Dance Like Nobody’s Watching

What’s currently on your mind? Write the first thing that comes to mind and go with it. Keep writing until you feel you’ve said everything you need to get out.

By Laura Black

I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” Well, that’s exactly what I did last night in my living room. Why, you ask? Why not!!!

Last year was an emotionally rough year for me. I struggled a lot with my anxiety and how to manage everything I wanted to accomplish. When I refer to accomplish, it could have been what I wanted to accomplish within that specific hour, day, week, month, or year. I just struggled to get everything done. Basically, I took on too much at once, which seems to be a reoccurring pattern for me. All in all, I think I expected too much of myself, and I put more pressure and stress on myself than I possibly needed. With all the excess expectations, my anxiety was through the roof. To say I was on edge would be an understatement.

I’m a super organized person. In fact, most would agree, especially my husband, that I’m a little OCD about organization. Okay, a lot would be more accurate. One of my biggest issues last year was I didn’t feel completely in control of all my situations. Because I wasn’t always in control, this led me to feel unorganized. I like things done a certain way, and I want things done NOW. When that doesn’t happen, I feel like I’m not in control, and I feel like my world is falling apart. I know. This probably sounds crazy to most, but that’s the way I work. When I’m unorganized, or things are not in my control, I tend to, how should I say this, lose my shit. I get irritable and want to avoid everyone in my presence like the plague.

I also absolutely HATE asking for help. I’ve always been an independent person. I can be super stubborn, and I tend to let my pride get in the way. I think a lot of this stems from my first marriage. I know this is an ongoing issue I need to work on, and I won’t go into the specifics of what brought it all on because it’s my own personal struggle. What I will say is I needed to figure out the root of my problem, and it ended up being me.

Overall, I was expecting too much of myself. I was taking on more work than I possibly had time for, I had a lot to tackle at home, and I was trying to further my future endeavors as a yoga instructor and a writer on top of everything else. Because I hate asking for help for many reasons already mentioned, I was expecting things from other people without properly communicating what I was expecting. In the end, I needed to learn to let go and not fester over small things that really didn’t matter. I needed to prioritize what was most important to me and go from there.

In order to do that, I needed to figure out what was important to me and how I would go about tackling or prioritizing it all. I did this by doing a series of things that I’ll talk about below.

 One: I bought a book by Rachel Hollis titled Girl, Stop Apologizing. It’s a self-help book designed to make you realize that you can have goals and ambitions without having to give up everything else in your life. You can plan out the future you want and still do your day to day stuff. You can achieve what you want with a plan and stick to it. The part that helped me the most was hearing you can say no to things you don’t want to do, and it’s okay. I have such a hard time with this, and I’m sure it will always be a struggle, but I’m doing it. This book helped me tremendously. I highlighted the shit out of it, and there are so many parts of this book I’m now applying to my life. First and foremost, I am getting back to focusing on me and what I want to accomplish with my life.

Two: I bought myself a new planner to help me achieve the goals I want to accomplish. I talked about this planner in my last blog of 2019, Mapping Out a New Year. A few years ago, a student had a planner that intrigued me, but I never looked into it further. This year I decided I need more change and focus when it came to planning out my life, so I did look into it, and now I’m using the planner daily. It’s a Panda Planner where you can focus on monthly, weekly, and daily plans.

Each section gives you space to reflect and write on the month, the week, and the daily events. It’s meant to help you be more accountable for your planning and accomplishing your goals, which is exactly what I wanted and needed. So far, it’s doing exactly that. Sure, I don’t get everything done that I want to, but I feel like I’m accomplishing more. Not to mention, it’s definitely holding me accountable more than not.

Three: I mapped out my goals for the year as well as my goals for ten years out. I wrote out my goals for the year and placed them in my planner as a daily reminder of what I want to accomplish. Then, as Rachel Hollis suggested in Girl, Stop Apologizing, I mapped out what I’d like to accomplish ten years from now. I write these ten-years out accomplishments in a separate notebook almost daily. Hollis says if you write them out daily, it’s a reminder of the goals you want to accomplish and a way to keep them in your head. It helps to make you accountable for them as well.

Four: I created a vision board within my planner. I wrote about this in my last journaling blog titled Vision Boards. It’s just another way to focus on what I want to accomplish within the next year. I have looked at it daily to help keep me in focus of what I want, and I plan on creating more.

With all this done, I started to bring my focus back to myself. Yes, I can do everything I normally do, but I needed to plan out time for the other accomplishments I want to achieve in life. I want to eat healthier, workout, and feel better about myself overall. I also want to become a yoga instructor, teach others all the benefits of journaling, write a novel or two, and offer my creative talents to others as needed. Overall, I want to remain the loving, caring, and kind person I’ve always strived to be. At the same time, I want to achieve all the goals mentioned above as well.

That brings me back to the phrase at the beginning, “Dance like nobody’s watching.” Last night, as I was sitting at home alone with my dog, I suddenly had the urge to dance. I was listening to my favs playlist I created years ago. I’m always adding new songs to this. It’s become such a variety of songs. I can’t even put it under one genre of music. It’s a cluster of everything. Music has always been an important part of my life. Whether it’s the lyrics or beat that gets me, music has always been there to inspire me, and it always helps me stay on track with life.

As I listened to my favs playlist and I had the urge to dance, I knew what song I needed to find – “Rain King” by Counting Crows. Whenever I hear this song, it automatically puts me in a good mood. The beat makes me want to jump around and freely flay my arms in whatever direction they choose to go. As I jumped around and let my arms freely flay last night, I belted out the lyrics too. My poor dog thought mama lost her marbles, but there’s just something about this song that makes me feel free and fully alive.

So, what brought on my sudden need to dance? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m finally feeling like everything is starting to align. I have figured out how to focus on myself again as well as my goals without taking away from my everyday life. I am happier with myself as a whole, too. I have been practicing my yoga, I’ve changed my eating habits, and I’ve lost weight. I am able to make time for myself to work on my goals, and I still have time for my family and friends, which all mean the world to me. I have a husband that supports me both financially, when needed, and emotionally. I know he has my back and wants to see me achieve my goals.

I also have a family that’s always there for me whenever I need them. They will always support my hopes and dreams, and they want nothing but the best for me. And, I have friends I call my family that will always be there for me, too. With all that going for me, why wouldn’t I have the urge to dance? I have so much to be grateful for every day, and that’s more than enough of a reason to dance like nobody’s watching. Hell, you’d dance too.

We all have hopes and dreams we want to accomplish, but we often let obstacles get in our way. We should always dance like nobody’s watching and be who we want to be. I can’t stress this enough; always be yourself and feel comfortable to be who you’re truly meant to be. You only have one life to live, so you should learn to make the best of it. Time to get up and dance!!!