I'm very comfortable on the dance floor. I'm obviously not Latin so, to make sense of me, folks will ask if I'm from Ecuador or Puerto Rico. Anyone that hasn't seen me dance will simply assume I can't. I don't hate. I make assumptions based on past experience too. We all do.

Tonight, for the ten thousandth time, a guy made that infamous assumption. He asked me to dance and, with all the confidence in the world, lead me out to the dance floor. The dance started out great. He was probably an intermediate level. The first dance between strangers begins timid. You're feeling each other out. You are learning his signals and he's testing your skills. A man should always scale down his dancing to match her level. Anything else will look bad and leave both of you frustrated.

Once satisfied he gradually "upped the ante" to a point where he felt comfortable but challenged and I followed without difficulty. His lead wasn't fancy. It was a clear and uncomplicated lead. Once I was sure there wouldn't be any crazy surprise dips I relaxed and started to play with the music. Playing with and between beats is what makes partner dancing so much fun. It’s how you add your own style and personality to the dance. Play is definitely reserved for more advanced dancers. When you are first learning Salsa you're too busy trying to remember the thousands of things that are muscle memory for us fogies.

When I started to play... he panicked. I could only guess at his self-talk but I'd imagine "Oh s#%!" based on his expression. All the color drained from his cheeks and all the confidence drained from his lead. At some point during the dance, he asked my name. I told him my first name. He repeated it with my last name. I guess he'd heard of me. He said, "I'm sorry I didn't know." His hands actually started to tremble in mine. Poor guy.

By the end of the song, he was making mistake after mistake. He was even messing up patterns he did effortlessly at the beginning of the dance. He apologized over and over. I just smiled and said, "It's ok, nobody knows but us." That didn't reassure him. What started as a fun dance had quickly became not so fun.

This is what Tony is talking about in his book. My dance partner's self-talk was having a clear effect on his lead. No matter what preconceptions he had about me I was having a great time. I can't help but wonder how many times I've ruined something great with my own negative self-talk.

I'm going to work on spotting when my self-talk goes south. It was easy to spot when someone else was doing it.

Be careful with your self-talk.