It's that time again, yet another year has passed. While the mere mention of this can throw ordinary mortals into deep bouts of depression, there's really no need to even go anywhere near there. Why? As a teacher, the passing of another year can be a true gift. How so? As the old year passes and the New Year begins, you have the opportunity to wipe the slate clean so to speak. You can keep what worked for you during the past year and what didn't work; you can choose not to bring forward with you into the New Year.
Teaching is a fine art. It truly isn't as easy as it looks. Your energy has to always be in top form otherwise how would you even begin to motivate the students you love to teach? Anything of a negative nature that happened to you on any given day is something you always have to make sure you don't bring into class as the show must go on! You have to please so many segments of people; your students, their parents and the owner of your studio. Most of all, you should be in the market to please yourself. Always work at being your biggest supporter as opposed to being your worst enemy. When things don't go as planned, don't batter yourself into the ground. Learn from what happened and work to make things better. Teaching is a journey, and a wonderfully rewarding one at that. You may never arrive at a true destination along your journey. The daily progress you make, positive and negative alike, are mere stops along the way. The best thing about all of this is that you don't need to stay very long at any stop along your path, just keep your feet firmly on the ground and keep walking on.
The past year is a symbolic stop on the path of your journey. Take what you learned from that stop and move on to the next, the New Year. As you keep moving forward, new and wonderful opportunities will present themselves to you, after all, it's a brand new year. These are things that you can learn from as you continually strive to make yourself better. Teaching is a wonderful profession to be a part of because the progress you make as you continue to teach can also have wonderful effects in your personal life as well. The strength and devotion you exude in class can mirror itself when you need to draw on those same qualities in your own life. The New Year gives you another wonderful stage, a new platform for you to grow. As you grow, so do those around you. It all works together in a magical way. All you need to do is keep focused and keep those feet on your path. If you do just that, the New Year will lead you to extraordinary things.
It is often said, "Out with the old, in with the new", and for good reason. Take what you've learned concerning your art and yourself this past year. There are things you'll probably never want to try again, things you'd sooner forget. Why not do just that? Anything that isn't worth taking forward into the New Year, acknowledge that it happened and most importantly, let it go. It's over now and there's no need to attach yourself to it any longer. If you attach yourself to any of negative things that happened to you, you end up becoming them. You keep them about you and that's the last thing you should do. This will only weigh you down as you move forward. The past is the past. Why continue to focus on that when you have the present to devote you energies and attention to?
The past year probably gave you lots of positive and things to learn from and remember. Cherish those as rare gifts that you've given to yourself. They happened to you for a reason. Figure out how you can incorporate some of those wonderful occurrences into your present circumstance and improve upon them in the New Year.
One of the most important things to always remember is the fact that you made it through. The past year will soon be over. Time moves on and so should you. That's one of the many wonderful things about life. We are always given a new opportunity to experience all there is to experience, to be even better than we thought we were.
Give yourself a challenge this year. Challenge yourself be even better at what you do than you were last year. Don't worry about how that will happen, just resolve it to be so and watch what happens.
Not only do you have a fresh start when the year changes, you actually have a fresh start each and every day. Not only that but you also have a fresh start with each and every moment. Embrace each day and make the most out of it. It's a wonderful thing to teach and motivate others to be the best they can be. In so doing, you continue to be the best that you can be as you put one foot in front of the other on your path of teaching and of life. There's so much to look forward to. Take each year as it comes, each day as it passes and strive to be the best you can be in each and every moment. Positives and negatives are temporary things that occur along the way, who you are and what you set your mind to do is the one constant that will keep you moving forward in this thing called teaching and in this thing called life. You always have a fresh start. Make what you want to happen, happen.
Robert Landau is a Certified Life Coach and a National Motivational Speaker and Seminar Leader that presents at the Dance Teacher Web Conference each year. You can purchase his best-selling Self-Help and Motivational Products at his website, www.RobertLandauMotivation.com
