I’ve reached the top and had to stop and that’s what’s bothering me.
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One of the great moments of the Zumba Instructor Academy I visited recently was the talk that Beto Perez gave us. Sometimes, with all the great materials and forum chat group rooms thingummies it’s easy to get lost, it’s easy to start looking at other people’s paths in life and start thinking “ah yes, that’s success” and then planning for a career that may not be what we want.
I’m a huge fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” and it’s interesting that in their surgical world when you become a resident the next step is to become Chief Resident, when you become a surgeon the next step is to become Head of your department or Chief of Surgery. But what happens when you get that awesome job is that suddenly you’re bogged down with managing others, dealing with paperwork, reports, budgets and that thing you loved to do, the thing you studied years to do, in their case surgery, becomes the thing you try to squeeze in before your day of paperwork.
In the Zumba world the next step from Zumba Instructor appears to be becoming a Zumba Jammer, where you teach Instructors choreography, then ZES, where you teach people how to be Instructors or teach Specialties. Those who are working as ZES are in most cases extraordinarily inspiring people, so it’s not surprising that after a while of teaching a lot of us regular Instructors aka ZINs start to set our sights on one day becoming a ZES. I recently applied for a Zumba Jammer job, I didn’t get it. And here’s the truth, hand on heart, I didn’t really want it, but I thought perhaps it was a step on the way to becoming a ZES which you know, maybe I would want? Possibly?
So, it struck a chord with me when Beto talked about this directly. He first of all paid tribute to the ZES who worked their butts off at the Academy (kneeling down a la Wayne’s World) and he’s right - seeing how hard they worked at the Academy is awe inspiring. As he said; they travel, they miss out on things, they sacrifice in order to do their job, and they’re awesome... but... he said we don’t need more ZES, what we need are awesome Instructors, teachers out there who are doing the job, just as he does every week when he is not Creative Director of Zumba worldwide, or a guy on a big stage with hundreds of ZINs following him, or a ZES, but just a regular ZIN teaching a class (not even a masterclass). It’s when he gets to do the thing he loves every week.
It’s so tempting to look around and think you want that job; whether it’s the CEO looking at the “ordinary Joes” in his company, as in Undercover Boss, and then realising that his head office is messing them around, or the “ordinary Joe” looking at that cushy “Head of Whatever” role and thinking “Wow, I wish I got to have business lunches.”
I guess what I like when I look at Beto is someone who is keeping it real, walking the walk, in fact his dedication is so powerful that I most often want to say to him “please take a break, go for a spa day,” just as my class say to me!
I think a big part of the desire to want to go the ZJ, ZES route is the desire to prove something, to myself, to others, it’s really about trying to be the best - don’t we all want that “Top Gun” trophy? It’s not really about beating others it’s, as Kelly McGillis says at the end... going at Mach whatever it is with your hair on fire. Being your best.
Ultimately Maverick figures out in the film that being the best is not about getting the trophy, it’s being there when he’s needed - it’s doing the job.
There are so many sensible career paths laid out for us that are wrong - I have this with my cycle ride most days, there’s a way I can go right, left, right or left, right, left. Now the logical practical way is to take the left onto the busy road and then a right at the roundabout where I have right of way. However so many times I try to pull out and turn right on my bike I get cut up, abuse and it’s horrible. If I go the other way I have to turn right onto a busy road - what happens? I stop and a few seconds later someone always lets me out as they take pity on me - and I get a nice easy left home. The sensible way is not always best.
So what’s left? Well in the world of “Grey’s Anatomy” it’s getting to research and experiment and cover new ground. Even there, they’re always working on some ground breaking procedure or cure... end of season it all comes together and they succeed... and the next season um... nothing much has changed, partly because this is TV and partly because the real changes, the real growth is so slow and small that it’s like watching a tree blossom. Really boring, right? (Sorry.)
There are few hard and fast rules to finding the perfect career or life path; most of them contradict each other. There’s “seek your bliss” and then “do what scares you the most”, so maybe do something blissful one day, something scary the next?
A friend of mine calls me a “mad scientist” in a nice way; I see the world as an experiment. Like so many other things found by accident it’s often when I get a result I didn’t expect that something wonderful comes out of it. I also like to explore things that nobody else has done yet.
I was the first filmmaker in the UK to make a fully digital feature film. I know this because the person who did it after me (lovely lady, very nice, I went to her screening) got lots of press for being the first. I also stayed in touch with her for a while, at the time I was a little jealous because she was getting the credit for something I had done, (you could be the first on the Moon, but if no one saw you you don’t get reported in history!) but over the next few years we both had our ups and downs and her life was ultimately no more blessed than mine.
I was the first person in the UK to write a book about being a kidney donor (there were a couple in the US before me) and I do believe my life has been blessed because of that - especially reading emails from people who the book has helped.
I may not have been the first but I was the only person teaching Zumba Gold in Merton when I started, and I do believe I was the first to teach Zumba Gold chair (although someone else was in the paper reportedly being the first when I had been doing it six months). And so it goes.
