Here I am feeling distraught that people are jealous about my belt. Photo by Lee Corkett.

If you spend any amount of time on social media, you see a lot of jealousy. Or maybe I’m just really sensitive, because I used to be a very jealous person. It was part of an overall bad pattern of negativity and bitterness. Someone would post something nice that they were doing or had and I’d say “Oh, it must be NICE to be able to go to Europe” or “Gee, I wish I could afford a fancy costume like that” or “UGH I am so jealous of you right now!”

As part of a general effort to improve my outlook on life, I removed that sort of language from my vocabulary. What was even the point of being so negative towards my friends? What kind of friend was I, that I couldn’t be happy that they were happy? And it wasn’t even like my life was bad, I lead a pretty good life, but no one can have everything and I wanted it all. I wanted to keep taking lots of workshops, but also somehow be able to afford nice international vacations and fancy costumes and home improvements and whatever else my friends were doing.

Now, here’s the thing… I think it’s perfectly alright, and even good, to want something that someone else has, as long as you can have it too without taking it away from them. So for example, it is wrong to look at the belt I’m wearing in that photo and think “Wow, I sure love Sophia’s one-of-a-kind Snake Church belt, I should break into her house and steal it while she’s at troupe practice.” But it’s great to think “Wow, I sure love Sophia’s belt and she seems to wear it a lot. I should really sit down and work out a budget plan where I can save up and buy myself a good neutral-colored Snake Church belt that I can wear all the time.”

If you see something, and you want it, ask yourself a few questions… Why do you want it? Can you get it? How can you get it? What are you willing to do to have it?

To really tie this into dance, it’s common to be jealous of another dancer’s technique and abilities. We all want to be the best dancers we can be, right? It’s so easy to watch another dancer and go “UGH I am so jealous of her shimmies!” That jealousy isn’t doing you any good if you just sit there and stew in it, though. Instead, ask yourself “How can I have a shimmy like that?”

Let’s look at a few things that might be preventing you from shimmying the same way as that other dancer, and a few things you could do to channel that silly jealousy into useful progress.

The other dancer’s shimmies look different because she has a different body type than yours.

Do you want to have a body like hers? If so, is there a healthy way to change your body to be more like hers? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you will need to accept that every body’s shimmies look a little different. You can still work on improving yours, but you will never dance exactly like the person you’re admiring, and that’s OK. You’ll come up with your own amazing movements. Practice your shimmies, look for what you love about them, and focus on improving that area until it’s just as amazing, but different from the dancer you were jealous of.

An injury, weakness, tightness or other physical limitation is holding you back.

Realize that it may be time to shift some of your focus away from training your shimmies specifically, and towards working on whatever physical impediment is limiting your progress. This may be as simple as doing some workouts and/or stretching, or working with a physical therapist, or even getting medical treatment such as surgery. So often we ignore this stuff because it’s not FUN like belly dance, and in the case of surgery, it can be scary. But it’s worth it when it makes you a better dancer and prevents further injury or imbalance.

You’ve been neglecting your shimmies in practice lately.

It’s really easy to forget to practice the things that we already know how to do. However, there’s a big difference between being able to do a move, and being awesome at a move. The more you work on your shimmies, the better they get. The more moves you can layer them over. The more strange positions you can stand in and still shimmy. So set yourself a practice goal and stick to it!

The other dancer is actually doing a style of shimmy you’ve never learned.

How exciting! A new move to master! How are you going to learn it? Does your teacher know how to do it? Is there another teacher in town you could get a private lesson from, focused on that shimmy? Is someone teaching it at the festival you’re attending later this year? Is there a video that covers it?

You really can’t figure out why your shimmy doesn’t look like that other dancer and it makes you want to cry.

Don’t cry! You can get to the bottom of this. Sometimes you just really need to work one-on-one with a teacher who will look at what you’re doing and help you figure out why it isn’t working. Sometimes your teacher can do this in the course of a normal class, if the class isn’t too crowded and it’s actually a simple and obvious thing you overlooked. Other times, you may need to schedule a private lesson. Show your teacher a video of what you’re trying to do, explain to her what you’ve done on your own to try to accomplish it, and ask her advice on what you should try next. She’ll probably know the answer, and if not, she can likely recommend someone who’s more knowledgeable about that move and could help you better.

Sure, all of this is more work than sitting at your computer sulking about how someone is better at shimmying than you are, but it’s so worthwhile when you watch a video of yourself and realize that you’ve finally got the shimmy of your dreams.