5 Life Skills Learned From Dancing
Performing art forms teach us more than we can imagine.
Practicing Kathak since I was 5 years old has taught me a lot about life.
Hobbies unknowingly teach many things. Picking a hobby and following it religiously can give you some of the most valuable life skills.
Here are some things that dancing for 17 years has taught me:
Empathy:
It’s important to put yourself in others shoes because you never know when you will be walking the similar path .
Kunal Shah tweeted: Engineers who do some version of performance arts in early life do much better later in consumer tech startups as they learn a super important skill-crowd empathy to get applause.
Empathy has also helped me in becoming good communicator.
Fearless:
Sometimes you need to take risks and actions in life as if no one is watching.
The mantra that I followed during every stage performance is that ‘I am dancing for myself and it doesn’t matter what audience says’. This made me fearless in life about people’s opinions and also in general thinking that I am a solo dancer of my life.
Patience:
Bill Gates says, ‘Patience is the key element of success’.
In dancing, takes years to get those moves correct. Someone who doesn’t have sufficient patience in life will never achieve long term goals. Patience keeps me going through all those moments where anyone would have given up.
Cooperation:
No other activity has taught me how to work in team as good as dancing did.
If your dance partner misses a step on stage you have to miss it as well on the spot. This taught me working in harmony with team members. You learn to keep an eye around and work, making sure the whole team is moving at same pace.
Decision making:
Jack Ma said, ‘Your attitude is more important than your capabilities, similarly your decision is more important than your capabilities’.
Most of the times, the wrong decisions that we make are due to the outer influences. As a dancer you learn to shun those outer voices. This made me good decision maker.
