Today I want to write about how it is to be a dancer in another job and how my dance career and dancers character influences the way I perform my job as a flight attendant.
As I started my new career as a flight attendant, I just threw myself in this new work and I gave more than everything. I was so eager to do my job perfectly that I worked 150-200%.
After approximately two years I started noticing that my very high expectations of myself and of my colleagues was somehow not realistic. There were situations in which I did the work for others and in which I always said “yes” to everybody who asked me for help or something else.
I remember I talked to my boss about it and I discovered that some colleauges treated me as everybody’s darling and of course also as everybody’s fool. This had to do with the fact that I approached my work in the cabin as a dancer and NOT as a flight attendant. I was a huge perfectionist and I did my job with my entire self, like during a performance on stage. I hope I am making some sense?!
I had to learn to approach my work as a flight attendant, as a JOB and not as a performance in which everything should be perfect and in which I would always give my utmost. I actually wanted to crystallize every step that I was doing during my work and it almost became obsessive.
So slowly I had to change my dancers working attitude in a healthy working attitude of a flight attendant. I am not saying that I had to become lazy or that I had to stop helping colleagues, I just needed to get rid of this dancers perfectionism which was (is) really hard.
This took a while and this is still my weak spot on the working field.
But now I am at least aware of this side of me that I developed during my dancing career and I can actually choose to turn it on or to turn it off, if you know what I mean. The dancers perfectionism is not controlling me anymore, I am controlling it myself.
I am very curious whether you have the same experience or simular situations?
Feel free to comment on my posts.
Hi Jeroen!
When I changed from being a dancer to working in magazine publishing, I had a similar experience. I was bringing a super high level of engagement and intensity and perfectionism to my work. It’s taken a long time, but I now come to see my work as just part of the whole picture of my life and I have a lot of interests and things I do outside of work that fill out the picture. I still bring a very high level of attention and quality to my work, but I no longer expect everyone else to do so, nor do I get angry if I don’t see my level matched. (Well maybe sometimes I get agitated. But it passed quickly.)
Love, Laura
Hey dear Laura,
Thank you so much for your reply!
It took me a long time too before I realised that it is unfair to expext colleagues to have the same kind of working ethics (is that correct English?! :-)) that I have.
It is so true that our work after dance is no longer such a huge part of our entire life. I am still looking for something that fullfills me beside my work…I noticed that I find it hard to choose something, not knowing yet whether it will give me so much as dance gave me before…sounds like a topic for another post 😉
Many, many greetings from Berlin!
Jeroen