Teacher: Have you thought about doing a dance competition?
Student: Oh, no I am not good enough for that.
Teacher: Of course, you are not good enough. This is why I am asking.
Student: I don’t understand.
Teacher: The purpose of doing dance competitions is to get better at dancing.
Student: Oh really. I didn’t know that competitions make better dancers. Sign me up.
Teacher: You still don’t get it. It is not the competitions that make you better. It is the work that you do to prepare for them.
Student: Well, then I can just do the work alone without the hustle, stress, and expense of a competition.
Teacher: Really? What time do you get up on Saturdays?
Student: I sleep in.
Teacher: Do you go to the gym?
Student: Yes. But what does any of this have to do with competitions?
Teacher: It has everything to do with competitions. You sleep in on Saturday because you have a day off. You have no reason to get up at 7 am. You go to the gym because you want to be fit and stay in shape. If it wasn’t for that, you would eat junk food three times a day and ice cream before going to bed. But you do all this because you have purpose. Competitions give you purpose. You know others are going to be judging you. You know you are going to be wearing tight clothes showing every imperfection of your body and quality of movement. You know you don’t want to make a fool out of yourself. So you practice. You take lessons. In other words, you do the work that is required to get better. Then, the end product is that you are a better dancer and other people have more fun dancing with you socially. If you are a lady, men ask you to dance. If you are a man, then ladies cannot wait to dance with you. In summary, competitions are for people that want to improve, not for people that are already good. The people that are already good are most likely judging or running the competitions. Also, because they dedicated many years to dancing, they are most likely too old to still compete. The “imperfect” people are the ones on the floor.