Ballroom dancing sets you for success in life and teaches you to be the master of your fate. That’s quite a bold statement but is it really true?

Picture this: you are in the dance studio practicing your routine. You’ve arrived an hour early to stretch and practice by yourself, to go through your choreography at your own pace. Then you have your group training, you dance with your partner for about 2 hours and you really don’t have that much rest time in these 2 hours. You go home, eat, go to sleep, wake up the next day and follow the same routine, maybe even adding a private lesson with your teacher… 

Now realize that this might not be your exact case… The truth is you might not even be a dancer… yet. But what you can notice is that the person in the above story showed incredible character traits that are priceless in everything else, not just dancing.

Discipline, being less egocentric and taking criticism and feedback to improve, analyzing yourself, being self-aware, collaborating with your partner… All these things at once and more… 

When you’re dancing, you don’t really realize you’re building on them, but what you’re doing is making you become a better person and more prone to success person and you probably don’t even realize it, because you’re so caught up “in the dance”.

We made a list of 5 characters traits every professional dancer develops. So let’s dive in…

1. You Develop A Strong Work-Ethic

To pursue a dance career you have to develop work ethics. Practicing ballroom dancing regularly is an activity that instills a strong work ethic in kids from a very young age. Always reaching for perfection, a dancer practices the steps over and over again with the same dedication. This type of craft requires discipline and a lot of hard work to master it.

As a dancer, when an opportunity comes your way, you have to commit. You need to put in a lot of time and effort to get some results.

Picture this:

• First scenario – you go and train for 3, 6, or 12 months and you win a competition and feel on top of the world because the work you’ve been putting in paid off;
• Second scenario– you end up in the competition, realize that others are way better than you, you leave empty-handed and you have to start all over again with the training without letting that bring you down. And then you have the power to do whatever you want to do, when you want to. Most people procrastinate for 6 months before doing anything. Imagine that you now have a 6-month advantage just by having work ethic.

Now you’re ready for everything. Take that, life!

2. You Become An Amazing Partner

Ballroom dancing teaches you what true partnership is and what it’s based on – communication and understanding. You are two different people but move as one. In sport, there is no room for selfishness, so make sure you pass the ball to your teammate and assist when needed. Bring that fire on deck with your presentation as a team.

Partner dancing involves knowing how to highlight the partner’s abilities and, on the other hand, hide their flaws. No good dancers will showcase abilities if they know they are putting their partner in difficulty. Granted, you might play the blaming game but know that the truth is split in half in a partnership: you hold half and your partner holds the other half.

That’s what partnership teaches you: how to listen and make adjustments without ripping your eyes out. Future wife or husband, you welcome!

3. You Have Self-Confidence

Dancing helps you increase self-confidence because it involves taking in new skills. More often than not, as a professional dancer you give yourself very little room for making mistakes, but you don’t end up a champion by not going through trials and tribulations. The truth is you’ve made plenty of mistakes over time, but you picked yourself up and bounced back. That’s called resilience, and self-confidence is one of its results.

As a dancer, you’re always on the lookout for dance camps and private dance classes with top-class teachers. That also enhances your social skills and adds to your confidence levels. Also, ballroom dancing teaches not to take criticism to heart, instead work on any weaknesses the teacher points out and focus on improvement rather than perfection. 

Taking imperfect action is a step forward. On a weekly basis, you’re going through highs and lows and you can’t give up – that trains you to be more confident and to gain more energy and belief in what you’re doing.

Remember: some are born with self-confidence, some work hard to achieve it.

4. You Can Express Yourself Freely

Dancing is an inspiring way to enhance creativity. Also, it’s an art deeply connected to the exploration of the human form. At the end of the day, not choreography or technique sets apart an extraordinary dancer from the rest but the way in which a dancer expresses the specificity of the dance style through feelings and the mood they create.

Through dance, you break boundaries and drop your deepest fears – you stop caring about other people’s opinions. By constricting your body expressions, you shrink who you are and you affect your interaction with others. 

Dance offers you a safe place to express yourself and show your personality to the world. On top of that, it’s going to make you more of yourself. It’s liberating. Dancing transforms oneself into a person who is not afraid to express thoughts and feelings.

Also, through dance people become more of themselves and drop the filters. That improves both the relationships in your private and professional life. People are not attracted to pretenders and fakers, they can smell it a mile away. 

Authenticity – that’s what people are drawn to.

5. You Have Great People Around

Dancesport is art and it attracts high-quality people. Yes, it’s a generalization, but I gladly stand by it. Artists have a different way of looking at things in life with more depth and understanding. 

The people involved in dancing are people who worked their asses off to become champions. They kept going for years through sweat, blood and tears to reach their goals and they’ve become your friends and people you look up to. The dance partners you had, showed you things about yourself that you wouldn’t have been able to figure out otherwise, they saw your blind spots and stayed by your side in your self-discovery journey.

To top it off, the teachers or trainers you’ve ended up with taught you the value of this sport and made you see the bigger picture. They didn’t just show you how to improve your technique but they also led you through the process of self-discovery and provided you with great psychological insights. Basically, they also trained you for real life. A great teacher reveres the craft, honors dancing and is capable of having an amazing impact on you and your professional journey.

Even if you’re are a world-class dancer or you’re just taking your first steps on the dance floor, the energy of dancing is addictive and exhilarating. Nothing compares to that feeling that you finally got that move, or that you finally made it in first place. Every small or big achievement is reached through hard work. Every dance class you take, every competition you partake in is an opportunity to learn and to improve. Those changes also mirror in your attitude towards others and towards yourself.

If you’re a dancer, tell us which of these have you gained over the years and what are others that you see yourself developing. We’re curious to find out!!

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