How Adults Learn Ballet | Overview of the Facets of Ballet
Let’s dive in!
Today on the show, we're going to talk about all of the different facets of your ballet training.
We're going to talk about how complicated these stages of ballet are, we're going to talk about even why I'm calling them facets, we're going to really get into a lay of the land here.
Following this episode, I'll start digging into each one individually, but we're going to kind of talk about all of them, how to lightly acquire each of them and how to take them back to the ballet classes that you are taking in your local studios or in your online classes.
So to start, let's talk about how complicated these stages and levels of ballet are.
As we talked about, in the last episode, for adults, zero is very different for each of us. Because each of us is coming to ballet with a very, very different breadth of experience in our lives.
Some of us come with coordination, some of us come with flexibility, some come with musicality, some come with none of the above and it's a wholly new experience. For each of us, it's a highly individual process. So to even consider putting them into specific levels, or specific chunks of information is a little bit tricky, because for some people, level one is going to look a little bit different. For some people level one, if it's a specific set of 10 different skills, they may already come in knowing nine of them and only need one of them. Whereas some of us will come in not knowing any of those 10 things and needing to learn all of them. So really thinking about how one individual adult could structure or work through the things that they need to learn is a little bit different than just level one consists of these 100 lessons, because for some people, they may need more or less than those 100, they may need different ones in order to achieve the same skills.
The concept of “levels” is really complicated. To call it levels implies that you could move linearly but ballet progression is so nonlinear. For some of us, it takes a really long time to warm up to the idea of turning; for some of us jumping is never something we're interested in; for some of us, we don't want pointe work or we don't want a partner or we don't want different parts of it. So to call it levels is complicated when you get down to the granular individual level.
The idea of calling it a spiral did interest me and that it's still rather linear, although you're just kind of winding through different twists and turns.
Chaotic mess is also still not quite accurate because there is somewhat of a method to the madness, even though it feels a little bit chaotic in the beginning.
It's kind of a web. Except not every skill is related in this web, for example, counting music, it doesn't have much to do with strengthening your core. I mean, you can strengthen your core to music, but they are sort of unrelated skills.
There are also many parallel tracks of skills, but there's an interdependency between some of them. For example, strength, flexibility, and technique are all combined to create high extensions.
You want to train them in parallel with each other but there is interdependency with them.
It's not really a stair step either. Stairs also imply linear progression, and sometimes if you picture stepping too big, you couldn't really climb it.
So in reality, where I've landed is that your ballet training is a collection of different skills with different facets, some related, some not, that must be developed independently. But then they come together to create the beautiful gem that is your ballet technique.
Within the whole of ballet, there are micro facets such as pure wets could be their own quote unquote jam with many facets, where you're thinking about balance, control, momentum, body awareness, physics, timing, musicality, all of that little pieces of each of those going into a pure wet
Ballet is incredibly unique. In that we need to do two things. Number one, we need to learn how to dance. But number two, we need to learn an entirely new movement pattern, we need to learn a new way to be. We need to learn how to exist with our legs turned out we need to eat, breathe, feel the turnout the whole time with our arms in a specific place and our bodies in a specific posture.
On top of this, we also need to learn to dance, how to move our bodies, how to understand physics, how to get momentum, how to get power, how to remember combinations, how to dance with the music, how to express and all of that.
Other styles only need to remember combinations and dance with the music. So you don't need to learn how to turn out your legs. In jazz class, you do have some technique you need to learn in order to do pirouettes and turns but it's a little bit different in that you don't have to relearn how to stand, you don't have to relearn how to exist with your legs turned out. So in those classes, you don't need the barre work. You go in, you do a quick warm up and you get right to the dancing. But in ballet, we need to learn how to manage and control every part of our body in order for ballet to look and work correctly. So our classes are longer, more in depth and include barre work.
Facets of Ballet
So today, we're going to talk about all the different facets.
Let's go through them all. So let's say we lump them into four big groups, we have:
Breadth, this is the dancing
The depth, this is the technique
The performing and storytelling
Personal and body strength.
Breadth
So within the breadth, the dancing, this is where we get all the different vocabulary, all the different words. If you like to learn how to spell, knowing how to spell all of them with all of the accents.
This is knowing all the different words in ballet so you know the few 100 different vocabulary words. Knowing which foot to step on knowing where they would come in a combination. Knowing the lay of the land.
