Bad Dancing, Submitting, and Surrendering
- 2. When I was in college I used to hate going to parties where there was a lot of dancing. In fact, I did everything I could to avoid it. If I took a girl to a party and she insisted on dancing, I would generally have one of my friends dance with her because I disliked it so much. I am not sure what it is about dancing, but it is just not something that gets me all that excited, and it never has.
- 3. If I really have to though, I will dance. I am so bad at dancing that people often imitate my moves on the floor. I have heard several people refer to one of my worst dance moves as “the chicken”. It involves flapping my arms like a chicken, bobbing my head and butterflying my legs. My dancing is so bad that people often form little circles around me and start cheering because they think it is so funny. I have had too many embarrassing and humiliating moments to count.
- 4. Several years ago I went to a highly regarded professional coach with all sorts of degrees, to bounce business ideas off of. Although we never talked about my dislike of dancing, or about the humiliating experiences I had with dancing in the past, one piece of advice that he kept giving me blew my mind: “ You should go get dance lessons. Preferably from a sassy black woman with a lot of rhythm. She’ll bring out your groove.” “ What the hell are you talking about?” I asked him.
- 5. For the longest time I thought that was some of the crappiest business advice anyone could possibly give someone. I could not believe that this was the sort of professional advice I spent a lot of money on, and took up a lot of my time to get. I was looking for some advice about how to be a better businessman–not how to shake my booty. I had the following sorts of reactions to what he was saying: Withdrawal Skepticism Pessimism Criticism Being Judgmental Stubbornness
- 6. If he had instead said, “I recommend that you spend two weeks at a seminar at UCLA Business School about cross-border transactions in Russia. It is important that you understand the relevance and importance of cross-border trading with Russia to our modern economy,” I would have run right out and signed up for the course–despite the fact that I have never had anything to do with Russia in my business or career. However, when being advised to learn how to shake my booty, I was very resistant.
- 7. This Saturday I went to see a rock concert with my wife and, like at all rock concerts, there were people there who had been dragged along half-willingly by others. There were a lot of confused, uptight people like me there because it was a small and private benefit concert being put on by the rock star father of one of the kids in my daughter’s preschool in Malibu.
- 8. After 45 minutes or so, my wife started poking me, trying to get me to dance. As I do in most of these events, I started to dance but without doing the chicken, or any other number of moves that were sure to bring me certain humiliation. I was half-dancing to the best of my ability, as an act of submission.
- 9. The act of submission is more akin to the act of a slave than anything else. When you submit to something, you do so as an act of weakness, in response to pressures around you. You are acting because you are being dominated by outside forces, not really based on your own free will. You are a victim when you submit and are not really in control at all of your life. You are trying to look like something you are not, to someone else. There is a difference between surrendering and submitting.
- 10. When you do not act in the way you want to, or a way that is natural to you, there is going to be covert resistance, an inability to put forth your full effort. Fear of action, hostility and all sorts of other negative emotions will overtake you. You become hostile because you are not really acting in a way that you want to. The way you really want to act lies festering beneath the surface, suppressed.
- 11. There have been a few times in my life when I have been truly excited and have put my full effort into dancing. I enjoyed those occasions; however, in those instances I was surrounded by people I knew well, so I was not as self-conscious. I have been at seminars, for example, where the seminar leader got everyone to jump up and down and scream about how excited they were, and I have gotten into this and really let go
- 12. The act of surrender is something that we choose to do. When you surrender, you are letting go and allowing whatever is to just be. Surrendering is a conscious decision and choice. When you allow what is to be, you open yourself up to whatever may come along. This defines the act of surrender. Surrendering could be as simple as, for example, allowing yourself to be close to another person. Surrendering could be deciding that you are ready to make the most of yourself and to start applying yourself. Surrendering could be allowing yourself to experience what is, instead of resisting what is.
- 13. The stiff people who are standing in the audience at rock concerts like myself are all resisting. When they start dancing they are generally just submitting. You can always distinguish the movements of people who are dancing in a submissive way; they are awkward.
- 14. In contrast, the people who are dancing freely and willfully have allowed themselves to “surrender” to the music. They are not self-conscious; they are simply feeling the music and living the music. They may dance with their eyes closed and move their bodies, totally oblivious to those around them. They are completely “into the music”, having a great time and feeling very good about what they are doing. Someone cannot be a good dancer unless he or she surrenders. Someone cannot really fully enjoy himself or herself at a concert, unless he or she surrenders.
- 15. In fact, unless you can learn to surrender, you will never be good at anything and you will never become anything of significance. If you cannot surrender, you will never have the career you want, or the life you want. Many, many people go through life not surrendering, and instead they continually resist.
- 16. What are you resisting in your life and your career? The odds are very good that there is something that you are resisting, and whatever it is that you are resisting, it is holding you back. You will never reach your full potential and be all you are capable of unless you pick someone, or something to which you can comfortably surrender.
- 17. One of the most exciting things in the world is spending time around people who have achieved great things, or, more simply, people who are incredibly happy. I do not care if the person is a rock star, or an attorney; I absolutely love spending time with very successful and/or happy people. The reason is that in almost every case there is a certain vein that runs through the histories of the most successful and happy people: They have found a profession, a person, a way of life, or a calling to which they have surrendered. They have surrendered their life to something, and have allowed whatever it is to, in a major sense, define how they run their lives.
- 18. I love looking at how rock star musicians dress. The rock star I saw on Saturday night looks tough and has long hair, but he also wore a Scottish kilt at one point during the concert. He did not care how he looked. He had surrendered to be the person and the persona that he wanted to be. The people in the audience who were getting down and having the best time had also surrendered to their experience. The people who had not surrendered, or who had submitted, were resisting the music and just waiting for the end of the show.
- 19. Resisting and thereby not allowing one’s self to surrender is often the reason behind mediocrity or failure, in almost every profession, and in life. When you are resisting, you are never able to apply yourself because your heart is not completely in the game . You are a slave to a job, another person, or to the life you are in. You let the life you really want to fester beneath the surface, although you would much prefer to be somewhere other than where you are.
- 20. When you are doing something you are interested in and feel comfortable doing, you are doing a job that you have surrendered to. When you are doing a job that you do not feel comfortable doing, which is not in accordance with your values, you are doing a job that you have submitted to. No one can ever do very well in a job they are submitting to, and if you take a job like this you will likely never amount to much in your career. Are you in a profession to which you have surrendered ? If you are not, you need to be.