4 Life Truths I Learned at Jazzercise

Thankfully I have been able to jazzercise again the last two weeks. There was a few week period where due to travel and then my knee being incredibly weird I had to stop. As my friend Jenn put it:  “thank goodness you are Jazzercizing again!  What else would you talk about?   You’d have to result to only TVD and Originals and I don’t know that you’re caught up yet.  So how on earth would you function in society?”

I realized when I returned to jazzercise after my brief hiatus how much I need it to be happy. Not only because it’s a huge stress reliever, but because when I go to jazzercise I am reminded of some very important life truths that help me keep things in perspective. Here are the four top life truths I learned in jazzercise.

4. People Are Stupid (but get over it)

There are times at jazzercise where I am incredibly annoyed by some of the other participants. It has nothing to do with knowing the routine, or how well they do it. Jazzercise is a judge free zone.

No, what pisses me off is the evidence that people lack basic reasoning skills when it comes to arranging themselves in a small place. Sometimes it’s a crowded class, and you’re just not going to have a lot of room. That’s fine. But sometimes people go stand in the most ridiculous spots so now some of us are squished together and the other half of the room could fit like five more people.

Last week I was getting particularly angry because there was a woman right behind me that was so close I had to watch my moves to avoid accidentally kicking/punching her in the face at points (although I kind of wanted to). The kicker was that there was enough space between her and the woman behind her that if one of my tall friends was lying on the floor, there would still be room between them (that’s the only way I can really conceptualize distance). So let’s call that over six feet of space. Did it ever occur to this woman to back up?? No, and in fact with some songs she kept inching ever closer.

But at the end of the routine when we do our strength training there’s always more room, and I have time to calm down. Despite how easy it is to get angry at people and hold on to that anger, it’s so much better for you to let it go. Some of these people are actually really nice, and there is absolutely no benefit to being angry.

3. Everyone Has a Thing

When I reached my 150 classes in October, I excitedly texted a good chunk of my friends and family.  My mom responded with “who would have ever thought you would become an exercise fanatic!” My dad makes similar statements all the time when he calls and I’m like “just leaving jazzercise” or “need to head to my jazzercise class now.”

The thing is, I hate exercising. When my parents tried to get me to exercise when I was younger it was like pulling teeth. Actually harder, because I’ve had a lot of teeth pulled and it’s not that bad of a process.

And even now, when I can’t jazzercise for whatever reason, I don’t workout. I think I should but I can’t make myself do it. But I love jazzercise. It’s my thing. I didn’t think I’d ever find a workout I’d love but there you go. Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I’m too lazy or hungover or unmotivated and I skip class, but overall I think I’m doing a fabulous job with it, and it’s all because I love it so.

2. It Matters Who You’re With

Did you know they’ve done studies that found if you hang around with people that are generally unhappy your happiness goes down as well? It’s too early in the morning for me to find one of those studies, but trust me I’ve read that somewhere.

Who you’re with can play a big role in your attitude and behavior. With jazzercise, I’ve found this particularly true when it comes to the instructors. Even when they’re doing the same routine some of the instructors are a little more enthusiastic than others. They do the high intensity moves pretty much the entire time, and they are freaking HIGH intensity. There are others that do the same song but do it a little more casual.

I’ve found that I always get a better workout with the higher intensity instructors. It doesn’t seem to matter that I realize when the instructor is doing a lighter version, I go along with it. The only exception is when there are other people in the class (that I can see) that are still doing very high intensity.

One of the things they say a lot in jazzercise is that we go to class so we can workout together and motivate each other. This is absolutely true. I apparently am only as committed to the workout at the people around me. I probably should use this knowledge to make myself do the high intensity moves no matter what, but I use it more as a life lesson. I am now trying to surround myself with people that genuinely make me happy, and not people that bring me down.

1. You Can’t Please Everyone

Thank god jazzercise emphasizes this to me so much, because I absolutely need to remember it at all times. With jazzercise, I realized the truth of this statement when I started traveling and hitting a large variety of instructors.

You see, I have my favorites. There are some that I’ve had multiple times that I think are really nice people, but I don’t like their style. However, I’ve heard other people in the class say the same individual is their favorite instructor. There are different things I take into consideration – the intensity level, what they say during the routine, whether they emphasize certain moves that people typically get wrong, etc. There was one instructor that drove me insane because during leg routines she just yelled “get lower!” at us again and again no matter how low we went. There was another the other day that kept telling us to breathe through the nose, and that annoyed me (and also seemed weird since then literally five days later another instructor was yelling that we needed to breathe through the mouth).

The point is, as I’ve discussed multiple times with a friend, people like different things. Certain types of instructors resonate with me better. The reason this is so key for me to remember is that I too often fall in the trap of thinking EVERYONE should like me. When I used to train customers at work, I was devastated by every bad review. Let’s not even talk about how I now have a complex about my voice after a few complaints about it.

I realize this every time I jazzercise and I think I should really learn to keep it in mind every single day. If I can’t please everyone, and I can’t, I think it should be more important to do what makes me happy than worry about what other people are going to think.

There are other little things that jazzercise helps me learn, but those are the big ones. At this point I know that when I don’t get to go to jazzercise for a long period, it makes me cranky. We’ll see how that plays out this week since there’s not really a class nearby.