Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life by Twyla Tharp (2019)
Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life by Twyla Tharp (2019)
Chapter 1: Terms and Conditions
Age is not the enemy. Stagnation is the enemy. Complacency is the enemy. Stasis is the enemy (6).
TAKE UP SPACE
When your muscles stretch rather than constrict, you expand your share of the planet. You take up more space, not less. Dancers know this intuitively. They are taught to move so that every gesture is not only more precise and elegant but bigger. We call it amplitude. It is not enough to state an arabesque; it must be opened in every direction to its full expanse. In order to be seen, the dancer must occupy maximum volume. You can think the same way in your everyday movements.
• When you walk, think of yourself striding, not just taking mingy steps.
• Greeting a friend, reach your arm out, whether to shake a hand or give a hug, with amplitude and full fellow feeling. Be robust.
• During a meeting, spread your belongings out across the table instead of gathering them tidily in your lap. Speak out. Take up mental space as well (8).
Expansiveness is a factor of the following four ingredients:
1. Intention is the umbrella term for our desires, ambitions, and designs for the future. Intention defines our next move, and the next, and the one after that. It’s how we plan and control our life. Without it, we’re either marching in place or losing ground.
2. Honest appraisal of the past is how we deal with the inevitable setbacks, failures, and embarrassments life hands us. Without it, we cannot self-correct or recover. We will be forever mired in regret and guilt, wanting to change what we’ve already done to create a new outcome. Only happens in science fiction.
3. Anger about the past is the killer emotion. It’s noise not signal. Crank it up to high volume and it cancels out the sound of our best intentions.
4. Energy and time are self-explanatory, but as tools they are force multipliers. If you have an abundance of time and energy but waste it by getting stuck in the stale routines of the past, you have no chance of moving forward (9).
Make a contract with your future. Facing new habits requires accountability. Here are the terms and conditions of our agreement:
• Acknowledge you have choices. Make them.
• Your body will be a big part of this deal and you will be ready and able to use it.
• You will be okay to reidentify yourself often along the way.
• Obstacles-you will meet many-go around, over, under, or through. Again often.
• Bounce back-yes, many, many times.
• Up is preferred to down.
• Stamina is your bailiwick. Train. Train more.
• Bend in the wind. Get stronger for the mending.
• Dance is being in motion. You are doing it. Do it more (11).
Chapter 2: The Life We Choose
The best choices are made instinctively. Bit by bit, these choices fill out your character over the course of a lifetime. Your pledge materializes out of observing the choices you make (16).
My pledge is a daily choice. We all see the distinction between a chosen life and an unintentional life when we apply it to other people. It’s why we admire the self-made individual and resent the heir. The former satisfies our sense of equity; the latter offends it (why him, not me?) (17).
Many carry the misconception that we should become more comfortable and that things should become easier as time goes by. This is a belief system designed to undermine you. In life, there will be problems. This is guaranteed. We must learn to use our obstacles, transforming them into advantages (19).
PRACTICE PUSHING BACK
Pushing against a fixed object is the physical equivalent of the emotional resolve we must have as we push against obstacles. Physical resistance is called isometrics. Like a pledge, the isometric grounding we gain by pushing into a wall or the floor can be thorough and unrelenting.
Remember, as a kid, pressing the back of your wrist against a wall for a minute or so, then stepping away and watching the stored power lift your arm of its own accord with no additional effort on your part? Static resistance training using the body’s weight generates great power in the muscles. This is the basis of calisthenics.
Try simply pushing your palms together, fingers pointed upward. Press as hard as you can, as long as you can. By pulling your stomach in and curving your head forward, you can accomplish an upper-body stretch. The same stretch can be had by locking the fingers and pulling out with the arms.
Design your own isometric moves by pushing any part of your body against any surface. You can keep this resistance isolated, as pushing your hand into a wall for the muscles of the arm, or you can extend the resistance by pushing the feet into the ground and elongating all the muscles in the body.
