The Five Distinctions For Extraordinary Achievement

Introduction
The idea behind the Five Distinctions For Extraordinary Achievement is to assist students of dance to re-invent their ability to learn how to learn to dance and have extraordinary results be common-place. This is not dependent on the student's talent, body or dance facility, or even how intelligent they believe they are. It is about how they may provide for themselves the conditions for extraordinary results to occur.

One aspect of this conversation directly relates to the students' idea of excellence, and how it affects their ability as learners. Most learners look at reaching excellence through hard work, with the hope of achieving it in the future. The Five Distinctions supports a different approach than the traditional 'hard work' ethic. Rather than having excellence be a place to get to, the Five Distinctions regards excellence as a place to come from.

Imagine what it would be like if you were a dancer who has already achieved excellence. From this point of view what difference would it make in your approach towards your training, rehearsals and performances? How would you view yourself, your confidence in who you are both personally, and as a dancer, if excellence was available to you now? Imagine the difference it would make in your ability to express yourself effectively - in your ability to be satisfied and fulfilled.

In this conversation about excellence it will be your students' approach to learning that will determine their effectiveness in producing the condition for excellence to occur. Excellence is a skill that cannot be taught; it can be acquired when the conditions for excellence have been met. The Five Distinctions embodies tools that allows the learner to produce the conditions for excellence to occur by giving them an approach towards highly effective and creative learning.

The Five Distinctions For Extraordinary Achievement is exemplified in these five statements:

• Your instructor is a coach first then a teacher.
  
• Your instructor not only to teaches you the art of dance, but coaches you in your ability to learn the art of dance.
  
• The instructor's role is equal to your role in your training as a dancer.
  
• Your willingness to be coached by your instructor is essential to your development as a dancer.
  
• When you learn to want what is available at the moment then learning how to be an exceptional dancer will be effortless and your accomplishments extraordinary.

The Five Distinctions For Extraordinary Achievement is a tool that presents a clear and unmistakable impression of the dynamics of extraordinary achievement by providing the conditions for extraordinary achievement to occur. Understanding these five distinctions will assist your students toward their goals as a dancer with celerity and confidence. How well they master these distinctions will determine in part the quality and artistry they hope to achieve as a dancer.

1) Coach (Inspire) First - Then Teach

It is not possible to learn something effectively if you do not wholly desire to learn it. When it seems to be difficult for the learner to learn something, the learner has decided not to learn whether the learner is aware of it or not. It may not seem that the learner is openly willing not to learn - instead, the learner describes their state of mind as being confused, angry, despairing, tired, preoccupied, depressed, restless or bored.

These are only a few states of mind the learner may use to describe their unwillingness to be aware of their commitment to learn.That is why it was said, 'It is not possible to learn something effectively if you do not wholly desire to learn it'.

A master instructor recognizes the need to provide the conditions that will allow the learner to be aware of their commitment to learn - thereby automatically re-aligning the learner's commitment to learn with their goals for learning. A master instructor generates those conditions through the application of certain fundamental principles - it is the application of these fundamental principles that the difference between a coach and teacher becomes distinct.

• A teacher verbalizes what they know to the learner.
• An exceptional teacher demonstrates what they know to the learner.
• Neither of these actions have the learner learn what the teacher knows.

A coach is a teacher who knows the information the learner must learn. The master coach understands that the first lesson to be learned is the willingness to be coached in how to learn. This fundamental distinction for all accomplishments, the willingness to be coached, is the direction in which the master coach focuses their energy - to strengthen the learner's motivation to learn. That is why it was said, 'The instructor not only teaches you the art of dance, but coaches you in your ability to learn the art of dance.'

1) Willingness to be Coached

Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is the fundamental power of your commitment to excel and go beyond your present abilities. Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose is the key we will use to unlock your capacity to produce extraordinary results. Your ability to direct your thinking as you choose generates the ‘field of action’ where you may be fully expressed as an accomplished and creative artist.

To achieve these goals, the only lesson that must be learned is to be aware of your commitment for being in the classroom - the willingness to be coached. When this lesson is learned all other lessons become easy and natural to learn - they are easy and natural because you willingly accept them.

• Your instructor is your coach only because you are willing to be coached.
  
• Your instructor is your coach only because you and your instructor say so together.
  
• No one is able to have this be true except you and your instructor.

It is not your instructor’s responsibility to teach your body to do anything. Your instructor is there to coach you to guide your body and have it perform as you direct it. This is accomplished through your ability to focus and be aware.