Arguably, you can know the vocabulary without having the technique: you can know how to do these things. You can know what a tour jeté is without necessarily being able to execute one flawlessly.
So learning the vocabulary is a separate thing than learning how to do the vocabulary and executing at a higher level.
Each vocabulary term has its own set of levels within it, where you're going to start with a tendu and how it looks at the beginner level to the pro level is different in each step of the way.
Each individual vocabulary term has a range and a spectrum of levels. Within breadth and the dancing, you also have memorizing combinations.
Yes, dancers. This is a skill that gets better with time. Memorizing combinations is something you practice. It is something you learn. We will be talking about it! It has to do with so many different factors that you do get better at you really do you really do learn how to pick up choreography and how to internalize it more quickly.
Depth
Within depth, the technique we have your posture, we have your core control, we have your hip control, and we have developing the motor patterns for turnout. This is what barre work is.
If you can picture all the ways that your legs can move turned out, that's what you have at the barre: you can bend them, you can straighten them, you can lift them, you can throw them, you can bend them one way, you can bend them another way.
And this is what barre work is. This is developing the motor patterns for turnout. We have an entire episode dedicated to barre work: what it is, what we're doing at the barre, but that's going to be your depth.
The depth is what will give us the different levels of breadth that I mentioned. So within each vocabulary word, as we learn a vocabulary word at the surface level, each level of each vocabulary word has a deep trench of technique that will continue to level up that specific word or that specific step.
Performing & Storytelling
The third area the performing in storytelling. I would put all of this with personal expression, I would put this with musicality, with counting music, understanding how to play with the music, with understanding how dance personifies the music.
I would put artistry in here. That’s your facial expressions, that's your epaulement, that's your expressivity, that's how well you are portraying what is inside into the outside.
When it comes to artistry, we're always trying to allow our body to project what we feel inside into the into the outer world. This is where you're going to get your pantomime, the sign language of ballet.
This is where I would also put choreographing. So the skill of choreographing as a dancer and making up your own dances.
Now you'll notice each of these individual facets is its own individual thing. You don't need to know how to make choreography in order to learn a pirouette. They are two completely independent things. It's helpful to know how to make up your own choreography so that you can more easily practice your pirouettes at home. If you wanted to practice in a different combination or something you can make it up yourself but they're really unrelated skills.
Personal & Body Strength
In the fourth category of facets is the personal and body strength. I would put in here your athleticism. Yes you are an athlete when you are a dancer, you are working on becoming more athletic, you are working on your athletic strength, your power, your stability, your stamina, I would put your flexibility in here.
I would put your mindset in here. Your mind is a very, very powerful tool. When we are training when we're training our technique, we need to train our minds to think more precise thoughts, we need to train our mind to think more clearly, we need to train our mind to think optimistically, we need our mind to not overwhelm us with anxiety, we need to teach our mind how to respond to scary situations. How do you respond to the sensations of pointe work? How do you respond to stage fright? How do you respond to criticism? How do you respond to bad days in your body, and how you respond to injuries and setbacks.
All of this is a very important part of your journey with ballet because it's all part of it. And it's all if you want to stick around for several years into your ballet training, which is what it takes to achieve those higher skills and goals, the mindset is going to help you keep going through all of that and not give up when you hit different setbacks that we all inevitably do.
Last thing I would put here in this fourth category is coordination. Your intuitive sense of how to move your body.
To be clear, intuitive doesn't mean you have to have been born with it, I truly believe you can develop intuition. For example, Warren Buffett wasn't born with an intuition of which stocks would do well; he developed it over years of reading, noticing, experimenting and learning. So our intuition of our body can be developed: our understanding of momentum, our understanding of physics, of power, of gravity, of how our limbs work together, all of that coordination is key.
How does this work with Open Drop-in Classes
Let's talk about how these facets are actually applied in your standard 90 minute open drop in program class.
Let’s talk about what are you getting in these classes? What are you learning? What do you want to focus on outside of that, and then give you an overview of what to expect from these different facets in your group classes.
Most of the open programs focus only on the facet of breadth: the combinations, which foot goes where. For example, tendu front three times and then you plié and then you go to the side and you plié and then you go to the back, and so on.