Isometric stretches are fundamental and are done in nature by all living creatures, for pushing away from gravity is how we stand. Make a conscious effort to drive into the ground with your legs and feet. Then resist this movement by pulling your stomach back and your buttocks up. This will deliver a body-renewing stretch any time, any place (22).
When the poet Donald Hall asked his friend, sculptor Henry Moore, for the secret to life, Moore-just turned eighty-had a quick pragmatic answer: “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is-it must be something you cannot possibly do!” (24)
Chapter 3: Your Body Is Your Job
William Pullen would agree that exercise elevates the mind. An avid runner, this British psychotherapist realized his mind reached a new plane of tranquility when he was out jogging. Finding that movement had much to teach him, he wondered, “Why learn only from the spoken word or thoughts when the body is so informative?” With a technique he termed dynamic running therapy, he was able to integrate running into his professional practice and his therapeutic method. He now uses DRT to help his patients deal with many forms of difficulty-from stress to depression to the ability to handle crisis (31).
MARKING YOUR DAY
Like the dancer, you have dozens of ways to mark your day-creative, substantial ways of integrating physical activity with whatever else occupies your time. Take the stairs instead of the elevator when you’re shopping. Park in the farthest spot in the parking lot. Walk or bike to work. Practice keeping your abdominals engaged and your shoulders back during meetings (34).
Chapter 4: Make Change Your Habit
How can we become comfortable with change in order to remain one step ahead of what is past?
Here are five suggestions.
1. Take On a Persona
While most of us don’t go to the extreme of creating a persona, it can be useful to think of a before and after. The moment you marry, have a child, divorce. Even if you do not actually take on a new name, give yourself the option, with a milestone, to adopt a generational tag (43).
At the other end of the spectrum, you might try dissolving your identity completely (43).
You cannot reveal or use anything from your past-not what you do, where you went to college, who you know. Your only revelations involve the present or future. Would that work for you or against you? Would the situation be good, bad, or ugly? Your objective is to free yourself to be whatever and whoever you need to be right now (43).
DROP THE PAST BY LETTING GO
Here is a simple exercise that allows you to stand in the middle of your living room and challenge your status quo by changing your physical center.
Stay firmly planted with your weight evenly distributed between both feet.
As ever, be aware of your breathing: in on the work, out on the release.
Take your arms into a high V with an inhale. Then exhale and let the arms flop.
Next, reach your arms out from each shoulder to both sides on the inhale, then exhale, letting the arms cross the front of your body as you drop. Bend your knees with the drop.
Last, lift both arms to the left side and inhale; exhale, dropping your arms across to the right, bending your knees. Then reverse to the right.
Repeat this set of three until your body has memorized what to do next without the brain having to think. Your body makes its own connections.
Now we’ll widen your center by swinging. First, broaden your stance. Then drop your whole torso, bending over your knees in one flop. That’s your new center. Swing your torso to the right and then the left. Having your weight down the middle or off to the side of your center changes what we call your placement, where you carry your weight in your feet and legs.
These are different identities for your body. Be aware that being very grounded conveys a sense of confidence and security that is slightly diminished when you are off center. Think of locating a new center as finding a new you for the day. Shall you be striding forth strongly or-pitched slightly forward or back-just a tad vulnerable? Each placement has its advantages for both your skeleton and your character. You will feel it, others will see it.
Carried to an extreme, being too far off your center is but a way station to a fall. This you can use as a heads-up to go with the flow. While I am not looking to promote falling in your life, if you feel a fall coming, here’s a clue. Try not to fight back (45).
2. Have the Courage to Fail
Imagining yourself in a future makes leaving the past more appealing. Be brave. Hit the deck without pause. Use your momentum down for your recovery. That’s the only way it works.
The same is true of your decision-making process. Hesitation can cause injury.
3. Combating Procrastination to Create Change
For the procrastinator, the only bad choice is no choice (46).
4. Beware Entitlement
Get out of your own way; do not expect what you have been in the past to make your today. The wealth of our past does not entitle us to anything other than-with luck-another shot at tomorrow. Do not believe that if you set the target in the past, envisioned the result, prepared for it, executed on point, and made it happen that the universe is now whispering in your ears, You were right. How’d you get to be so clever (49)?
