Bad Habits, A thing of the Past?

Every dancer has bad habits and probably will for the entirety of their dance career. Whether its relaxing turn-out, hiking up shoulders, or much more minuscule things, they're there. The goal then is to break those habits, but this is much easier said than done. The main reason its so hard is the simple fact that now the correct habits feel weird. Over the quarter I've been working on using my rotaters and focusing on my pelvis placement (e.g. while in 4th position). For a while I was struggling with my rotaters because I didn't have enough strength to use the correct muscles. Because of the bad habits I had acquired over the years I was compensating with global muscles like my quads in order to make ballet happen on my body. Now that I have been pushing myself to work harder in ballet, I have finally started to find and apply turnout in everything I do. I still find myself falling back into my bad habits from time to time, but the difference now is that I realize and physically feel when I am doing it and can correct it on my own. This is also the case with my pelvis placement. At the beginning of the quarter I was in the habit of sinking back into my heels rather than lifting and holding my pelvis and weight evenly between my feet. At first this correction felt very weird on my body. I felt like I was too far forward on my front leg and that there wasn't an even distribution with my back leg, but now I am finally starting to retrain my body to know when I am in correct placement and not falling into old habits. I still have habits that need correcting but now that I have started this life-long process of correcting all my bad habits I fully understand that it takes time and a lot of hard work, but in the end it is one of the most worthwhile things a dancer can do.