Are you ever your own worst enemy? Your own harshest critic? Your own roadblock to success?

Yeah? Sometimes? Always? Well, welcome to my club. And frankly, this shit is getting old at 66.5 years.

I’ve been taking latin dance lessons here in Portugal off and on for at least a year or more. Same with Portuguese lessons, for three years. Whether learning to do a new dance or learning to speak a new language, it is not possible to improve and master learning without consistent practice out in “the real world.” With language-learning, that means stuttering your way through real conversations with native speakers. With learning to dance, that means getting your butt out on a real dance floor at social dances with other dancers. I am nervous about the former, still, after nearly four years of living in Portugal. I am terrified of the latter.

My language teachers have said I need more confidence, perhaps a glass of wine, and to stop overthinking all the grammar rules and just talk. Make mistakes. Keep talking. And I do. I really have no choice where I live, although growing numbers of English-speaking immigrants/expats here are making it easier and easier to just lapse back into my native tongue. Great for my comfort. Not good for my learning. When I speak Portuguese around new American acquaintances — say, at a restaurant or bar — some think I’m showing off. I am not. I’m trying to support my own learning by consistently applying it. But I don’t want to come off like I’m trying to show off, so I often don’t apply my learning.

With latin dancing, my caring about what other people think stokes a toxic self-consciousness and paralyzing fear that typically keeps me off a social dance floor. I’m instantly transported back to middle school and high school, where I avoided school dances and even prom. As an adult attending parties and festive events in the United States, whenever the line-dancing lineups started forming, I made a beeline for the nearest restroom or pretended to be on my cell phone.

GB (which stands for German Bae, my German boyfriend of 2.5 years) has been lovingly coaxing me out of my persistent “performance” confidence issues.

GB recently taught me a new German idiom: “Was juckts die Eiche, wenn ein Schwein sich an ihr kratzt.” What does the oak tree care if a pig scratches itself against it? It’s saying that you (the unfazed oak tree) shouldn’t care what others (the pig) think or say about you.

I look like an oak tree out on the dance floor — tall, stiff, wooden — so I’m trying to think like an unfazed, confident, and strong oak now. “Who cares what I look like dancing? Who cares what people think?” Gulp.

We’ve gone to several social dance venues in Lisbon and a couple on the Silver Coast. I find the outdoor pop-up socials to be less intimidating… only after there are lots of couples out there dancing. Glasses of wine don’t hurt either. I even felt confident enough to learn and try a new dance — Brazilian forró — for the first time at an outdoor social on a main thoroughfare in Lisbon one afternoon. Many sips of cerveja (beer) were part of my prep.

Balance issues and vertigo are not my friends during latin dancing. I don’t like dancing with anyone other than GB at social dances, but in a small class it’s a requirement. Painful to watch, I know. When I was first learning these moves, other classmates, two Portuguese women, giggled together as they watched me doing a demo with the instructor. Me: Oak tree. Them: Pigs.

This weekend, there will be more dancing. And wine and beer. But the biggest lesson and most important practice will be developing my confidence and minimizing my self-consciousness issues. That’s a master class I’ll be taking for many more years.

---

Thank you for reading! ♥️ Wishing you a weekend filled with confidence, joy, and learning.

---

All images are my own.

The Hot Goddess

---

If you enjoyed this please remember to Share, Like, Follow, Comment, Subscribe. (This is my “call to action” I’m supposed to include in every post. Thanks so much for your support!) ❤

Copyright ©️ 2021-2026 thehotgoddess.com. All rights reserved.