Ep 39: The Power Behind Your Why

In this episode, I’m diving into something that every teacher needs but often overlooks, defining your why on a deeper level.

This conversation was inspired by a moment inside Total Technique Academy where teachers realized they felt stuck trying to define their why. Not because they didn’t care, but because their answers stayed at the surface.

I walk through why a shallow why like “I want my dancers to improve” isn’t enough to carry you through the hard seasons — the burnout, the pressure, the attitude, the exhaustion. And how going back to your story, your experiences, and what truly drives you creates a foundation that actually lasts.

Cara talked about:

•  Why many teachers feel disconnected from their original passion over time
•  How surface-level whys fail during stressful, high-pressure seasons
•  The importance of going back to your own journey as a dancer and teacher
•  How personal experiences shape a deeper, more meaningful purpose
•  Why a strong why must be internal, not dependent on external circumstances

Key Tips:

•  Revisit why you fell in love with dance in the first place
•  Reflect on when you decided to pursue teaching and why it mattered
•  Identify what you needed as a dancer that you now want to give others
•  Get specific about what is currently pulling you away from your why
•  Build a why that is deep enough to carry you through hard seasons

When your why is tied to how things feel, it will shift constantly.
But when your why is rooted in purpose, it becomes something you can rely on.

Because the hard days are coming. The hard seasons are part of it.

The goal is not to avoid them.
The goal is to be grounded enough to keep going anyway.

