How Dancing Can Make You A Better Copywriter
If you'd like to master copywriting, or any skill for that matter, you've got to have the nerve to just do the damn thing. And it's quite probable you can learn this principle instantly if you learn to dance well.
...athletes will recognize this right away. There come moments in learning new skills where you've got to surrender your comfort to execute the technique.
If you've ever golfed, you know that a proper swing feels completely unnatural. It's uncomfortable. "Icky", even. But it's in those moments where you surrender your comfort to do the swing properly, regardless of how it feels, that you get the best results.
Or if you've ever skateboarded, you know that the biggest obstacle in learning all the best tricks is to just commit to the trick at full speed and trust that you'll come out alright on the other end. It's the people who are afraid to just do it that take so long to learn.
Now it's usually assumed that "practice makes perfect" by way of rote repetition. In a sense that's true. But upon closer inspection, you'll find that
If you had the nerve to execute a new skill with perfect form... regardless of how comfortable or familiar it felt... you'd get it right away.
Until you can do that though, you have what we call "practice".
There is an old Zen saying about how archers, when playing for pebbles, are all experts. When playing for a bit of cash, their skills waver. And when playing for gold they all miss the target.
Here is how dancing teaches you to have real nerves: to dance well, you've got to let go and let the music dance you.
It's heinously obvious who's...
- uptight
- insecure
- worried about whether or not they're doing it "right"
- worried about how they look and...
- who lacks the nerve to let go and just have a ball on the dance floor already.
And the people who can let go may look completely ridiculous, but it's a disarming and impressive sort of ridiculous that allows everyone else to feel more comfortable to let go themselves.
Also, while the really swinging cats might look funny, they also really appear to know what they're doing! While in contrast, the wallflowers and the stiffs look clueless, even though in their minds they've got a firm handle on themselves and what's going on.
You've got to let go.
It's not the technique, the specific things to do, that will hold you back.
It's the mental chatter.
The worry.
If you want to be a champion you've got to be able to look at the games where gold is on the line in exactly the same way you do when you're just playing for pebbles.
Sayings like "nerves of steel" and "brass balls" are hilarious, but misleading.
They lead us to believe that nerves work by effort.
They don't. They work through sensitivity. And you can only develop that sort of intelligence by letting go.
By getting out of your own way.
The only way to do that is to come off of it and just let it happen already.
In copywriting, this means that you need to stop trying to write a great sales letter and just write one already.
If you had the nerve to do it, you wouldn't need an entire "swipe" file.
One good letter to model would be enough.
But see we're operating under images of the world that teach we've got to "earn" things (whatever that means) and so until we've done enough work so that it feels comfortable that we should be "masters" of a skill... we pretend we're not.
We invent all sorts of mental fictions that tie us up into a million little knots that we've got to waste our time untying.
It's like the person who goes to speak in public in front of a big crowd... if he had the nerve to just drop it and do the speaking... he'd do great. But instead, he invents all sorts of mental fictions where people are either staring blankly with grim expressions to the music of disinterested crickets playing... or else they're laughing at and mocking him or whatever, and so he gets nervous.
He's playing for gold.
He's trying.
The same guy, when in his home with his friends, can be the life of the party without a worry in his mind.
There, he's playing for pebbles.
When you learn to stop making the distinction, everything will come much more easily and naturally.
And I know no way of learning this lesson more quickly than to get on the dance floor and get stupid.
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