Ultimately it doesn’t really bother me because I know I was first, oh yes and I believe I am the first to ever publish a book about spa treatments rather than just spas (pretty proud of that!) I feel it’s a little bit like indigenous people living somewhere and some group comes along and “discovers” somewhere and plants a flag and the indigenous people say, well yes, that’s where we go on Tuesdays. When you’re living it the “firsts” and “fastests” and “first woman” blah blah all seems a little irrelevant.
The best part of being a “first” is when you see others go after you, when other people set up classes, when others ask you for advice on publishing, on kidney donation, when that “first” is a flag that helps people find you and ultimately inspiration to do more of the same. (Or they just got there after you not even knowing you were on the same path.)
Being the first to put together a mixed Zumbathon with three different types of class together made me so proud, mainly because I’ve been experimenting with bringing these classes together for years, trying first one way and then another and so it was succeeding with that “experiment” that meant a lot to me. Now I know that it can be done, nothing would make me happier than seeing others use that knowledge to expand and grow.
At the Academy Beto also paid tribute to one of the ZES teaching Sentao, one of the Zumba specialties and he said he was so happy and proud to see someone who could teach it better than him. You can see why we all look up to him. Whether you’re a teacher or a mad scientist it’s the body of knowledge and skill that we look up to - we want to add to it and encourage others to do the same.
It’s hard to stay true to yourself, to your values, your nature and your ideals when you are bombarded with “success” stories, emails telling you how to grow your sales, improve your Google results, make contacts, network... It’s hard when you’re doing a launch party for your book and you’re not sure how many people are going to show up, when you teach a class each week and numbers go up and down, when you feel that maybe you should be doing something different.
And that’s when you have to ask yourself what success really means. For me it’s getting to do what I love, seeing people benefit from it, knowing I make a difference, it’s doing things that no one has done before or just things I’ve never done before, it’s getting to sit in my pyjamas and write about incredible massages (not too shabby, right) and take beautiful real photos to put on the covers, it’s being able to offer support and advice to people who really need it. It’s about creating something powerful and magical and unique, even if it’s only a class that will exist after it’s done only for the few people who were there. It’s meeting up with other Instructors and sharing stories, ideas and experience and helping grow that shared pool of learning.
It’s embracing that wonderful, unique, special person you are that is the only, only person in the world that could do exactly what you do, how you do it, living that magic and following your dream no matter how embarrassingly fun, outwardly dull or hair-raisingly scary it can be at times.
Okay, let’s go. Ulp!
x P
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One of the great moments of the Zumba Instructor Academy I visited recently was the talk that Beto Perez gave us. Sometimes, with all the great materials and forum chat group rooms thingummies it’s easy to get lost, it’s easy to start looking at other people’s paths in life and start thinking “ah yes, that’s success” and then planning for a career that may not be what we want.
I’m a huge fan of “Grey’s Anatomy” and it’s interesting that in their surgical world when you become a resident the next step is to become Chief Resident, when you become a surgeon the next step is to become Head of your department or Chief of Surgery. But what happens when you get that awesome job is that suddenly you’re bogged down with managing others, dealing with paperwork, reports, budgets and that thing you loved to do, the thing you studied years to do, in their case surgery, becomes the thing you try to squeeze in before your day of paperwork.
In the Zumba world the next step from Zumba Instructor appears to be becoming a Zumba Jammer, where you teach Instructors choreography, then ZES, where you teach people how to be Instructors or teach Specialties. Those who are working as ZES are in most cases extraordinarily inspiring people, so it’s not surprising that after a while of teaching a lot of us regular Instructors aka ZINs start to set our sights on one day becoming a ZES. I recently applied for a Zumba Jammer job, I didn’t get it. And here’s the truth, hand on heart, I didn’t really want it, but I thought perhaps it was a step on the way to becoming a ZES which you know, maybe I would want? Possibly?
So, it struck a chord with me when Beto talked about this directly. He first of all paid tribute to the ZES who worked their butts off at the Academy (kneeling down a la Wayne’s World) and he’s right - seeing how hard they worked at the Academy is awe inspiring. As he said; they travel, they miss out on things, they sacrifice in order to do their job, and they’re awesome... but... he said we don’t need more ZES, what we need are awesome Instructors, teachers out there who are doing the job, just as he does every week when he is not Creative Director of Zumba worldwide, or a guy on a big stage with hundreds of ZINs following him, or a ZES, but just a regular ZIN teaching a class (not even a masterclass). It’s when he gets to do the thing he loves every week.
It’s so tempting to look around and think you want that job; whether it’s the CEO looking at the “ordinary Joes” in his company, as in Undercover Boss, and then realising that his head office is messing them around, or the “ordinary Joe” looking at that cushy “Head of Whatever” role and thinking “Wow, I wish I got to have business lunches.”
I guess what I like when I look at Beto is someone who is keeping it real, walking the walk, in fact his dedication is so powerful that I most often want to say to him “please take a break, go for a spa day,” just as my class say to me!
