Through out my dancing life, and in fact through all aspects of our lives we are forced to think about what has happened or our decisions, reflect on their outcomes, and from that learn for future situations (well hopefully). Putting this reflection in to the form of writing, however, is something I have struggled with in the past and I am going to put it out straight there and blame my training for this.
For years I had to produce a mandatory "Dance Diary" daily where in which we had to reflect on our dance classes that day. Every day. From the age of 11 to 19. Yawn!
It is a known fact in the dancing world that the only way you can possibly improve or progress in your career is to self correct. This is taking all the years of training's worth of corrections and applying them to our work. Developing the ability to do this without the help of a teacher to take with us into our professional lives. This is something I have grown to do subconsciously and so having to go back to basics into writing was tough.
I am true believer that looking back on your day and taking from it as much as you can to progress in your professional life but in terms of my profession, there isn't necessarily something I would feel is good enough, for lack of a better phrase, to write each day. This mental barrier is something I have found difficult to brake.
I am interested to know how other people have found journal writing?
Am I missing some great epiphany that happens?
Any recommendations for helping to lose my Journal inhibitions would be greatly appreciated.
I have been toying with the suggested forms of documenting my daily reflections and I will share how I found them soon.
Hi Bernie,
ReplyDeleteI find it really intresting that you feel for your profession you can't see reflection (writing a journal) how it's going to work.
I feel reflection in any style of work or even day to day life can be very beneficial but you won't see the outcome until a few months down the line & you read what you wrote. This is when you really reflect. Yes writing in a journal is reflecting because your reflecting on your day but when you go on with life but then look through your journal you will come across things that you prehaps struggled with but now don't. You'll notice hurdles in your professional life that you have felt with and that's the beauty of reflection.
So just keep going with it & I'm sure one day (if it's not right now) you will see a huge positive in reflection.
Reflection is needed everywhere, as we all can push our professional skills to a better level as no one knows everything no matter how many years we've been in our professions. In today's society there's something new to learn everyday.
Hope this helps :)
Beth x