Shy Girl Speaks

I couldn't think of a better title for this, but it represents the topic of the post sufficiently. (Lol, it's 9 AM and I'm up and blogging and not really sure why!)

On Tuesday, I had ballet and pre-pointe. It'll be a long time until I ever step foot into pointe shoes, but the new teacher was really cool. I never took criticism as well as I did in my this class and he's not afraid to give it, so I'm trying to really study how he does this so I can figure that aspect of myself out a little better. He told me I could be a really good ballet dancer in 50 years. The first thing he said to me was, "You've never taken a day of ballet in your life, have you?"

Usually I would take these words to heart and it would be terrible, but for some reason I took it REALLY well. I mean, when he said these things he would be half joking, but it's totally me to take it to heart anyway. I just never take things well and this was a moment in my life where I wasn't doing something right, got criticism and took it well.

Maybe it was because he promised I would get better or because the other girls were so nice. He also told me not to give up and that it just takes time. This still baffles me, though, how I was able to take this so well. In most cases where I receive criticism, I would be hurt but pretend it was okay. If this had bothered me instead of empowered me I would have hacked it for the remainder of the class and then just stopped going. This is how work has always been for me. I do great until I receive criticism and then I get hurt. Every job I had, the main reason I quit is because I couldn't take criticism but used other reasons as excuses. Hopefully how I took criticism at ballet is a show of how well I am doing versus how well the instructor dished out the criticism.