The Spotlight Effect

What is the spotlight effect? The overestimation of how much others are noticing or looking at us 👁

How does this relate to your pole journey?

🖤 GETTING STARTED. The whole idea of being rubbish, everyone looking at you, being the worst one there, embarrassing yourself, feeling out of place. We can assure you, most people feel this way before they begin, it’s completely natural, but take *the spotlight effect* away, and you’ll realise that no one is really looking anyway. So f*ck it up, get it wrong, that’s how we learn 🤷‍♀️

🖤 PROGRESS RATE. Slow learner? Worried that others think you should be learning things with more ease? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with taking things at your own pace. In fact, it will probably mean you have a better understanding in the long run, and are more likely to stick with it. In the best way possible, people are too selfish and are worrying about their own spotlight to pay much attention to what you’re doing.

🖤 PROGRESS PRESSURE. So you started out getting things real quick, all was good. Then suddenly, there’s a limit. There comes a point that any strength/flexibility you had before starting, simply cannot outplay pole technique. There’s the expectation that you’re the person who will get things straight away, and when you don’t, it can be a bit of a bruise to the ego. Usually, in order to level up in these situations, we need to check our basics, but pride of working at a certain level stops us doing this.

🖤 TELLING PEOPLE YOU DO POLE. This is a strange one. In almost 12 years of doing pole, I have barely met 1 person who doesn’t have some kind of opinion/reaction that I do Pole. Some judge, some think it’s impressive. Even though people have an opinion, they don’t *really* care. They’ll stop thinking about it shortly after the conversation, but in our heads this can turn into a real stress that stays on our mind, and might even put people off starting. We can assure you, the benefits m a s s i v e l y outweigh irrelevant, quick passing opinions. And as soon as pole becomes a normal part of your life, you won’t care what they think anyway.

What you should take away? No one is watching, so do wtf u want 💅