—
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to It's All Relative, the podcast where dance technique meets purpose, progress becomes visible, and passion fuels the path forward. I'm Kara Dixon, co-founder of Relative Motion, and our team is made up of professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers here to make high-level training feel doable, measurable, and exciting again. Whether you're a teacher searching for fresh cues, a dancer craving more clarity, or a studio owner chasing a bigger vision, this space is for you. Each week, we'll break down complex technique, dive into real studio strategy, and share tools that spark transformation from the inside out. Because in this community, we train with intention, we lead with love, and we know that better dancers start with better teachers. So let's grow, let's move, and let's rise together. Because at the end of the day, it's all relative. Hi friends, and welcome to a new episode of It's All Relative. Today we are talking about something that's vitally important as teachers to keep that momentum going, to keep that love of dance going. And that is the idea of defining your why. The idea of having something very specific that lights you up and lights you on fire. And I thought it'd be fun to record this episode today because we are kind of wrapping up our Total Technique Academy. We just, as I'm recording this, we released our 12th module, which means we have been in the thick of this 12-week three-month training program since January. And it has been such a rich and rewarding experience, what we get to share as a community, and also just seeing the teachers learn and grow and all of us really learning and growing together, right? We're getting to know each other. I'm hearing the inside scoop of what's happening in the studio, what's happening in their classrooms, and really understanding what their goals are and what their challenges are. And we're walking together to get there, which is so cool. So this past week, the call I had with them really inspired me to record this with you. And that is we were talking about one of our modules, especially before we dive into curriculum building. So they've learned like the technique behind the apparel, they've learned how to form a class and make sure that there's a specific formula to getting the results you want, all the things. So now we're jumping into curriculum. And the first kind of topic we jump into before we really dive deep into curriculum is why are we doing this in the first place? Right. We define our why. And what I found interesting was that when we got on the call, our teachers were all a little bit stuck. They had referenced texting each other during the week and like just, hey, I'm really stuck on this, on my why. And I feel like from an outside perspective, maybe you're like, hey, how do you get stuck on your why? But it is so easy. And it's really common. It's really common to start teaching because of something very specific and then to start to drift away from that love, to drift away from that passion, to feel the pressure and the disconnect from why we dance in the first place. And so, as I was listening to these teachers and their challenges, and we've really grown together in community. We don't launch the define your why on day one. We're launching this after we're getting to know each other and we're understanding goals and we're understanding the highs and lows of being in the studio space. And we're talking about the why, and I can just see the teachers like why they understand like the why behind giving their dancers good technique, but their personal why, right, was a little bit more surface level. It really was like, well, I really want my dancers to have these wins, or I really want my dancers to get better. But here's the thing, and I think that we've all been in these seasons. We as teachers, it's not always gonna be great. It's not always gonna feel great. It's not always gonna be enough to want our dancers to just have better technique. There are gonna be seasons where you've been at home with multiple sick kids for the entire week, and it's all you can do to get yourself to the studio. There's gonna be seasons where if your seniors give you a bad attitude one more time, you just don't know if you can do it again. There's gonna be seasons where your dancers are giving you pushback on the dress code. There's gonna be seasons where your dancers are like rolling their eyes at you, or the parents are coming at you, and it's just really hard and difficult. And there are even gonna be times within the season that you're just drained, you're exhausted, it's back-to-back competitions, the dancers are drained, you as a drained teacher are trying to motivate and inspire also drained dancers without feeling overwhelmed, without feeling the burnout being that good role model. And it's heavy, it's a lot. And so when your why is, I just want to see my dancers get better, when that dancer comes in with a bad attitude or refuses to wear their hair back in ballet, that why gets too shallow to sustain you. And so when we're talking today, I want us to talk about defining that why as in let's go deep. There is a reason why each of us decided at some point, not even to teach, but that we loved dancing, right? We could have been a younger dancer and just the music comes on and your body can't help but move. Your body can't help but find that beat and move and create. You could be even have even started later, and you just always resonated with feeling your body move a certain way. You come to life when your body can create these shapes and when you can bring emotions out of other people through what you create. And so there's for us, all of us as teachers, at one point we're the dancers that just could not stop. We could not get enough. We were passionate about it, we were driven, we were so excited, right? Then there's a moment in our dancing, in our training where we decide, okay, wait a minute, we want to actually do this, right? It's not just a hobby. It's not just something my mom brings me to on Tuesday afternoons. This is something I want to pursue. How far can I go with this? And maybe it's not like a striking moment. For a lot of us, it will be. It'll be a striking moment that you can remember when you said to yourself, Man, I really want to do this. This is what my heart wants to do. For some of us, it might be something that just grows over time until it overtakes our thoughts. And that's the new plan. And for some of us, we might have graduated high school, left dancing altogether, started doing something else, and then realized, no, I can't stop dancing. My heart isn't in what I chose now. My heart constantly wants to go back to dancing. But whatever the choice, whatever that moment, whatever that shift happens, we found ourselves here and we're passionate about teaching. And maybe we had a career performing. Maybe we had an entire career performing, and then we're like, man, I really want to give back. I really want to connect and see other people improve and give other people the opportunities that I have. And found yourself in this position. Or maybe right out of training, out of maybe even college, you're like, I have such a passion for teaching and helping others and investing in others and seeing the next generation grow. And you went straight into it, right? There's really no right or wrong here. Everybody has their own journey, everybody has their own story, right? And no two stories are alike, which is what is so great about life. None of our stories are the exact, but we have so many intricacies that are gonna overlap. We have