Dance means a lot to Valentino, a breakdancer in Huancayo. To him, every new acrobatic move or dance step symbolizes life’s challenges. Every new achievement on the dance floor acts as a reminder that there are no limits in life.

In this video clip, Valentino shares why dance is important to him:

It takes a lot of time, effort, discipline and practice to learn a new breakdance move. You don’t always see the tangible improvements, but somehow, one day, you’re flipping and spinning on your hands, feet and head. “It’s like medicine,” Valentino says. “It relaxes me and helps me recuperate.”

Things haven’t been easy for him these past few years. He has a 2-year-old daughter and is steeped in debt because of various failed businesses. It’s dance that helps him let go and brush away fear and self-doubt, motivating him to keep fighting for something better. He continually sees how he is able to push his limits on the dance floor and applies the same hope to his life and career.

As he explained this to me, I considered them lessons:

1. We don’t always see that we’re growing and changing, but we have to keep chugging along and one day, we make wiser decisions and are proud of ourselves.
2. When things get rough, we can call on past achievements to carry us through, and remind us of our value and strength.

Whenever I face self-doubt, I try to remind myself of the work I did in Japan. My research was on children with disabilities and it involved attending weeklong camps where we worked one-on-one with a patient using a Japanese psychorehabilitation technique.

I had no idea what I was doing, I was the only foreigner there, I had little experience with people with disabilities aside from family members and I didn’t feel comfortable speaking the language after spending the first six months just trying to get the three alphabets down. But the teaching system involved throwing me in there and having me learn as I went along, reporting to and learning from a supervisor in the evenings. What’s worse is that I never had time for myself — I slept, ate and even bathed with everyone else. During the second camp I attended, I quietly cried myself to sleep every evening feeling incompetent and ashamed. I listened to my own demons telling me that I couldn’t do this.

I don’t know what changed, but something did over six more months until it came time for the last camp before returning home to Canada. This time, I didn’t have a translator, I took each therapy session as a learning experience with my trainee in which we joked and laughed together, I made friends with everyone and I eventually had a paper published on my research in an academic journal.

What is the challenge you overcame or overcome daily that reminds you that you can do anything?