I think a big part of the desire to want to go the ZJ, ZES route is the desire to prove something, to myself, to others, it’s really about trying to be the best - don’t we all want that “Top Gun” trophy? It’s not really about beating others it’s, as Kelly McGillis says at the end... going at Mach whatever it is with your hair on fire. Being your best.
Ultimately Maverick figures out in the film that being the best is not about getting the trophy, it’s being there when he’s needed - it’s doing the job.
There are so many sensible career paths laid out for us that are wrong - I have this with my cycle ride most days, there’s a way I can go right, left, right or left, right, left. Now the logical practical way is to take the left onto the busy road and then a right at the roundabout where I have right of way. However so many times I try to pull out and turn right on my bike I get cut up, abuse and it’s horrible. If I go the other way I have to turn right onto a busy road - what happens? I stop and a few seconds later someone always lets me out as they take pity on me - and I get a nice easy left home. The sensible way is not always best.
So what’s left? Well in the world of “Grey’s Anatomy” it’s getting to research and experiment and cover new ground. Even there, they’re always working on some ground breaking procedure or cure... end of season it all comes together and they succeed... and the next season um... nothing much has changed, partly because this is TV and partly because the real changes, the real growth is so slow and small that it’s like watching a tree blossom. Really boring, right? (Sorry.)
There are few hard and fast rules to finding the perfect career or life path; most of them contradict each other. There’s “seek your bliss” and then “do what scares you the most”, so maybe do something blissful one day, something scary the next?
A friend of mine calls me a “mad scientist” in a nice way; I see the world as an experiment. Like so many other things found by accident it’s often when I get a result I didn’t expect that something wonderful comes out of it. I also like to explore things that nobody else has done yet.
I was the first filmmaker in the UK to make a fully digital feature film. I know this because the person who did it after me (lovely lady, very nice, I went to her screening) got lots of press for being the first. I also stayed in touch with her for a while, at the time I was a little jealous because she was getting the credit for something I had done, (you could be the first on the Moon, but if no one saw you you don’t get reported in history!) but over the next few years we both had our ups and downs and her life was ultimately no more blessed than mine.
I was the first person in the UK to write a book about being a kidney donor (there were a couple in the US before me) and I do believe my life has been blessed because of that - especially reading emails from people who the book has helped.
I may not have been the first but I was the only person teaching Zumba Gold in Merton when I started, and I do believe I was the first to teach Zumba Gold chair (although someone else was in the paper reportedly being the first when I had been doing it six months). And so it goes.
Ultimately it doesn’t really bother me because I know I was first, oh yes and I believe I am the first to ever publish a book about spa treatments rather than just spas (pretty proud of that!) I feel it’s a little bit like indigenous people living somewhere and some group comes along and “discovers” somewhere and plants a flag and the indigenous people say, well yes, that’s where we go on Tuesdays. When you’re living it the “firsts” and “fastests” and “first woman” blah blah all seems a little irrelevant.
The best part of being a “first” is when you see others go after you, when other people set up classes, when others ask you for advice on publishing, on kidney donation, when that “first” is a flag that helps people find you and ultimately inspiration to do more of the same. (Or they just got there after you not even knowing you were on the same path.)
Being the first to put together a mixed Zumbathon with three different types of class together made me so proud, mainly because I’ve been experimenting with bringing these classes together for years, trying first one way and then another and so it was succeeding with that “experiment” that meant a lot to me. Now I know that it can be done, nothing would make me happier than seeing others use that knowledge to expand and grow.
At the Academy Beto also paid tribute to one of the ZES teaching Sentao, one of the Zumba specialties and he said he was so happy and proud to see someone who could teach it better than him. You can see why we all look up to him. Whether you’re a teacher or a mad scientist it’s the body of knowledge and skill that we look up to - we want to add to it and encourage others to do the same.
It’s hard to stay true to yourself, to your values, your nature and your ideals when you are bombarded with “success” stories, emails telling you how to grow your sales, improve your Google results, make contacts, network... It’s hard when you’re doing a launch party for your book and you’re not sure how many people are going to show up, when you teach a class each week and numbers go up and down, when you feel that maybe you should be doing something different.
And that’s when you have to ask yourself what success really means. For me it’s getting to do what I love, seeing people benefit from it, knowing I make a difference, it’s doing things that no one has done before or just things I’ve never done before, it’s getting to sit in my pyjamas and write about incredible massages (not too shabby, right) and take beautiful real photos to put on the covers, it’s being able to offer support and advice to people who really need it. It’s about creating something powerful and magical and unique, even if it’s only a class that will exist after it’s done only for the few people who were there. It’s meeting up with other Instructors and sharing stories, ideas and experience and helping grow that shared pool of learning.
It’s embracing that wonderful, unique, special person you are that is the only, only person in the world that could do exactly what you do, how you do it, living that magic and following your dream no matter how embarrassingly fun, outwardly dull or hair-raisingly scary it can be at times.
Okay, let’s go. Ulp!
x P
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