042: Dance Your Way Through Life

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Tudor Alexander.

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Transformation is an ongoing journey and it is good that we don't have to walk that path alone.

My name is Tudor Alexander and this is my weekly podcast where I share my life lessons on and off the competitive floor with a few stories in between.

Thank you for joining me on this journey and now let's create a life we love.

Well hello and welcome.

Thank you for joining me.

My name is Tudor Alexander and this is my podcast,

The 7 Transformations.

Happy Friday to you wherever you may be.

Thank you for joining me today.

I want to talk to you about something that I find very cool and very useful for your everyday life.

Normally I have interviews on Fridays but for the last two weeks I decided to take a break from that and post a couple thoughts I had that I thought were very useful and very important for ultimately creating your life,

For having high performance,

For time management.

These types of things are topics that we are always interested in regardless of our profession and coming from a background of professional athletics and ballroom dancing especially,

Which is a very highly skilled activity,

You need a lot of skill and repetition to do it.

I think that a lot of those things that I've learned are very useful for anybody regardless of whether you've even set foot on a dance floor or not.

Because ultimately I think that dancing is an expression of the fundamental laws of the universe.

You've got two units moving in unison to create something.

I often talk about how dancing and martial arts are very similar and the difference is that in martial arts you've got two units moving together to disable one another.

The goal is not to create anything,

The goal is to remove a threat,

To come back down to homeostasis,

That kind of thing.

Whereas with dancing,

That's kind of the opposite side of the coin.

We're trying to synergize,

We're trying to create something greater than the two of us.

We're trying to go off balance together but because we're holding on to each other we can do something that we can't on our own.

That's the beauty of it.

You know the picture on my podcast,

Thumbnail,

That's my partner and I dancing at a competition.

I love it because it shows this whole idea that I'm talking about.

I'm holding her and she's going into a position that she's off balance and she wouldn't be able to do that on her own.

That's the whole reason why I use that picture.

There's some other ones too but it's a beautiful example of this idea of choreographing your life through these principles.

Today I'm going to talk to you about three important principles that I've discovered through my career and that is timing,

Dynamics,

And presence.

So these are things that you can apply to your own life and again I don't think you need to have even set foot on a dance floor to understand these and to see them in your life.

I think dancing provides a wonderful metaphor.

It's very visual,

It's very easy to understand because it's obvious.

In dancing the thing that ultimately makes it a useful tool is that like anything else it is an order of things that you do.

That's the first point is that everything in dancing is a choreography.

Sure even social dancing which is very impromptu,

There are still movements and leading and following that we do to go through an order of something.

The music is playing,

It's not random beats,

It's not random sounds.

There is an order to the music and regardless of whether the dance is improvised or not there is some sort of structure that we follow,

Some agreement that we have entered into with our partner and as long as we follow the order everything is good and that doesn't mean it has to be boring but there is a rule and there's a structure to anything and you know if you do any Tony Robbins reading or anything like that ultimately he talks a lot about just basically mimicking people who you think are successful.

If somebody has done something that you really like or that you admire,

That you want to replicate,

Look at what they did and just do the same thing.

Follow the choreography,

Follow the steps that they took and you'll get the same results.

The result is really just a series of steps,

Whatever actions you take are going to give you the result that you want and that works in any direction.

If you're having a crummy result in your emotions,

In your life,

In your finances then you just have to look at what actions contributed to that.

There's no meaning,

There's no getting sorry for yourself,

It's just a matter of what actions that I take and what result did it produce and if you can have that black and white look at it.

You know the beauty about dancing is we say there's no right or wrong,

There's only right or left and I love that because it takes the meaning out of the situation immediately.

There's no right or wrong,

It's just right or left so if you can start to look at your life in terms of just the physical,

Okay what actions do I need to take for what result do I need to have.

That's black and white,

It's just purely what's the physical thing that I need to do.

There's no emotional,

There's no meaning behind it in terms of like oh gosh this is going to be really hard,

Well maybe I shouldn't do this and having this self-deprecating kind of cycle that we go into.

So dancing and creating your life,

You know dancing through the situation,

Dancing through the conversation with people,

You know these are things that we often hear.

