Dancing Through Discomfort

How Learning K-pop Dances Changed My View on Perfection

Photo by Juan Camilo Navia on Unsplash

I’ve always been a victim of perfectionism. It’s a thing that keeps you trapped in the best you could be. I reminisce about the good old days when I used to get straight A’s. Life was simple then; I got the answers right and raised my hand in class. But that’s not how “real” life works.

“If perfectionism were a medication, the label would alert us to common side effects. Warning: may cause stunted growth. Perfectionism traps us in a spiral of tunnel vision and error avoidance: it prevents us from seeing larger problems and limits us to mastering increasingly narrow skills.” — Adam Grant, Hidden Potential.

I had intentionally overlooked these side effects. I kept soaking in the residual warmth of my perfectionist days. I trapped myself in the few areas where I’d experienced success in the past. However, things changed after I became a mom.

Parenting is the grandest mess of all messes. It’s beautiful because no one is perfect at parenting; the best you can be is less of a mess most of the time. Since nothing was in order, I decided to do something I’ve always wanted to do: learn to dance.

For my first ever dance (Talk that Talk by Twice), I mustered the courage to attend an actual dance class. We stood…