5. Change by Knowing When It’s Over Learning to recognize the end is a skill that comes with age. When you are still young, being able to recognize that the past is complete is a rare accomplishment (49).
Chapter 5: Kick into High Gear
JUMP FOR JOY
Jumping is one of the greatest movements the body has for building and expressing optimism. We all know this-jacks jump, ropes jump, frogs, horses, kangaroos, everybody jumps-so let’s take off now. But it requires energy, and you are going to have to practice building it like anything else.
Here are three different jumps to get you started. If you are a novice, try them in three stages: practice them first with your fingers, and then use feet still seated. Next get up. No music yet.
Jump One: Sky Jump
Stand with both feet together. Bend your knees. Jump straight up. Reach to the heavens with your arms. Repeat many times-at least three.
Jump Two: Ski Jump
Feet together, jump out to the right; arms go high to your left. Then jump back to center. Reverse. Repeat. Many times-at least four.
Jump Three: March in Place
Feet slightly apart, weight on your right, lift your left knee high. Then jump onto your left foot and bring your right knee high and slap that knee with the opposite hand. And reverse. Repeat many times. Try six.
Jump Four: Traveling
First to the front, weight on your right foot, jump forward to the left foot. From there back to the right foot. Then place both feet together. Reverse. Go for four each leg.
Same pattern, only now jump to the side, right and left. And then to the back. Repeat many times. Try eight. Note, as ever: the body prefers moving forward to going backward.
Now let’s really kick it up a gear and mix in the music.
Here are three samples of irresistible can-do music. Go for stomps and joys-stomps and joys are literal dance forms, like the minuet or gigue-high-energy New Orleans marches full of energy. Try “Boogaboo,” a joy by Jelly Roll Morton, and jump. Or “Stompin’ at the Savoy” by Louis Armstrong. Do what it says.
Try on a jump blues such as Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home.” I defy you to stand still. Jumps are jitterbug, and it is that high velocity and power that got us through World War II.
Then there is always the Ur powerhouse march, the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy.” The chorus in the last movement, combined with Beethoven’s messianic power, confirms the human potential within us all. This piece is guaranteed to stir you to a recognition of the power that music has to inspire us and get us going.
You can, of course, choose whatever music you like. Look for the maximum-octane music your body already has loaded in its muscle memory from past listenings, then get jumping. It’s visceral; the body takes over and the brain takes a rest. Your reward will be the runner’s endorphins. Literally get high: jump (61).
Too often, aging can promote a condition identified by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania as learned helplessness. This shows up when we are conditioned to expect pain or discomfort and we make a peremptory retreat to avoid those nasty outcomes. We see no way to escape, thus become defeated, acting as though we are completely helpless (63).
The way to boost your mood for real, in a sustained way, is to line up your actions and your values. Practice optimism. Torpor creeps in when we approach our daily lives with dread, and dread emerges when we do not support our pledge. Could we have forgotten our pledge? Go back and look at it now. Where are you coming up short? What in your life is not contributing to fulfilling it? What can you plug into to regain your focus? Short on energy? Go for the marches (63).
When you are kvetching, ask yourself, What are you complaining about? What is the change that you would like to see happen? Is it something you can fix? Then fix it. Beware making plans that require coordinated efforts with other people, a protracted time line, elaborate equipment, multiple authorities or experts. I repeat: find what you can do for yourself and then fix it (66).
Fight fight fight-keep chipping at the status quo bias, keep chipping at the funk. Fight fight fight until you can make change-not stasis-the constant. Ultimately your values, faith, beliefs most dearly held are what will support your finale. Visualize. Remember your pledge.
In 1908, when he was just beginning to work as an artist, Matisse wrote, “My destination is always the same but I work out different routes to get there.” In a life filled with many difficulties-cancer, world war, painful divorce-Matisse’s work never abandoned his pledge to find joy in the world around him. “What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity. Devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.” In late photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse holds a living dove in his left hand and, with his right, sketches this bird as an exuberant celebration of life. Ultimately, optimism is a discipline and it was this that steeled Matisse to work through his very last days. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them” (69).