It's really just about learning the particular moves that you need to take and the right actions to create the right results and you know with dancing it's very obvious because two people are dancing right in front of you and you can see the choreography and you can see these types of things but your life is a choreography already.

It is just a series of steps that you follow every day,

A series of thoughts that you think,

A series of behaviors and habits and rituals that you have and that's what makes your life's choreography.

If you saw let's say for example a map of the places that you go to on a weekly basis you would see how habitual it is.

You would see the choreography but it's over such a large part of space over the map of the city.

It's not as obvious.

We think their lives are a little more random but it's not.

It's very choreographed.

You know and that leads to the point,

The first point which is timing.

In dancing we are masters of time.

We are you know looking at our movements in a very sequential manner that the top professionals are extremely well rehearsed in their timing which is learning how to break up time and time management.

In this case it's very much focused on our physical bodies but what if you could apply those principles to your energy body,

Your thinking body,

Your mind,

Your behaviors,

Your habits,

The set of values that you have,

The you know the goals that you have at work in your family and those type of things.

So timing is a principle or set of principles really that we can take from movement which is a very useful medium into the rest of our lives.

With timing there's two particular you know subgroups there.

I'm going to talk about duration.

In duration the first part is you know in dancing again I'll use a dance example,

A movement example because it's very easy to visualize.

When you talk about duration the first question in your mind is how long do I have and what do I need to do?

You know for example in dancing if I have you know a certain amount of time I can use a certain part of the foot.

If I don't have a lot of time then I have to use a less part of the foot or whatever you know it's all about the physical amount of time that I have.

One principle of management in time that I've found extremely important is understanding you know this is actually a relationship here but it's understanding the principle of accelerating and diminishing returns.

So for example you know there takes a particular amount of time for you to warm up to an activity,

To a person,

To a social situation,

To whatever you're doing at the gym and also after a point in time it's no longer as effective.

There's like an optimum window that happens a period of time after you start and before a particular period of time kicks in after you start that is the best amount of productive time you have.

You have to figure that out because you're not always going to have the optimal amount of time so you have to learn how to warm up you know when we practice when we go to a competition at an event.

Warming up is one of the most important things and the better you get at warming up the better you get at your time management.

Warming up is several things it's you know your mental presence which is what we're going to talk about last in this episode.

You know it's being able to get present right away if it takes you 10-20 minutes to get present you're wasting your time and it's going to impact every activity because it's all the same and ultimately if it takes you 10-20 minutes to get present to one particular thing that means that in general you have a problem getting present.

So unless you know that one thing that you're doing is something you really really hate and you just don't want to do it but in general you know you should be able to get present quickly if you want to be productive and creative and you know stay on top of your life and manage your time effectively.

So learning to get present and warming up is very important.