Mastering the art of focusing and awareness as an extraordinary skill will have your abilities as a dancer be extraordinary. It is your willingness to be coached that generates this possibility into a reality. A master instructor respects and honors your willingness to be coached, and so becomes a guide you can follow who will always strengthen your commitment as a dancer and never detract from it in any way. A master instructor's commitment to your excellence is sure, because his trust in you is whole and complete.

3) Equality

Your Instructor is your equal - not your superior. This is true, though not in time, for they have the greater experience. Its truth lies in the value of your commitments together. Its truth is beyond each of you separately, but together it gives both the ability and strength to go beyond the ordinary.

For your instructor to respect themselves and their abilities they must respect yours. Your instructor respects you and your abilities by not affronting your belief in who you think you are or what you think you can accomplish - rather, they believe your excellence is beyond question.

A master instructor believes in you in the same manner as the sculptor Michelangelo believed when he stood before a dense and immovable block of marble:

The form buried within the stone already exists a perfect work of art - all he need do is to remove the unnecessary pieces of marble to free it from its imprisonment.

A master instructor will say the same of you as they stand before you in the studio:

I am an artist who sees your excellence as an accomplished fact - all I need do is remove the unnecessary blocks to learning to free you from the belief (self imposed imprisonment) that you are not excellence.

Uniting the instructor’s abilities as a coach with your commitment to excel will demonstrate the truth of your excellence. Through your daily practices together you will create the possibility for removing your blocks to learning and have your excellence be the expression of who you are. When you wholly desire to see this possibility for yourself then you will be free to choose which vision you wish to have of yourself - until then, a master instructor will safely hold that vision of you for you.

That is why it was said, ‘A master instructor respects you and your abilities by not affronting your belief in who you think you are or what you think you can accomplish...’ - you will see this for yourself by strengthening your belief in yourself through your commitments together.

4) Ability to Learn

When the first three distinctions are mastered then the ability to learn becomes effortless - until then it must be practiced. One of the instructor’s underlying commitments to the learner is to designate the classroom as a safe environment to explore your abilities as a dancer - this includes your mistakes as well as your accomplishments.

Your accomplishments are the reward of your trust in your coach and your commitment to be coached - your mistakes are the stepping-stones to your accomplishments. Your mistakes will not have you achieve your goals, for they are only a guide - but your awareness and acceptance of your mistakes will. Accepting your mistakes as only mistakes and not using them to decide your self worth, you will be cheerful of them knowing they increase your awareness of your capacity to go beyond your present abilities. Having your mistakes be happy occurrences, you will learn to look beyond them to the excellence and perfection that already exists in you, thereby strengthening your awareness and belief in your excellence.

When you enter the classroom it is the same as asking your instructor for coaching, thereby agreeing that you are willing to be coached. When the learner is present in the classroom and not willing to be coached it becomes a conflict in purpose - this will only interfere in your ability to learn both in regards to your goals as a dancer and developing your self confidence.

When you decide to accept only part of the coaching, then you have taken on the function of coaching yourself by deciding what you will learn and what you will not learn. Being your own coach you cannot go beyond your present abilities, because you can only coach yourself in what you already know. You cannot coach yourself past your abilities, because you do not know what is past your abilities or you would already be past your abilities. To perceive yourself as your coach perceives you, demonstrating this by accepting the available coaching, then the possibility of going beyond your present abilities will become a reality.

5) Want What is Available at the Moment

Before we explore this distinction we must first understand what an upset is. An upset is:

• a thwarted intention
• an unfulfilled expectation
• a feeling of a loss of power over outside circumstances.
  

In other words, what you had intended or expected is not going the way you want it to go and you feel as if you have lost control over the circumstances. The feeling of loss of control is not the loss of control over the outside circumstances, but the loss of control over your ability to direct your thinking as you choose. When you allow what is happening to you to direct your thoughts and feelings about yourself, then you have willingly given the power to direct your thinking as you choose over to something outside yourself. Your true upset is allowing the outside circumstance to dominate the expression of yourself and your happiness. This is the underlying cause that leads to all upsets - your unwillingness to direct your thinking as you choose and allowing outside circumstances tell you how you should think and feel.

Your willingness to direct your thoughts and feelings as you choose is the only true power you have in any situation. To give up this power willingly is a decision based on the values you have towards yourself and life in general, which points directly at the heart of your evaluation of yourself. This evaluation is fundamental in nature and is based on whether you believe yourself worthy of being happy, vital and fully self-expressed.

