Did you eat your humble pie today?

Let's talk about humble pie.

"You have to eat a humble pie to win." I heard the idiom for the first time today — and I loved it. It set off a small thought process about dancing.

Being humble is so important in the growing process. Our ego prevents us from being open-minded, from taking critique as a guide instead of as an insult. Our ego tells us to give up if we aren't immediately good at something.

We compare ourselves to other people, too. Some dancers make finals and place in comps right after starting a new style. Quick success. Is it inspiring? Honestly, not for me. What I love is the story where someone put time, effort, patience, discipline, consistency into their progress. Where it wasn't luck, or randomness, or natural gift alone. You don't see fruit or flowers the same moment you put a seed in the soil. You water it, regularly. You give it time to grow deep roots, mature, and become something beautiful and strong and uniquely itself.

I wasn't accepted into ballet school as a kid — they said I wasn't anatomically gifted enough. I still did a lot of ballet anyway, not professionally, as a complement to my other styles. And it carried me. It bore fruit.

The other side of the medal: when progress comes easily and quickly, we take success for granted. There is more chance we will get full of ourselves and stop putting in the work — not practising, just expecting results because it happened once without effort. Or we point at our points and our placements and assume we have it all, technique-wise. So we stop drilling the basics, because we are too cool for school.

And because we placed, because we have titles, we stop being open to feedback or to anything new. The ego speaks: "How dare they say something to me? I placed first. I am better than everyone, forever."

But the truth is — we have to constantly work just to stay where we are, never mind progress. Stop practising and the skills go. We have to come back to basics, turn the foundation upside down, and be ready to listen — sincerely listen — to the teacher with an open mind and an open heart, even when the advice sounds too simple for the cool bean we think we are. Sometimes we assume we cannot get better because we don't have the teacher's experience. But the teacher's eye sees deeper and farther than ours. "Why does the teacher tell me to work harder? They probably just don't like me." A teacher who doesn't like you will be indifferent to your progress. We all want praise. I love hearing it and giving it; it's motivating, it builds confidence. But healthy confidence is different from egocentrism. Healthy confidence is willing to hear honest, respectful feedback. We need to trust teachers, because they often see a bigger picture than we do.

When I started WCS, I had twenty-plus years of ballroom behind me. So when I watched people dancing it, I thought: pfff... this looks too simple after ballroom. I asked the local instructor — Marina Korzun, still one of my favourite teachers ever — if I could take one or two privates with her, just to figure this out and win it all. I am still dying laughing remembering her face after that request. I didn't take group classes regularly. I just started going to events. I felt like a real rockstar. And then not placing the way I thought I would, and staying in Novice forever, finally made me realise I had to put the work in. Novice is a deep swamp, especially for followers in Europe. It was my longest division ever; very hard to climb out of. So I started taking group classes, privates from many teachers, and practising regularly. I am also dying laughing at the video of me drilling just the right-side pass back then — my face looks like there is high-level mathematics happening in my head.

I love watching old videos of pros from when they were just starting this dance. It is so inspiring to see where they were and how far they went. It gives the rest of us hope — regular people, not the swing gods born with the gift — that we can become great dancers if we work. And funny enough, my favourite pros are the kindest and the most humble human beings I know. They set a great example as dancers, and as people.

I have heard stories about dancers being told they would never reach their dream level — wrong body type, lacking natural skill. It breaks my heart. Please, don't believe those stories. Dream big and you will get there. But you have to be humble, honest, real, disciplined, patient, curious, consistent. The fruit comes.

And when people say they are stagnating, or feel bored, or demotivated — be humble. It cures a lot of things. Take a group or a private. Ask the teacher what to work on. Knowing what you need to do motivates the practice. Big goals, small goals. The way of small steps will carry you very far. Just don't expect results in the same moment. We can't always feel motivated and inspired and excited; that's not how it works. Patience and belief bring those feelings back, but only after the work is done. The next level shows up after a stretch of boring. We have all been there — flat, uninspired. A champion (and I mean champion as a quality of a human, not a level on a card) keeps going. Keeps believing.

Nobody is perfect, my friend. I am not. The whole message of this long read is just: be humble, no matter what level you are at. The intention is to bring some motivation to dancers who don't see fast results, or to anyone tempted to assume that success comes without work. There is always a bigger picture of work behind the scenes that nobody tells you about.

And it is not only about competition. If you don't compete and you only social dance — if you want your partners to enjoy the dance with you — you have to learn and practise, too.