I recently wrote:
As kids we take it so personally, whether we can do a particular move. My advice to any dance (or skating) student is to step back and look at your body more objectively. Each session is an opportunity to take out this amazing machine called your body, work with it, and improve it through grit, self love and character. That is your role, as director and orechestrator. Neither your body’s capabilities nor its limitations are a reflection of the you, merely a reminder of our humanness and mortality.
This brings up a philosophical question: Am I my body? Or am I a separate being from my body? As dancers, we are both at once. But the ability to separate our ego from our body is incredibly useful to train objectively and carefully. As soon as we dysregulate and get upset, our ability to train and make progress diminishes. Progress is made through careful self observation and finding ways to improve things. A need to be perfect works against progress.