When you have failed to be (or do) whatever you thought you should be (or do), your concern is only about yourself. These thoughts about who you think you should be are only an image you have created for yourself in order to protect yourself from failing to be all that you think you should be. This image of yourself only comes from where you think you have failed in the past in order to help yourself succeed in your future wants and desires.

When this image of yourself has failed to live up to your expectations you attempt to escape this image by being upset – taking your mind off the situation and focusing on your feelings. In other words, how you attempt to escape is by willingly allowing yourself to be upset and focusing your awareness only on how you feel about what is happening to you instead of the reality of what is happening at the present moment - and thus missing an important occurrence that could have your present abilities as a dancer transform to the extraordinary.

When you find yourself unhappy it because you are only thinking about yourself. You can only think about yourself from a reference point, and the only reference points are either from past occurrences or future wants. When you are focused only on the present moment, then there can be no image of yourself, no reference point to decide if you are being who you think you should be, and you can be just who you are.

An upset is always only about yourself. Who you think or believe you are is the source of all your upsets. So it is in who you believe you are that must be examined. You base who you believe you are on your thoughts and feelings about yourself and over time you eventually believe you are your thoughts and feelings.

It is here that your blocks to being extraordinary become apparent. Thoughts and feelings are only reactions to what is happening to you at any given moment. Your reactions to what is happening at the moment has become so habitual that you have lost the ability to distinguish who you truly are from your thoughts and feelings. It is in your ability to distinguish your thoughts and feelings from who you truly are that the extraordinary exists; for who you truly are is not in question - only who you think and believe yourself to be is in doubt.

Being extraordinary is a choice and does not occur through talent, intelligence or even fortunate circumstances. When you have given up your ability to direct your thinking as you choose, you are also giving up your ability to choose to be extraordinary. So the question you should ask yourself is, "Who am I, if I am not my thoughts and feelings" - in other words, distinguishing who you are not. When you can distinguish who you are not, then the possibility of who you truly are will rise naturally in your awareness. When the possibility of who you truly are rises in your awareness, then a new and beautiful self-expression will blossom and your dancing will be extraordinary.

Conclusion

When you come to fully appreciate that your thoughts and feelings are not you, but just a reaction to what seems to be happening to you, then you will always want what is happening to you at every moment. When you can distinguish your thoughts and feelings from who you are, then you will learn that who you are is far above any thought or feeling you could ever have of yourself. In the understanding and mastering of this last distinction, want what is available at the moment, you will come to know the most powerful training tool you will ever use as a dancer. To want what is happening to you in the present is the way your self-expression through your dancing can be full and unlimited, presenting yourself as a timeless, perfect and fully alive being.

Below are ten statements that will assist you in your distinguishing who you are not from who you are:

When you are not distinguishing who you are from your thoughts and feelings

1. You are often anxious because life may not cooperate with your plans.
2. You are willing to sacrifice your integrity to get what you want.
3. You are usually pre-occupied in planning your future or defending your past.
4. You are in a struggle about your life, or recovering from one.
5. You are unable to calm your mind and rest quietly when you need to.
6. You are easily upset when someone or something gets in your way.
7. You are always looking for what you do not have to satisfy you.
8. You behave and speak as if what you have is who you are.
9. You are always competing with another who wants what you want.
10. You are always striving to convince yourself that you have what you want.

When you are distinguishing who you are from your thoughts and feelings

1. You are never disappointed with what is happening at the moment.
2. You are not anxiously preoccupied with the past or the future.
3. You always believe you are in the right place at the right time.
4. You are quietly confident no matter what the circumstances are.
5. You are out of reach of all upsets, including anger and anxiety.
6. You are awake and sensitive to your surroundings.
7. You are never thrown for a loss.
8. You are accepting and in command of all events.
9. You are free of ever feeling you have missed out and your mind is free of regrets.
10. You are mentally quiet and eternally grateful.

The five distinctions for extraordinary achievement is not a formula to use in order to get more, do better, or be different... but a guide to follow as each dancer explores who they are in relationship to their commitment as a dancer, who they are as an individual creative being, and their relationship with other creative beings.

What you have read is not true... but it is a possibility. Its truth lies in its ability to inspire and support you in your love and commitment to your art and to your life.

In Moments
Filled With
Compassion, Love, And Beauty
Perfection Is Held...

Waiting To Fall...
Like A Drop
Of Water
Into
The Pool
Of Life...

To
Ripple...

Extend...

And
Touch All Things.

- noa -

Anthony answers some of your questions in this special section. You may email him at coach@danceart.com