The main focus is on the breath. On the surface level on the vocabulary on the combination and on remembering the combination and picking up the choreography. All of these are within that first category of breadth (the dancing).
Sometimes you also get musicality within these classes or a little bit of flexibility and athleticism, if you have some barre stretches or some rélevés within class.
But a lot of times the focus of the class and the teacher’s cues are about the breadth or the dancing. There's a lot missing there in terms of the technique, the performing, the storytelling, the mindset, the coordination, some of those things that take a little bit longer, and a little bit more focused work to develop.
Why is the focus so much on breadth?
I want to help you see from the perspective of the teacher from the perspective of the studio owner and to understand why this is the case, so that if you ever feel pulled to advocate for change in your own studios, that you have a little bit more perspective and can go into these conversations more informed.
I truly don't believe that anyone out there who's doing their best to make ends meet and provide classes for you is doing it with mal intent in any way. I want to help you understand some possibilities of what’s going on
First of all, let’s revisit the idea from episode 2 about the varying goals of adult dancers and in adult open programs, generally speaking, you're catering to all of the dancers you are you have a room full of mixed faces, mixed goals and mixed levels.
The teacher is really trying to make the most appealing and general class to the people in your class because adult classes can make a good amount of for the studio and you want to keep people coming back. So a lot of times, the teacher will actually focus on those more superficial aspects of ballet in the open program to try to cater to the majority of the people in the room.
Trying to have more “fun” & technique is too boring
They tend to be a little bit more dance-y and focused on the “fun” aspects of ballet.
(In my opinion, fun is the technique part as well, and perhaps if you're a technique geek listening to this episode, you might be in that boat as well, ha!)
But picture your teacher a lot of times the teachers are professional dancers or they work with kids and pre-professional students all day and they spend all day getting hammered with technique
So perhaps, picture with me in some cases, they might envision how fun it would be to just let loose and dance! They might then project that desire onto their adult students, just thinking how fun it would be. They might think, “I bet these adults are here for a good time. They came here after work, they're really stressed, I bet they want to just have some fun and do some dancing!”
They might even worry that they'll bore an adult if they take time to talking about the minutiae.
It can bore the kids.
I am a part of so many groups of teachers and within these groups of people working with kids, they talk about how the kids and parents complain ad nauseum about how much time they spend on technique and how it bores the kids.
Of course, all of this is generalizations, and I'm sure there are kids and parents out there who love this.
But if you picture that, that is the environment that these teachers are in all day, and then they get a group full of eager adults, perhaps they don't want to bore them. They have a bit more freedom in the class. And they want to show them a good time and keep them engaged in ballet. And perhaps well meaning go about it in a way that isn't what you're looking for, as a technique geek, let's call ourselves.
As a studio owner, I've had people quit because they're bored. They'll reach out and they'll say, “you know, your classes are really just too boring, we go too slow, we talk about technique, I just want to dance across the floor.”
And if you're a studio owner or a teacher and you receive feedback like that, AND you already hold the belief that adults just want to come and go across the floor, then an email like this is going to really just hammer home the point that adults don't want to learn technique and that it’s too boring.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with not wanting to learn technique. There are so many ways to exist in the ballet world. There's nothing wrong with only wanting to focus on breath or on that portion of it. As adults who are doing this because we love it, because we can't “be” without dancing, because it's part of who we are, it can be part of who you are in whatever way you want it to be.
So there's nothing wrong with it. I'm not begrudging anyone who doesn't want to learn technique, it's just another way to be that it’s good to know about if you’re a technique geek.
And it's possible that the studio owners and teachers are catering to that specific type of dancer, because they will get feedback like this when the teacher does go into the details and the minutiae. The studio ethos has to really believe that technique is what you want to teach in order to be able to hear this feedback and keep doing what you're doing without turning into a “fun” class.
Fear of injury
The teacher might be afraid of injuring their students, encouraging adults to push themselves is a little different than encouraging a child to push themselves.
Adult bodies are strong and fully grown. But we also have to be more careful with ligaments with old injuries with joints that have already lived a long life, we have to be careful in how we encourage adults to work on their turnout, being really careful with knee safety, being really careful with backs and shoulders.
It's just a little different. It requires a different type of training for the teachers. It's a different mindset, encouraging adults to push their limits but in a really safe and sustainable way so that the students are able to keep coming back.
