To dance is to be out of yourself.  Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.

~Agnes De Mille

Let ourselves be free to just be who we are and not worry about what other people think about us. When we are home alone and nobody’s watching and we hear the right song, we start to dance and our hearts start to sing. We go back to that time when we were two or three and we didn’t have a care in the world and we just danced. We danced because it was fun. We danced because we could. We danced just because. We didn’t care what people thought of our dancing skills, we just danced. And there are moments when we recapture that innocence and we dance as if there is no one looking.

Something seems to happen to us on the way from our living rooms to the dance floor. All of a sudden we think that we can’t get out there and dance because people are going to be watching?

When we get on the dance floor the only person who may be watching us is the person dancing with us, and they may not be watching either. We are the only ones concerned with how well we are dancing. Our egos are the only ones that care if we can keep a beat or not. Our bodies just want to move and enjoy the freedom and joy in dancing. Yet our heads keep our feet on the sidelines. Our minds allow us the joy of dancing only in the privacy of our homes, when we think no one is watching.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.

~Martha Graham, American Choreographer

How many other things do we fail to do because we are worried about doing it right. How many other opportunities do we miss out on because we think there is someone watching us and we are afraid of embarrassment? Just like dancing mostly the fear is in our own heads. We all do things that cause us to be embarrassed.

We say the wrong thing, to the wrong person at the wrong time and we suffer temporarily the shame of imperfection. Each of us knows what that feels like. The worst thing we can do is to vow to ourselves never to be embarrassed again. We can hope to do better the next time, but if we vow to never feel shame again, then we have just vowed that we will no longer be ourselves. We have promised that we will be the person who is all things to all people and we have promised to not be ourselves. When we worry more about what people are thinking about us, then we stop accepting the person we are, in all our glory and all our failings.

How much happier we would be if we knew deep in our core that we were enough, we were inherently worthy of dignity and respect. How much more secure would we be if we knew that we were loved just for who we were, not for who we might become. And not for who we once were, but just for who we are now. This belief allows us to live securely in a nation where constant insecurities are thrown at you.

Each of us should know that we are loved just as we are, and that we should be in the world as our authentic selves. We were not put here to care about whether we can keep the beat we were put here dance to our own unique tune. We may think it seems silly sometimes, or we may feel a little out of synch, but that’s okay. We are put here to dance our own dance, not one that someone else has prescribed for us.

Maybe it’s time for all of us to say it’s enough. Enough of caring so much about what we think someone may be thinking of us. Enough of trying to live to up to someone else’s expectations of our lives. It’s time for all of us to proclaim that the essence of who we are and always have been is enough.

We are wonderfully beautiful just the way we came into this world.

Let’s shed the worries that hold us back from truly being who we are and living our own dreams. We are never too young and never too old to dream and begin living those dreams. What holds us back is not the size of our aspirations, but the size of our fears. When we give up the fear of not being accepted for who we are and accept ourselves as we are, we are able to accomplish so many more things. When we get our egos out of the way, we can see clearly the path our lives intend us to take and we are free to travel to places our small minds could never imagine.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The greatest choice you’ll ever make in your life is whether or not you will permit your fears to rule your life. You have the power within your hands to decide if you will live under the tyranny of public opinion of if you will rise above it. There will be many out there whose own fears will tell you to toe the line, keep on the straight and narrow. Don’t listen to them, listen to the voice within you that says be all that you have been created to be.

It may not be easy and sometimes there is a cost, some people will reject you for your freedom. Some people will say they can only love you if you are the person they want you to be. Don’t listen to that voice, if they loved you truly, they will love you still. Silence the voices inside your head that tell you be just like everyone else. That is not the voice of reason, it is the voice of fear. Instead listen to that voice that says to you:

Sing like nobody’s listening,
Live like it’s Heaven on Earth,
Work like you don’t need money,
Love like you’ve never been hurt,
And dance like no one’s watching.

excerpts from: Cheryl Walker [source]