There's also the physical side of warming up of what you're doing you know and this this can come in various shapes you know I like to cook and granted I don't ever have time to do it anymore but you know let's say I want to cook and meal prep on Sunday and I have all of my meals planned out on my list well the prep you got to okay let me figure out what I'm going to cook I'm going to do this this this so I'm going to set my get all my dishes ready get all my my food prepped and chopped that's the physical warm up of of what I'm about to do because then I can just execute you know that's what it's all about it's warm up and execution you know if I if I just kind of jump into the fridge and okay let me get some radishes and cut them up and okay let me start this you're doing half hazard you're not prepping enough you know you're going to waste time you might risk an injury you might you know cut yourself you'll maybe forget an ingredient all those types of things so warming up and prepping is extremely important for you know deciding what you're going to do with your time and how much duration do you have you know the other part is cool down learning when to stop you know if you go to the gym for three hours that's just not effective you know a good 45 minute workout that is very well planned and structured is way more effective than going to the gym for an hour and 20 minutes where you're lifting a little bit and then looking at your phone for 10 minutes and doing social media and then lifting a little more and so on so ultimately that's a waste of time now if you have the time to waste and you don't care great but ultimately this is talking about you know high level performance creating a life that you love living your life full out these types of things require you know the details and the you know they say the devil's in the details and it's all about controlling those details and managing your time effectively so knowing how much time you have and how to use that time effectively by balancing the principle of acceleration and diminishing diminishing returns you know that's your warm up and your cool down you know for an optimal window of time is key the other part of timing is understanding the sequential or systematic thinking that one needs to have to manage their big decisions as well as the smaller decisions of daily life you know we live in a reality where the order of what you do will determine the result you know you look at chemistry and that's a perfect example for that theory is that everything that you do is based on the particular order that you do it in so you know you have to consider that that is reality for everything so when it comes to your big decisions you know the order that you do something in this relates to taking risks utilizing the timing of your life on a large scale you know how old are you what are some of the things you should be keeping in mind based on where you are on the chart of your life you know granted we can't predict our future but where are you in relation to the bigger picture and how should you be most utilizing your time right now and of course for the small decisions the daily moments the daily grind this comes down to your multitasking abilities you know learning how to utilize these timings you know of your life like in dancing we we have a lot of things that we coordinate we coordinate our feet our hands our hips our heads you know our bodies there's so many things that we coordinate to music there's so many different timings we call it again i'll use another cooking example like if i'm gonna meal prep on sunday i don't want to do things in a linear fashion i want to see if i can cook like three things at once and if i can manage that effectively because i know the timings like okay i know you know if i'm gonna cook like a soup that's gonna take me you know 20 minutes and in that time i can chop up this and then start the other one cooking for 10 minutes and then put the rice cooker on and that's gonna cook some rice so by the time the soup is done i have like three things done if i do it all nicely organized so you know understanding your timings is ultimately a factor of your process thinking and you process oriented how will this to fit decision affect xyz down the road how is my process going to change or alter my result in thinking of every decision in terms of the decision before it and the decision after it these things are very useful and important things to have in your life and considerations if you want to manage your time effectively so you know your small decisions are all a matter of of managing your time and multitasking and when it comes to that you know i also talk about lateral multitasking versus vertical multitasking it's like what the heck is that well it's kind of interesting because you know you can multi there's many ways to multitask and like in the cooking example that would be what i would call a vertical multitasking situation and why i say vertical is i i call it like stacking like one on top of the other because in a lateral situation let's just imagine like one dimension in a lateral multitasking situation all your tasks are competing with one another you know so for example if i am uh you know at the computer and i'm working on a word document but then i've also got audacity open for some you know whatever podcast stuff all of those are on the same medium and ultimately they compete for my time but if i'm cooking you know like some foods let's say i put the rice cooker on i've got some stuff boiling there i've got something baking in the oven all those things are happening at the same time so i'm able to manage them it's like there's a stack they're not competing with each other they're vertically related in that sense if you can visualize that so you know there's pros and cons to both of these you know like for example if i if i was sitting in a bath like a detox bath and drinking like antioxidant tea and and learning watching a tedx talk on my ipad all of those at once that's like ultimate multitasking you know and self-improvement but you know there's also a drawback to it because ultimately you're not as present either you know so so when you have a vertical situation where you have multiple things going on at the same time that don't necessarily compete with each other there is a question to ask yourself okay at what point does this become unmanageable you know so you everything has pros and cons you always have to balance two aspects of everything and with lateral multitasking where you have a series of tasks that compete with each