This can be really scary, though, it's really scary to push people beyond their limits. It can be a very difficult experience for the teacher, especially if they're not used to encouraging or pushing adults beyond that point.
Forgot what “beginner” even looks like
The teacher might also be used to kids with a background in dance. When you're working with kids who have a background in dance, it is a whole different ball game than working with an adult who hasn't experienced these things.
Teaching adults and kids is so incredibly different from teaching kids. Kids really rely on mimicking a lot, especially young kids. If you do something, they will mimic it; it's actually incredible. They mimic really well.
But adults don't have that sort of mirroring thing and they really need a deep explanation of what's going on. They need everything broken down and won’t simply copy. It's a different way that we learn as adults.
Additionally, we have much more deeper rooted movement patterns in our body. And so to explain something isn't enough, we have to take the time to be patient while the new motor pattern is instilled in the adult dancers' bodies.
Not to mention that there is just so much stuff to learn in ballet. If you've been dancing since you were a young child, you forget how much there is to learn. Even if it's been a while since I taught absolute beginners, when I go back into an absolute beginner class, it can be kind of jarring. And I think “oh, wow, yeah, I really have to slow it down.”
There's so much to remember that you have to say. The dancers don't even know why you're saying 5678 at the beginning of a combination. They don't know how far away from the barre to stand. There's just so much stuff that you need to tell people that they don't know, because how would they know it? How would you know these things if you weren't taught it?
But as a teacher, especially when you live ballet every single day and you say the same things over and over again, it's actually really hard to remember all the things you have to tell a new ballet dancer.
Their toes
Their fingers
Where to stand at the barre
How to put their stuff on the side of the room
What the music is doing
How to spell these words in French and what these things are
Where your belly button goes
And SO MUCH more!!
There's just an incredible amount you have to tell a dancer and it's really easy to forget all the things.
Imagine if you were going to try to teach someone English. Where would you even start? You are at such an advanced level in English, that to go to a beginner and say, “I don't know, I use the word ‘the’ a lot, maybe we should start with that!”
But that's not at all where you should start with teaching English. But because you're at such an advanced level, it's hard to remember what you should learn first, or all the things that a beginner isn't going to know, because it's just massive.
Therefore, a lot of things go unsaid, not out of malice or anything. But just because it's sometimes really hard to remember all the different things you need to say
Especially, since adults don't tend to mimic the same way that kids do. Adults will look at you and see something different than what kids will see. Kids will just mimic and they will watch the behavior and pick it all up; soak it all up. But adults learn in a completely different way, needing an explicit explanation of things and there's a lot to explain. If you haven't had to explain it in a long time, there's a lot of explaining to do!
Anxiety around how adults pick up steps
If the teacher is used to teaching kids who have a background in dance, and who can mimic and who learned in that way, it can be surprising or cause a lot of anxiety if you are met with an adult who isn't picking it up the same way that you're used to teaching it.
It can be a little bit like you're on the spot when you're trying to get someone to learn a waltz and they can't pick it up the same way that a kid would.
Here's an example. There is a phenomenon that I like to call “body dyslexia.” There's a whole subset of dancers of adult dancers where you will tell a dancer to step on their left or their right foot. And a lot of times there's a moment of hesitation, where the dancer doesn't know which foot is the left foot or the right foot.
If you tell them to turn to the left and pick up their left foot, there is a hesitation and often they'll pick up the wrong foot or turn the wrong direction. There is an effect where their mind is mirrored to what you would expect.
It seems to me that the more visual the person is, the more visual of a learner, the stronger this body dyslexia is.
This, interestingly, applies to plié and rélevé too. When you tell this dancer to bend their knee or to plié, often nothing happens when you tell them those words.
As a teacher, it can be a little bit alarming, because you might worry, how many ways are there to say “bend your knees” and not know of another way. It can give the teacher a lot of anxiety to have that inability to communicate what's what you need the dancer to do to to create the step and the footwork.
There's so many factors from the teachers perspective, where if this is your first time coming about it, or if you're not used to it, or if you haven't seen it before, it can be alarming, it can trigger feelings of inadequacy, it can trigger all kinds of different things for that teacher that could cause them to pull back from the confidence in being able to teach this student or adults in general.
Corrections & Reminders vs Instruction & Explanation
A teacher who is also a dancer in the ballet company and is teaching the adult class will often teach how they're used to taking class, which is very different from what an adult beginner would need.
