Hi dancers, and welcome back to The Reel Deal! Today, I’m excited to introduce the first installment of a new series called Comp Chats. This series will dive into all kinds of different elements of competition and being a competitive dancer. And with the West Region Open Championships just two weeks away, what better way to kick things off than by talking about setting competition goals?

As a competitive dancer, goal-setting is so important. Without goals, competitions wouldn’t have much meaning. But sometimes we get too narrow-minded when setting our goals. I used to be like that. Every competition, I had a specific placement in mind, and if I didn’t achieve it, I felt like I had failed. Many people think that being intensely strict and holding yourself to high standards is the key to improvement. While that can work if done properly, being too hard on yourself can actually stunt your progress.

For me, when I didn’t meet my placement goal, it didn’t motivate me to work harder. It just left me feeling defeated. The problem was in how I defined success.

Rethinking Success

Take a moment to think about what “success” means to you. How do you know if something is a success? Is everything else a failure, or is there a middle ground? My old definition of success was rigid. Success meant achieving exactly what I set out to do, and anything else felt like failure. If I aimed for top 3 and placed 4th, it wasn’t good enough. If I wanted to win and came in 2nd, even if one judge ranked me 1st, it still wasn’t good enough. Sure, it felt amazing when I hit my goals, but when I didn’t, it was tough to recover.

Over time, I’ve challenged myself to change my mindset around success. Shifting the way you think takes time, especially if you've been in the same habit for years, but it’s possible! My new definition of success is much more flexible and holistic. Success, for me, now includes several elements: overall placement, individual placements from each adjudicator, how I danced that day, and how I felt. And not all of these elements need to weigh equally. For example, if I placed really well but didn’t feel great about how I danced, I can still celebrate my placement. Or, if I didn’t place as high as I wanted, but felt proud of my dancing and noticed one judge ranked me higher than expected, I can still celebrate my improvement! 

This definition allows me to see success and failure as more nuanced. It lets me take credit for all the progress I’ve made, instead of getting stuck in an “all or nothing” mindset. This shift in thinking has boosted my motivation moving from one competition to the next because I believe in myself more. Celebrating small improvements helps me know I can improve even more, and that drives me to keep pushing for better results next time.

Rethinking Goal-setting

As my understanding of success has evolved, so has my approach to setting competition goals. My old goals were very specific and tied strictly to placement, like “Win 1st in my Ardghrad Reel” or “Place top 3 in my championship.” While it’s great to have specific goals, they were rigid and focused only on my final placement. Now, I set multiple goals across multiple different areas of competition. 

So, my advice to you for goal-setting as a competitive dancer is to try and do the same! Think about what success means to you, and use that to set goals in multiple areas! You can still have a final placement goal—just don’t stop there. 

Some things you can also think about are…

• Individual placements from each judge. What would make you happy in that area?

• A technique or skill you want to focus on while you’re on stage.

• How you want to feel at the end of the competition weekend.

And, when it’s all over and you’re reviewing your goals, don’t just give yourself a “yes” or “no” for each one. I like to color code my goals when I am evaluating them so that I allow myself space to recognize growth even if the exact goal wasn’t achieved. I use green for goals I achieved completely, red for goals I haven’t reached yet, and yellow for goals where I didn’t complete them exactly, but I made an improvement or I was really close. For example, if I had a goal of having each judge place me in the top 3, and 2 out of the 3 did, I could mark that goal as yellow. That way I’m recognizing that the goal was incomplete, but I’m not writing it off as a total failure. 

Success is a journey, and recognizing your progress at each stage is key to staying motivated and enjoying the process. By breaking your goals down into smaller more specific goals, and goals that span different elements of your dancing, you’ll be able to track your progress easily, and celebrate yourself with every improvement!

I hope this has helped you think about goal setting for competitions in a new way. Take some time now to think about what success means to you right now, and if you want that to change. Jot down some of your goals for Regionals, and make sure to set goals for different things, not just your final placement!