so many little threads in what my story would be and what your story would be, that if we sat down, so many of them would overlap. And that's why it's so good to always be in community and always be connecting. And I love that you're on this podcast. That's a great way to get that connection with other people. But also, wouldn't it be great to sit and have coffee and be like, man, tell me your story? And so we're at this precipice where now we've realized, okay, this is why I connected to dance in the first place. This is why I decided to teach. But now, as time goes on, it's very easy to lose track of that. So if you're a brand new teacher, you might get in and be like, this is not what I expected and lose track of it pretty quick. Or you might be 10 years in, you might be a 30-year studio owner, you've had your studio for 30 years, you've seen it all, you've seen the changes in parenting, you've seen the changes in respect, you've seen the changes in styles, right? And so, how do we keep plugging in? So, what I would say is just like an exercise to do is go back to why you love to dance. And then go back to that next step would be go back to when you decided you wanted to teach. And what were the things in those two that overlapped, right? What are you seeing? You love to dance, and maybe it could be that you realize that you have so much to give other dancers, but also maybe you realize that, hey, I can give dancers things that I didn't myself receive. And I think that happens with a lot of teachers. When we talk to teachers, it's an intimate conversation, right? It's something that's really close to our heart. And so it can be emotional, but a lot of teachers are like, I realize what I needed as a dancer, and I know I can give that to more dancers. I know I can pass that along to the next generation. I needed it and I didn't have it. And so, my why is passing down what I needed to the dancers that are following me. And the next one, sometimes with teachers, is like, I never had my career because I got injured really early on. And I want to make sure that I'm protecting the next generation, the dancers coming after. We're protecting them, we're nurturing them, we're guiding them. Maybe we're speaking to them in a way that we weren't spoken to. Maybe we're mentoring them in a way that we weren't mentored. And so figure out what it is that lights you up about dance, about teaching, and then currently figure out what you feel is disconnecting you the most from your why. So, my suggestion is to go so deep. So the deeper you can go with your why, the more likely it is to get you through those hard seasons. Because I think when we go through hard seasons or we go through hard moments, maybe it's at the studio, maybe it's with our families. Maybe if you're a studio owner, it's the business aspect of it. It can be stressful, it can be straining. And we start to isolate and we start to get into a moment of overwhelm. But I think what we need to do is level our mind to know that those seasons are totally normal. I think when we have this vision of what teaching is going to be or what business ownership is going to be, and it doesn't line up with that, we start to think, man, what are we doing wrong? Or maybe this isn't for me anymore. Maybe it was for me for the past 10 years, but now it's not for me. And I hear so many teachers saying, I feel like I'm almost done, which is sad because they're amazing teachers, right? And so they're sitting here and they're going, maybe this isn't for me anymore. And what I would say is if you can go back, replant yourself, ground yourself in your original goals, your original reason, and find a why that is so deep, so personal, so intimate to you. Then on those hard days, and there will be hard days, there will be hard seasons. You get out of bed and you get excited because you are doing it for something more than what you can surface level C. You are doing it because you can't not do it. And so sometimes we talk about technique and we're like, we don't want dancers just to get the turn right once, you know, oh, they got it. We want them to get it right so many times they can't get it wrong. And so the same is true with us and our why. If we feel inspired one day and we're like, got it, you know, but it's circumstantial. I'm excited because it's sunny outside, my kids are showing me respect, the parents are amazing, you know, everyone came in and worked hard. And it's all reliant on outside things, it's all surface level. Our highs and lows are gonna come and they're gonna be vicious. But if we can set up a why that is so deep, it's so innate and ingrained in us because it becomes more about our purpose versus our feelings. Then we wake up and even on those tough days, we have the vision, we have the purpose, we have the meaning. And as humans, we look to make meaning. That's what we do. We look at stuff and we're like, this has to mean something. So we plant a meaning on everything. So if it is a great season, we can be like, I'm meant to do this, I'm in my flow, this is my fill in the blank. But when it becomes a hard season, if we don't have something ingrained in us and pre-decided as our why, then it's very easy to let the feelings become the facts. It's very easy to be like, actually, this is awful. This is hard. I thought it was good, but it's not good. And I think a lot of times we as teachers find ourselves there because when the season is stressful, there are a couple of months every year where it's basically nonstop, all competition, it's all getting ready for a recital, it's all the stress, and it feels like a lot of pressure. And so that's gonna be, especially right now in the season, we're at that go time. Everything is on 110%. We're going 200 miles an hour constantly. And so take time for yourself to do this exercise. Take time with yourself to be like the purpose has to be ingrained in me. This has to be not just I show up and I'm a teacher, but I am in my unique design for my life. This is my purpose, this is my passion, this is my calling. And when things go into making meaning, you start to make the meaning around that, around your why versus around your feelings. And I challenge you to do this because it was so wild on our call when we actually started unfolding the layers of each teacher's story and diving in and getting those goosebumps and just being like, yes, that's what I'm talking about, right? It's not just about getting our dancers better technique, it's about this human connection and it goes so much deeper. And there's a purpose behind what we as teachers are doing. So the more we can tap into that, man, how rich and full our experience is, even on those days that are gonna challenge us. And just remember, those days are gonna come because this is a human experience. Those days are part of it. But you were designed on purpose for a purpose, and you are walking in that. And so I'm really excited for you. I'm really grateful for you, and I hope that this just offered you some light and some beauty inside your week. Talk to you next time. That's a wrap on today's episode of It's All Relative. Thank you for spending your time with us. We believe what you bring to the dance world matters, and we're honored to support the way you teach, read, and inspire. If this episode moved you, made you think, or gave you something new to try, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's next. You can connect with us anytime at Relative Motion Dance on Instagram or visit relativemotiondance.com for more tools and training. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep dancing with purpose. Because remember, it's all relative.