Wednesday 18 April 2018

The dark side

I must admit that I'm on the fence right now, regarding this idea that there are 16 basic personality types. I'm talking about the whole Myers Briggs thing. It's based on the theories of Carl Jung, who is something of a hero of mine, but I don't know just how seriously to take it all.

Apparently, I have the INFJ personality type. If we take the root of the theory, this means that I have certain preferences in the way I process things and use cognitive processes described by Jung. This, accordingly, affects how I express myself, and therefore what people perceive as my personality.

When I look at other INFJs, I see areas of commonality. Actually, I see so much that I have in common with them that it's difficult to outright condemn the whole Myers Briggs thing. What I see as a difference between the greater INFJ community and myself, however, is how much they are connected to their spiritual side. Furthermore, there's a darkness to so many of them that seems absent from my own life. I wish I could put that darkness into better words, but I can't.

What scares me is the realisation that what I see in other INFJs, and deny being present in myself, are things that I've learned to suppress. As a private counsellor said, I've learned to hide my power. I pretended for a while that I didn't understand what she meant, and I almost fooled myself into believing it.

The darkness doesn't scare me so much. What I have come to recognise is that the darkness is an INFJ simply expressing their authentic self, and this includes what Jung called The Shadow. It should scare no one, really - least of all me. Well, actually, it should be of concern to anyone who's screwed me over, but that's another story. Accepting our darkness makes us strong. I don't know how true that is for other personality types, but it's true for an INFJ.

The spiritual aspect may be more of a challenge for me. I was once told by a new age type that I had a purple aura, which meant that I was inherently spiritual. I don't believe in that kind of stuff, but I found it strange that more than one person said the same thing to me. I don't know how it would feel to fully connect with my spiritual side, or what the outcome of that might be.

Here's to finding ourselves!

Thursday 5 April 2018

Achieving balance

In terms of my progress as a dancer, I seem to have hit a wall. When this happened to me as a martial artist, taking a break for a while seemed to help matters and, as much as I love to dance, I can't discount it as an option. The other option, as I see it, is to move down a level in the lessons.

It's known that some of the ladies in dance classes anticipate what the lead is going to do, rather than just following it. Obviously, this goes wrong when they guess incorrectly. Unfortunately, some of them manage to convince a lead that he or she was the one who erred, and a minority even try to instruct a lead on how to improve, though they may never have learned to lead. I often forget a sequence during a class, and it is most often for these reasons.

The key point is, this will probably always happen to some extent, and other leads seem to cope with it better than I can. I should be sure enough of what I'm doing to be able to offer some resistance, but I'm not. Clearly, some of the ladies have areas where they could improve, but so do I.

My worry about moving down is that I'll be seen as a poor dancer (which is what I feel about myself right now anyway), and the ladies who like to instruct, correct and otherwise advise leads on how to lead will do so all the more. Right now, it happens enough to make me question my continued involvement with learning to dance; if it worsens, the question will have a definite answer.

I've worked out why I have such difficulty with learning new sequences of movement. A full explanation would involve a lot of explanation of cognitive functions and personality theory. In layman's terms, dancing connects with parts of me that haven't been needed so much in the past, and therefore haven't had so much time to develop. The same can be said about the social aspects of dancing.

So, what I've come across is a weakness or, to put it in less negative terms, an area in which I'm not so strong. Let's not forget that I was asked to attend that first dance class, and did so under protest. Me being there is something of an anomaly.

As recently as a few months ago, I believed that a big event in Liverpool would mark the end of my involvement with this relatively new hobby. Now, I've realised how much it challenges me, and that's exactly why I should continue with it. I also feel, however, that it can no longer be as big a part of my life as it has. The challenge of it has pulled me in, and the reality is that I'm not able to dance often enough to progress in a way where I'll feel that I've met the challenge.

There's certainly the feeling that I should learn to walk before I run. Taking a break is still a possibility.