Chapter 6: Hope Less, Plan More
The older you get, the more you need motivation to keep going. Anticipation is a powerful prod. Like all motivators, anticipation works on the pleasure principle-the desire to increase pleasure, decrease pain. Often what we anticipate is a desirable occasion: a reunion, a vacation, a second date, the prospect of sex. As Samuel Johnson said, “Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them” (74).
Your fear of disaster can be translated into action by thinking ahead and addressing the issues you see percolating. But careful: too much cautious anticipation breeds fear, and like anger, fear is dirty fuel (79).
The other pathway to counter Murphy’s Law is by visualizing success. The next time your brain is crowded with troubling thoughts or you’re dreading a future event (a tough meeting, a boring obligation, a painful encounter with relatives), picture a sequence of actions that can make you happy with the outcome. Rehearse them in your mind. Then sleep on it. You’re not relying on hope. You’re engaging in active anticipation, and your odds of a pleasant experience will be improved dramatically (79).
Chapter 8: Bounce Back
Resilience goes by many names. Educators prize it as grit, commanding officers inculcate it as endurance, my weight trainer measures it in terms of recovery time. I prefer the term bounce back, which I share with professional golf (104).
Here are six thoughts to help you acquire the resilience you will need for your inevitable comebacks.
1. Get Past Imposter Syndrome
2. Framing
In a comeback, you must train your mind to find what’s useful in any difficult situation.
3. Get with the Better Program
Now that you see more clearly what happened, find the lesson. Do the work. Look at your mistake, figure out what you did wrong, and fix it for next time. Find changes to make, however small or incremental. Maybe you wake up earlier in the morning, or alter your evening routine, or choose a different friend to call on for sound counsel.
4. Can’t Build a Cathedral? Build a Bridge
Note I said “do it better,” not “do it best.” You will get old, cold, and stale if you only accept a perfect, triumphant comeback. Remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I rank my dances into three buckets of achievement.
First, there are the Ur pieces, the breakthroughs that exhibit a seamless union of intention and result. They don’t happen often-maybe a dozen times in more than 160 attempts-but I treasure them. Next are the two or three dozen works that have aged well and are still performed by other companies. That leaves well over one hundred dances. These are my “bridge” works, the pieces I did while I was groping for a breakthrough or attempting to bounce back. Some of them are clearly transitional pieces, showing minuscule progress from one to the next. Some are placeholders, works to fulfill an obligation or fill out a program. These lesser pieces are as important as the more durable work because they connect me from one effort to the next until the day something wonderful materializes. They keep me going. When I can’t build a cathedral, I build a bridge to get there.
5. Motivation
While you plot your ascent, be sure to look closely at what motivates you. The most easily made error in a bounce back is doing something for the wrong reason (113).
The ultimate purpose of bouncing back is not to repay the world with your scorn. It’s to launch yourself into a better position, a higher perch (114).
6. Gaining Closure
Finally, our efforts gather focus, and we make a leap forward, leaving the error behind. One cycle ends and a new one begins. And it feels earned. We recognize this because our audience and our loved ones tell us it is so (115).
Chapter 9: The Swap
TO BE A MORTAL, SOUND OFF
Immortals feel no pain, make no great physical effort, and never cry out as they move. Dancers-like immortals-generate the illusion that there is no pain in their efforts, only ease.
But mortals make noise. As you practice these simple isometric stretches, sound off! As you exercise, you are allowed to grunt, squeal, cry. Sound off.
First: put your palms together and stretch the arms straight up from the shoulders. Use these long arms to stir the torso first clockwise, then counterclockwise. Express your deeper feelings. Go ahead.
Now reach laterally-right, then left. Feel the obliques to the left of the torso as you reach right, then reverse. How are they today? Massive GRRR.
Finally, arch back and then forward. With each repetition, increase the depth. Arch back, breathe in, then arch forward, breathe out (128).