An adult beginner needs a full explanation about what's going on. A new dancer who has never done ballet before, would come into class and doesn't know how to use their core, right? That's not something that we learn unless we've been taught it or been specifically trained in your former life.
Maybe you did gymnastics, maybe you did other athletic endeavors. Unless you've been trained how to use your court, you probably won't know how to use it on day one because it's rather difficult. Like all things in ballet, if you haven't figured that out already. So when you're working with a new adult dancer, you need to explain to them what it means to engage their core. They won't come in knowing how to engage their core. But when you're a professional dancer, all the teacher needs to say is, “don't forget your core.”
And because the professional dancer knows how to engage their core, and so do the other classmates, everyone just takes the reminder and executes on it.
But for a new dancer, you don't need a reminder, you’d need an explanation.
Giving class and giving reminders to a room of people who don't know what's going on is a lot different than giving reminders to a roomful of professional or advanced dancers.
To a group of advanced dancers, you can say “Don't forget your turnout” or “focus on your standing leg.” But to a new dancer, they don't know what those things mean. They don't know what it means to “focus on their standing leg.” They need a whole lecture on what it means to focus on their standing leg, and then continuing help to develop that fine grained control.
As dancers, we're trying to build a control center dashboard of our body. If someone already has that built up from years of training, all they need to do is just turn the little knobs and dials on their control center. But if someone doesn't have a control center, and you tell them to turn a knob, they don't even have a control center yet! First you need to build that from the ground up, and then remind them which knobs to turn.
How this Manifests as The Big Gap between Beginner & Intermediate
Generally speaking, adult classes play it safe and teach adults the breadth, the choreography, the dance-y things.
In the beginner classes, what often happens is even though we haven't mastered the technique, we find ourselves bored after a little while, because we already know the combinations and we feel like we're not getting any better. We think the point is that we've remembered the combinations.
Once we've achieved that point, we're bored and ready to move up for a new challenge. But, really, the point isn't that! The point is to do the combination with technique.
But if the beginner class isn't teaching you what you should be focusing on to train your muscles, you'll get a little bored without having those things to challenge your mind and body.
Then we have a big gap where you're going to feel like you want to move up to intermediate and feel a little stuck.
But an intermediate the combinations are going to be so complex, there's going to be steps you've never seen before. At that point, the steps and the combinations are far too complex for you to even think of technique.
In the intermediate classes, while sometimes the teacher does begin to focus on technique, unfortunately by then you're so overwhelmed with all the different combinations and the new steps and the new body directions that there's no room for additional thought of technique.
We need simple combinations to focus on technique.
Beginner classes do give you simple combinations, but they don't necessarily focus on technique. So then you move to intermediate, and now the combinations are too complex. While there may be the technical direction, it's paired with too much to think about to even apply the technique.
Develop Breadth & Depth, then Merge Together
Ideally we work on our depth, we work on our breadth, and eventually we merge them together to apply the depth to the breadth.
That's when we get the advanced skills, the clean technique and our detailed center work, but the depth is developed slowly with great care and great focus.
We want to try to find a place to learn to sweat standing still. Learn how to be out of breath and break a sweat by the end of doing 16 tendus in first position with two hands on the barre.
If pirouettes are your goal, then 10 years of waltzing across the floor maniacally and then squeezing in one pirouette at the end isn't going to get you there. You're going to leave every class feeling dejected thinking you'll never get pirouettes.
But that's not because you can’t do them, it’s because that’s not how you work on pirouettes!
If you focus on balancing drills on posture on turnout on, rélevé strength, and you work slowly and methodically, you can learn pirouettes!
I've taught people to clean double parallettes, in just one year since the start of their ballet journey starting to work on that detailed technique in the beginning.
For the record, kids usually learn depth first. They go way deep, they learn very few new steps, they go 100% depth, and not breadth first. The reason I think that can fly with kids is because they're sort of forced to continue going at that level.
It's very possible that one day we're going to get there with adult beginners, where we have that extraordinarily slow technical process to begin with, but I think for the most part, we learn in a different way, and we're interested in many different things at once. So I think as adults, we don't necessarily need to go that same route.
