Failure Isn’t an Option; It’s a Necessity

One of the most difficult lessons in aerial arts and pole dance is learning how to fail. 

Even when we strive for perfection, we must understand that failure is an inevitability, and in order to embrace the lessons—and do so safely—it’s important to understand the value of failing and prepare ourselves for how to handle it. 

This is something we try to teach early on when students begin their journey with their chosen apparatus. Reaching our potential as aerialists takes hard work, and understanding that hard work begets obstacles is the first step. 

To help our students prepare for their journey and accept failure when it inevitably arrives, these are things we want them to keep in mind: 

Failure is a part of progress

You can’t move forward if you don’t know what it’s like to move backward. The lessons you learn from making mistakes give you an enriched perspective that fuels your future successes and provides you with a point in time from which you can progress.

Failure keeps you humble

We are not invincible, no matter how much we train! The occasional failure helps to keep us humble, emphasizing the need to always continue learning, growing, and pushing ourselves to do and be better. It’s important to understand confidence is different from arrogance. Confidence helps you achieve, while arrogance eliminates essential awareness. 

Failure teaches you how to stay safe

It’s important to understand how to fail safely! Since failure is a given, we must learn from our mistakes to avoid injury and deepen our understanding of our craft. When you fall, you learn to get back up and assess what happened to avoid similar mistakes in the future. Failure helps us assess our limitations (as well as how and when to push them) so we can continue on with more awareness and experience to stay safe. 

Failure fuels motivation 

Motivation doesn’t grow from perfection. If we nailed every trick immediately, there would be no feeling of empowerment, pride, or accomplishment when you achieve something new. Without the hard work and the effort of pushing through failure, we wouldn’t build that drive to challenge ourselves and reach new heights. Failure gives us a base point from which to grow, and that growth is what fuels our passion! 

In this modern world of social media and aerial influencers, where inspirational accounts rarely show the other side of training, it’s easy to forget that perfection is not the goal—progress is. 

This is an expectation that we want to make sure every student understands from the get-go, because aerial arts and pole dancing are all about the journey. We want our students to push themselves, to learn new things, to feel accomplished and proud of how much they’ve overcome to reach their goals. 

It’s a beautiful honor to get to be a part of your story. If you’re interested in beginning your own aerial arts or pole dancing journey, join us for an introductory workshop in Frederick, MD!