other in a sense you have to do them linearly you know remember the the rule that we established in the previous section about principle of acceleration and diminishing return so if i'm on a task once you get started on it especially if it's something like writing or you know whatever is some kind of analytical work you know remember that it takes time to mentally warm up to that so where you have poor multitasking in those lateral situations is that we often switch between tasks before we effectively warm up you know we we switch from we do a little bit of here like 10 minutes here and then you switch to another 10 minutes there you don't really get anything done because you aren't entering that optimum window of performance you haven't warmed up sufficiently that would be like you know again in dancing or any kind of movement you know that you start warming up but you don't really finish then you start doing some other random stuff so it's not directed you know whereas lateral you know there are benefits of having tasks that compete with each other in a sense if you can manage those principles that i was just talking about of knowing how long to stay for warm up to get to your optimum window of productivity and when to stay you know when to call it quits because there is such a thing as burnout and that is what can happen in a lateral situation because if you're stuck on one task too long you will burn out and so but the advantage to that though you know again we're talking about both pros and cons the advantage to a lateral situation is that you can be refreshed in the sense so you know if i'm working on something and i'm in my optimum window and then okay i'm starting to get that that feeling that it's just not productive anymore boom switch to another task you know and totally different task you know and i'm focused 100 on it totally new world i'm doing you know audio stuff now or maybe i went from writing to you know doing some video editing whatever that's totally unrelated it's a new wind it's a new burst of creative activity so it can be refreshing whereas when you have to keep track of a ton of different activities going on at once it can be very distracting so pros and cons to both sides when it comes to time management and the order in which things happen which ultimately again is systematic thinking the next set of principles deals with dynamics you know in dancing we talk about dynamics a lot but dynamics is not unique to dancing it's actually a physics principle and it relates to how things are related to each other and how they move specifically in relation to each other and this is a very important principle in creating your life and of course the topic of this episode which is choreographing your reality and creating that life's choreography to be as beautiful and impeccable and as productive for the least amount of energy as possible that's that's our goal you know we want to get the biggest bang for our buck life is short you want to live your life full out and obviously life is also hard work but it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be hard work forever the point is to come to the point where your process in your choreography is so well rehearsed and beautiful and effortless that you move through life with grace and that's what it all comes down to and it's about employing these principles and obviously there's others too but these are very powerful ones and dynamics what dynamics is is the study of how things are related to each other when they move you know what is what is the impact of me doing this on this and this and this what other things are going to happen you know that kind of thing so when when you move something what other things need to be moved or not moved and why when we look at dynamics in dancing in movement there's internal dynamics within the person's body in relation to themselves and there's external dynamics in terms of okay I'm dancing with a partner what does that look like between two people you know what are the principles there if I'm in a performance or competition situation what are the dynamics between our particular unit of me and my partner and everybody else on the floor that's called floor crafting in dancing and these things are very interesting to me because again they apply to everyday life when we look at internal dynamics between different body parts what is the point of that in dancing and that's to help you avoid unnecessary and unwanted momentum you know a simple example is this again you don't have to be a professional dancer to understand this but you know we make fun of the Frankenstein walk I usually do that to my students if if they're doing something by accident that's uncoordinated and I say it's penguin mode or Frankenstein walk and the reason we all know the Frankenstein walk is because it's completely unnatural it doesn't utilize opposition in the body you know so if we look at just walking in general it utilizes the swinging of the arms that is in opposition to the legs if I walk with my left leg forward my right arm is going to go forward and vice versa if my left arm goes forward with my left leg and I do that perpetually it's going to be a very weird walk like a zombie walk because it's unnatural it doesn't you know your your body's a perpetual motion machine and that comes from evolution we're designed to be under momentum but momentum is also something that can come into play that will prevent you from creating the life that you love from creating what you want to create because momentum can also set you off balance momentum can make you you know engage a situation early right as if you would in a dance you might step early on the step or you might be late because you you know you haven't built enough momentum that kind of thing momentum is not a bad thing it is just something to be used properly and if you look at really coordinated athletes they understand how to twist their body and put themselves in momentum on purpose whereas people who are not as you know uncoordinated or professional tend to fall victim to momentum in a way that's not of their choosing so this is where internal dynamics come into play and in dancing we talk about points of opposition you know like if I again with walking it's the same thing only just you know fancier I'm moving my left arm you know my left leg forward and my right arm forward now I have an opposition between two things and there's hundreds of points on the body like that that we are constantly studying in ballroom dancing but in in life you can think of those as opposing viewpoints