Regressing to Learn Depth
But there's a point that is going to feel like regression for the adult learning breadth. If you've only been learning breadth without depth, I've been there many adults in open programs or their advanced open classes cover breadth and not depth, then you get to that point, you can follow along in an intermediate class, you can do all the waltzes across the floors, but you can't land a pirouette.
The skills aren't going to be developed, but the dancing will be developed. And then there's a frustration that feels like a plateau where the skills aren't there, but everything else is.
Once you've climbed the ladder of breadth, you look over and realize there's another ladder called “depth” that you haven't even started climbing yet!
Depth is ultimately how you get those higher level skills, but you have to hop over, go down to the beginning and climb that technique ladder from the beginning.
You have to swallow that pill that is so hard to swallow and start from what's going to feel like the beginning. It's not the beginning, it's just two separate things you have to learn. But the combinations, the breadth will go way back to zero while you learn the technique.
Open Drop-in Classes are Putting it All Together
Adult open drop-in classes are putting it all together. What you're getting is a little bit of everything. You're scratching the surface of everything and you're getting a little bit of tendus, a little bit of rond de jambe, a little bit of grand battement, a little bit of across the floor, a little petite allegro, and you're putting it all together.
That's great. So useful, so necessary. As I mentioned in the last episode, I think that's a staple of ballet. I think it's a lot of fun! It's great because it allows so many of us with different interests, different abilities, and different levels to come together and have a lot of fun together. I think that's so fun.
But, we also need to have the opportunity to take it all apart before we can put it back together again! Take it all apart into the individual facets: work on pirouettes by themselves, work on standing still, work on your feet, work on your athleticism, work on your flexibility, as individual parts and components and facets, so that you can have fun putting it BACK together in the 90 minute class.
In a 90 minute class, it's very difficult to cover all of these topics. And besides, if the teacher spends 90 minutes on turns, but it was advertised as a general class, half the people are going to be disappointed because that's not what they came for. So setting that expectation is key. If you're going to a class that's putting it all together, that's what's expected to be going on.
But we need opportunities to take it all apart so that we can put it back together again.
We Shouldn’t Need Private Lessons to Learn These Things
The fastest way to get there is private lessons. The fastest way to get to where you're going and help put all these pieces together help you take it apart is private lessons. It is all focused on you. It is completely tailored to your goals, completely tailored to what you're looking for, what you want, and where you've been in the past.
I've done lots of private lessons in my life as a ballet dancer. I've taught them they're a lot of fun on so many levels.
But I don't think you should have to go to private lessons for this.
If you have the means, if you have a teacher who's interested, whether in person or online, do it by all means go for it. Private lessons are amazing.
But I want there to be a way for adults to learn the majority of things without having to turn to private lessons. I want you to be able to learn 80% of each of the facets without private lessons.
To have turning workshops, classes on flexibility, on extensions, on athleticism, on these individual facets, so that we can get exposed to all, learn what they are, and then decide where we want to focus.
Having this in a group setting really opens it up to more and more people. Having this level of instruction reserved for private lessons is tough because all these concepts take a long time to learn.
It takes a long time to learn pirouettes, it takes a long time to develop technique, it takes a long time to develop all these different things, and if you have to go to a private lesson to learn about each and every one of these, it's going to really add up fast.
Having these resources in a group setting in a lower cost setting is the most ideal scenario.
Sneak Peek of Episode 4
So in the next episode, we're going to dive into your technical depth. We're going to really talk about what it is what to seek out what to look for to try to find opportunities to learn this, the terminology the verbiage, the understanding of what we're looking for with technical depth, so that you can think about how you'll seek it out how you can find it if it's something you're interested in or not.
We’re going to talk about what we're trying to do at the bar, why we're at the barre for so long, and why it's so difficult to get it to translate into the center.
I want you to start to understand it at a deeper level and really know what to look for, and know if it's something that you're interested in learning more about.
The episodes after that, we're going to keep picking apart each of these individual facets
Get in touch! I Love to Hear From You!
I've been loving hearing what you think about these episodes so far! It's been so fun to have a chance to connect with you all about your ballet training about what parts of what I'm saying are resonating, what parts are bringing up more questions.
Leave a comment, send me an email hello@brocheballet.com, or find me on Instagram/Facebook @brocheballet.
I would really love to hear from you and how all of this is resonating with your own ballet journeys, your hopes, your dreams and your goals.