Fifth workshop and some career thoughts

Ok, so my big speech at the lunch went well, and now people are getting me involved in more initiatives. I was trembling after the meeting because I couldn’t believe what I just did… things are getting real? I can’t believe it. Now it’s time to actually make the change, instead of sitting back and complain about it. I can’t believe I get to be in this position just a year and a half into my first job! And also, just a day later, our firm announced a re-organization to drive the revenue synergies among previously acquired firms. So, in the next few years we will hopefully be witnessing some big changes among our businesses, which hopefully can transform the way people provide data services. Pretty exciting times!

During lunch today I also read about Fortune’s feature for David Soloman, CEO of Goldman Sachs who is also a DJ. It was pretty inspiring, especially when reading about how he said that if he decided to do something, he’d do it in the highest of his capability, or he’s not going to do it. It’s also inspiring how he managed to have such a demanding job while also being able to keep his hobbies and have a family, giving me confidence that if I want to, I can have it all too. I also aspire to be excellent in what I do, but in most of the time I feel like I am just doing things in my 80% capability, or otherwise I feel like I will burn out. Which is actually not a good way of thinking and hinders progress. Like for example, last night I didn’t really do a good job cleaning our apartment because I was tired, and then my roommate had to re-do my task, and seeing her clean what I just cleaned again did not make me feel good. I think as the year ends, one of my new year resolutions would probably be trying to do everything at my 100% capability, and see how things goes.

This also ties to our management team’s discussion about career progress. Many people asked them for advice on how to get promoted, how to be successful. But in our global town hall, our group president advised that we should think about it the other way around - making our goal to be how to make our business better, and actually do it, instead of arranging for meetings after meetings with the managers and ask for advice on how to promote.

Ok, enough work talk, now back to ballet! Today we learned a lot of things, such as sauté (jump), grand plié, and revised tendu. We also practiced postures by lying on the floor.

Posture and breathing

A very good way of realizing good posture is to lie on the hardwood floor, and adjust your hips and belly to make your spine touch the floor. When you do this, your muscle around your stomach and your muscle around your pelvis should be strengthened. Imagine someone put a hand on your upper back, right below your neck, and you are breathing into the hand that is placed on your hand. You need to then exhale into your back, in a way that your muscle around your stomach is pushing down while your muscle around your pelvis is pulling up. It is in this way that your spine elongates and your shoulder widens to the side as if you are expanding into the space. Breathing in this posture is hard, because we are used to breathing into our front to the belly. However, we are capable of breathing in a three-dimensional way - to the side, and to the back, so we just need to start getting used to breathing into our back.

Grand plié in first position

For a grand plié, you do not go down to the bottom of your leg. You keep turning out your leg to the side as you move down, until you reached your maximum turnout - which is when you feel like you have already turnout your leg to the maximum. When you turnout your leg to the maximum, your heels will naturally be lifted up the floor, so the imagery you should create for yourself is to think about how to reach the maximum turnout, and also how to move your tailbone strictly up and down like you are a puppet on the string - and the heels will come naturally.

Meanwhile, the teacher pointed out that we tend to lose our turnout on our way back to standing - we should still resume standing while having a turnout in mind.

Tendu in first position

We did tendu to the front, and tendu to the side. When doing tendu to the front, think that there is a wall between your leg, and when you stretch your leg to the front, you should imagine your heel is following that imaginary wall between your leg and that your movement should be a straight line perpendicular to your first position turnout.

Et voila! I think these would be the new things we learned today. We also practiced many many sautés, which made my legs and hip pretty sore. On my way to a ballet body! and hopefully one day I would be able to dance like this:

I also booked my ticket for the Nutcracker! I am so excited. Nutcracker was one of the reasons why I started ballet. Last December, I was sitting at my doctor’s office, bored, and watched the Nutcracker on TV. The dancer was so elegant and beautiful, that it really touched me and made me instantly fall in love with ballet. And then one day, I was running in the central park with my friend, when I saw a ballerina dancing very elegantly in the cold, with a very beautiful piece of music. I was so inspired that I turned to my friend and said I really wanted to learn dancing after taking my CFA. I then started to research online, and came across this adult ballet video from BAE, which is also quite inspiring. This video drove me to sign up for my first open class at BAE.

And then, the rest is history!