you know you should be able to employ two opposing viewpoints in everything that you do if you want a balanced approach to your time to your life to creating anything you know and what that means is for example let's say you have you know a viewpoint about money that you you know that life is short spend you know YOLO live it out spend as much of it as you can you know by experiences that kind of thing okay that's a viewpoint what's that viewpoint going to do for you well it's going to make sure that you really have a very experiential life that you're going to not miss any opportunity that kind of thing but what is it you know because it's just one viewpoint it doesn't come with a balancing factor to it what is the potential for misuse if it's done too much well you're going to burn through all your credit cards you're going to get in debt you're going to be irresponsible financially that kind of thing so it's there's no one truth that encompasses everything because everything is relational this is a super super important lesson that i've learned from dancing that i pass on through my lessons through my work with people everything is related to everything else there is no one thing on its own so if my attitude on life is you know what spend your money and get experiences live life full out that's great you should live life full out and you should live for every experience in the meantime also balance it with an opposing with an opposition right so let's say that you know that particular viewpoint is your left leg moving forward now i need my right arm moving forward which is okay let's be responsible let's make sure we budget let's make sure i don't borrow too much i have safeguards in play for that kind of behavior to not become reckless now i have a balanced approach because i have two opposing values that are complementary but they're opposite and that's really what it comes down to when we talk about internal oppositions it's it's the opposing forces within your own behavior and thinking that allow you to approach every situation every movement you take in this life's choreography towards the things that you want in a balanced way so that you're not going overboard that you understand how to use these things as tools you know you understand when they are using you and when they're robbing you of power because at some point if your only value is i'm going to spend money on my experiences and live life full out without some sense of the opposite you will burn yourself out it's designed that way the system is designed for you to discover the opposite regardless eventually you're going to burn yourself out you're going to run into debt and you will have to learn you know so that's just that's a part of our system and the sooner you can learn those oppositions of everything you're doing and see the opposite but complementary side the better you know so the the other thing we talked about in dynamics is external dynamics in the sense of what are some relational things that happen between you and outside forces like partners like floor crafting and that can be anything from you know repurposing the content from your blog to your podcast to your instagram to your facebook seeing the relation of everything in your branding scheme managing teams of people on your you know business or restaurant or whatever you know future planning except extrapolating you know situations being able to predict you know risk assessment all these types of things relate to systemic thinking you've got systematic thinking which is the one that we talked about previously with uh you know the order in which things happen and having an awareness of the process of things and then you have systemic thinking which is looking at something from a perspective of relating components you know today even in health it's becoming more and more of a systemic perspective in the sense that people are not looking at a problem with the liver as okay it's just a problem with the liver you know the doctors are going to start looking at a holistic approach to okay if your liver is doing this then okay what else is related to that and what else do we need to treat at the same time okay do a little bit with the heart here let's do digestion let's look at your mental health let's look at that and that is what health for example is all about a well-rounded or good plan a good health plan is one that is employing systemic thinking in the sense that it it will take a look at the entire system rather than at one singular part and that is what having an awareness of external dynamics of things outside of you and how they are related and moving is key for choreographing the dance of life you know that as i usually call it so moving on to the final point which is your mental presence you know we talked about timing we talked about dynamics and the relationship of different things moving the final thing that i'll mention today is presence you know your attention that is at a given moment in whatever you do in your multitasking in your tasks in your planning in your execution all that stuff and there's three factors to me that affect your mental presence the first one is your experience in the task obviously if you are new to something it requires a lot more mental energy than if you're not you know we often talk about the four levels of learning i don't know if you're familiar with them but i'll refresh them for you the first one is unconsciously incompetent meaning you do not know what you do not know so when you first start something you know i first get a student for you know teaching them some dancing they have no clue it's really fun you know they're unconsciously incompetent they're they're ignorant of what they are failing at so they don't even know what they don't know you know and life is easy but then you introduce a little bit of knowledge and the consciousness changes but their competence hasn't changed because you need repetition so they enter the second stage which is consciously incompetent which means you are aware of your incompetence now and that's a very frustrating place to be you know it's very difficult to to be present and a lot of people quit at this stage a lot of people stop doing what they're doing and move on either because they think they're not good enough because they you know they'll want to put in the work whatever it is there's some reason that comes up when we come to this stage and if you can slug it out if you can put the repetition if you can focus that mental presence through consistent work and direction and vision and applying of your