How To Be Lucky

Be generous. 

I don't use that word lightly. Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It's like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune. 

Whenever I feel I'm working in a groove it's invariably because I feel I am being the benefactor in the situation rather than the beneficiary. I am sharing my art with others, lending my craft to theirs, interest-free without no IOU. I want the dancers to look great, so I try to give them great steps. In return, they live up to the potential I see in them. Then I am the one who feels lucky. In the luck equation, who is the winner here? 

Someone once asked me why the superstar dancers of the ballet world don't make very good choreographers. The quick answer is that few of them have the facility to teach effectively since a lot of what they do has come so easily to them. But I think the bigger issue is generosity. Stars become stars because they have a gift for pulling the world into them; they draw people's attention through their beauty, talent, charisma and wiles. As a result I don't think they're generally willing to project their own artistic hopes and desires onto other people. They are used to having their own assets supported. This isn't evil selfishness or egotism it's simply a part of their creative DNA, the way they are. 

To be a great choreographer (or teacher), you have to invest everything you have in your dancers. You have to be so devoted to them and to the finished creation that your dancers become your heroes. It takes courage to be generous like that, to believe that the better the dancers look (or the actors in your film, or the singer of your song), the better the scene will play and the more satisfying the work itself will be. Without that generosity, you'll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it.  

It took me years to appreciate this. When I was younger (read: more limber, athletic, and strong) I used to do this awful thing to myself: Whatever dance I was working on, I would literally put myself in the center of the piece, even though I knew full well that I wasn't going to get to perform it. For a few years there, when I was in my forties and could still move well, I would get really pissy when the inevitable moment arrived and I would have to recuse myself from the piece and hand it over to one of my dancers. Of course, injecting myself into the piece was one of the ways I identified what the piece was about. (Every director does this-- tries each role on herself.) But each advancing year taught me a little more about generosity. Nearing my sixth decade, I could no longer rationally harbor illusions that I was the only one who could perform my work. In fact, I couldn't. If I could, it would not have been challenging enough for my extraordinary (read: younger) dancers. Age forced me to learn how to give everything to my dancers. That's not an easy lesson to learn, but I'm grateful for it. (Still pissed off, but grateful.) 

I cannot overstate how much a generous spirit contributes to good luck. Look at the luckiest people around you, the ones you envy, the ones who seem to have destiny falling habitually into their laps. What are they doing that singles them out? It isn't dumb luck if it happens repeatedly. If they're anything like the fortunate people I know, they're prepared, they're always working at their craft, they're alert, they involve their friends in their work, and they tend to make others feel lucky to be round them. 

Stupid

5. What is the dumbest idea? Thinking I could have it all. 

6. What made it stupid? Its built-in futility, given how I work. To lead a creative life, you have to sacrifice. "Sacrifice" and "Having it all" do not go together. I set out to have a family, have a career, be a dancer, and support myself all at once, and it was overwhelming. I had to learn the hard way that you can't have it all, you have to make some sacrifices, and there's no way you're going to fulfill all the roles you imagine. We thought, as women in the sixties and seventies, that we could change everything and remake all the rules. Some things changed, and some things pushed back. What makes it stupid is that I set up a way of working that was in direct conflict with my personal ambition. Something had to give.  

...

31. Which of your answers would you most like to change? Number six. Down deep, I still want to have it all.

- Twyla Tharp

Bridges

If we are to find our way across troubled waters, we are better served by the company who gave built bridges, who have moved beyond despair and inertia. 

Huffington Posts

My first taste if leadership came in a situation in which I was blissfully ignorant outsider. It was in college, when I became president of the Cambridge Union debating society. Since I had grown up in Greece, I had never heard of the Cambridge Union or the Oxford Union, and didn't know about their place in English culture, so I wasn't weighed gown with the kinds of overwhelming notions that may have stopped British girls from even thinking about trying for such a position. ... In this way, it was a blessing that I started my career outside my home environment. It had its own problems in that I was ridiculed for my accent and was demeaned as someone who spoke in a funny way. But it also taught me that it is easier to overcome people's judgment than to overcome our own self-judgment, the fear we internalize.

The Element

Sometimes, of course, your loved ones genuinely think you would be wasting your time and talents doing something of which they disapprove. This is what happened to Paulo Coelho. Mind you, his parents went further than most to put him off. They had him committed repeatedly to a psychiatric institution and subjected to electroshock therapy because they loved him. The next time you feel guilty about scolding your children, you can probably take some comfort in not resorting to the Coelho parenting system. ...

Few of us are encouraged to conform our family's expectations as firmly as Paulo Coelho was. But many people face barriers from family and friends: "Don't take a dance program, you can't make a living as a dancer," "You're good at math, you should become an accountant," "I'm not paying for you to be a philosophy major," and the rest.

When people close to you discourage you from taking a particular path, they usually believe they are doing it for your own good. There are some with less noble reasons, but most believe they know what's best. And the fact is that the average office worker probably does have more financial security than the average jazz trumpeter. But it is difficult to feel accomplished when you're not accomplishing something that matters to you. Doing something "for your own good" is rarely for your own good if it causes you to be less than who you are. 

The decision to play it safe, to take the path of least resistance, can seem irresistible, particularly if you have your own doubts and fears about the alternatives. And for some people it seems easier to avoid ruffling feathers and have the approval of parents, siblings, and spouses. But not for everyone. ...

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.