goals this is where all this stuff comes in play then you'll come to the third and fourth level which is consciously competent meaning you are aware you're competent but you are still having to think in a sense you still having to be you know you're not fully in it you know and that's the final stage which is unconsciously competent meaning you're just in the zone like i'm not even thinking to be able to create this level of competence that i'm doing that's what you see in the top athletes that's what you see in people who are in the flow in the zone they're really well rehearsed they're just doing it automatically without having to think about it and that's when we see authenticity that's when we see that storytelling we see that performance level in anything you know i talk about storytelling i talk about these things you know from dancing but look at anybody you know whether i just went to a bunch of speakers tonight and you know talking about anything from finances to transformation to all kinds of things it was part of a speaking program and it doesn't matter whether you're dancing you're speaking or you're you know writing storytelling sharing your story authentically this is something that's part of everybody's life it's part of our journey it's part of choreographing our life with others and walking into our truth into our passions into our futures you know this is part of everything so you can see that in your own life you know so unconsciously incompetent oh no sorry unconsciously competent that is the key that we want to arrive through and that only comes through consistent application of our mental presence having patience diligence you know over time to get to those levels because the third and fourth level that takes work that takes time you know competence doesn't just happen over a day you know so and that's the final thing is to you know which comes also it's all related you know these are all related but your ability to reduce the warm-up time obviously we mentioned that in the talk about your sequential thinking and timing and balancing accelerating and diminishing returns your ability to reduce the warm-up the warm-up time you know when you i have a lot of things going on throughout the day and it requires my mental presence to be there you know most you know at least 90 so it's one of those things where i can't check out so i've gotten very good at clicking into my mental presence immediately from one task to another that may be completely unrelated so and that's taking me time but through that practice and even through dancing you know and dancing what we do to practice is we have several dances that are very different in character that we have to go through and once you do one and you do a full intensity and it's done literally you have five seconds to change your entire mood your entire character you become a whole different person and boom okay now i'm here now it's done it's whatever happened it happened it's a new new beginning new story new person and that level of mental training is extremely important to to be able to have long-term success and high performance in life because in life to be able to create a lot of different things your mental presence needs to be able to switch gears and for that your ability to warm to warm up to the situation needs to be reduced you can't take forever to switch gears to you know get warmed up to the situation if you're still stuck on what happened if you get distracted easily if you are too much of a perfectionist and you can't let go of those incompletions from the last thing and whatever i am like super super ultra love completion and certainty and having everything in a box and right now i could tell you my life is anything but in a tight little box and it it's frustrating but i've really learned to live with those incompletions not done that are not neat that are not tidy that kind of thing so work on work on that work on your mental presence if you find that it is lacking you know find out where everybody's different you know everybody's different in terms of what they need to work on because some people have a very sharp level of focus but you know in that sense maybe they get too focused and they get too attached and if something you know those are the perfectionist those are the people who are you know let's say having an issue with control and i'm one of those too you know i've had to learn to dial it back and then some people are too distracted they're off in lala land maybe they're too creative or they're they just get easily distracted by everything so you have to find out where you are on the spectrum and you you are somewhere and adjust accordingly that's what it's all about it's not good or bad each of them has its usefulness you know being able to focus like a laser is very useful for certain things but again if it's not kept in check by those opposing forces of you know the opposite side which is okay being able to detach and being able to to take a look around and re-evaluate then it's going to take you for a ride it's going to burn you out it's going to take you for a momentum that's unpredictable and uncontrolled so employ your oppositions your opposing forces employ your mental presence and remember to learn the order in which you need to do something the timings of your life this is how you can choreograph your reality and dance your way through life so i hope you've enjoyed this episode i try to relate some of the most important things that i've learned through my career to a way that i think other people can feel and understand without having to be anywhere near a dance floor or be part of the dance community and i think this is very valuable so let me know what you think i always appreciate feedback you can contact me through my website that's probably the best way my hosting doesn't really tell me any you know stats regarding contacts or anything so anyway i hope you've enjoyed this episode happy friday to you go out there and choreograph your dance of life i want you to dance through your life gracefully whether that's on the floor or with your loved ones or in your business or at your office whatever it is move gracefully through those situations by mastering your timing your multitasking the dynamics within yourself and the others as well as your mental presence so thank you so much for listening and supporting the show and we'll see you guys next week you're listening to the seven transformations podcast with your host tutor alexander for more episodes like these subscribe or stay connected at the seven transformations dot com