Aretha Franklin was mentored by the great Mahalia Jackson, known as the “Queen of Gospel.” Jackson had been born into extreme poverty-she grew up in a three-room house shared with thirteen relatives and a dog. Losing her mother by age five made matters worse. Released into the care of an aunt, she was alternately neglected and abused for the rest of her childhood. But Jackson had been blessed with a priceless voice. Not only did she eventually land a recording contract and become the first gospel singer ever to perform at Carnegie Hall, she used her formidable voice as a force for the civil rights movement.
The depth and power of these women’s performances came not just from talent but from living through unimaginable hardship. They sang with what we commonly refer to as “soul.” We might also call it gravitas.
“Gravitas” comes from the Latin, gravis meaning “heavy.” Acquiring this quality means that we become more connected, solid, grounded in wisdom (131).
Gravitas is one of the better swaps to be made as we sense our loss of immortality. We recognize it in people who have a certain dignity in how they comport themselves. They do not flail about rhetorically or physically; they present a clarity and simplicity in their thinking, movement, and speech. There is a seriousness, a thoughtfulness, seated deep within them. These people have come to a place of peace in dealing with consequence (132).
Chapter 10: Build a Second Act
Techies have a word for any short-term inelegant solution. They call it a kludge (it rhymes with “stooge”). The Microsoft Word document on your screen vanishes when it’s time to print. Coders write a few lines of code that fixes the matter and allows you to print but does not solve the underlying bug. The code insert is a kludge.
When we are young, often we rush and are tempted to kludge. We come up with a fix and think, “Eh, it’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now.” If you are not careful, as you get older, those quick fixes can become permanently fixed in your ways.
We rely on kludges endlessly in our daily lives, not only with tech crises. Any on-the-spot improvisation to solve a problem qualifies (140).
Have you ever done something stupid and pretended it worked? Maybe you agreed to work on a project that was obviously dreck but provided a good paycheck. As you work, you convince yourself it’s not so bad, still, it’s soul-sucking. You tell yourself next time you’ll maintain your integrity and turn it down while you wait for something more stimulating, but then the prospect arises and you figure, what’s one more? Before you know it, you’re a little richer perhaps, but also miserable.
Examining your past, find the spots where you did something because you needed to adapt (you took that junk gig because you needed the money), but over time the adaptation outlived its usefulness. If you are feeling a twinge of guilt or stupidity with this practice, give up these emotional tongue-lashings and just make the changes.
Your kludges are all the trade-offs and allowances you make to deal with a deflating circumstance-by ignoring, tolerating, or avoiding the situation. Sometimes we’re aware that we’re settling for less than optimal. Sometimes we believe we don’t have any other choice. Like the tax code filling up with loophole after loophole until it is a senseless mess, many kludges are baked into our primary endeavors-to the point where we hardly see them anymore. We treat them as systemic, the way things are. These kludges shackle and slow us down. And they don’t autocorrect. Over a lifetime, they remain in force until dekludging reveals a better way. It’s possible-even likely-that you’re unaware of all the kludges you’ve relied on in your life.
How do we know we’ve been kludging? A dead giveaway is that when you describe a kludge to friends they squint at you and go, “Huh?” And you respond with something along the lines of “Oh, yeah, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it,” and sort of scurry to move the conversation along.
We can’t make perfect choices all the time. But we usually know deep in our bones when we’re on a wrong path-and that we should correct the error. You can call on your pledge to determine whether a choice is the right one. Does it strengthen your determination to go for a bigger life or undermine it?
Ask yourself where you rely on autopilot in your life, where you have fallen into a rut. If you were describing your setup to a friend, what part would make you wince and say, “I know, I know, it doesn’t make sense, but it works for me.” See if you can locate the duct tape you’ve applied. What would it take to peel it off? What would happen if you did? Would it all fall apart? Is there a solution that would make things stronger in the long run, though it may be difficult in the short term (142)?
ROCKING TO ROLL
Try the following sequence in serenity. Think of nothing but your motion and allow one thing to pass seamlessly into the next as you move from each numbered point to the next.
• Seated on the ground, stretch your legs slightly open out in front of you. Rock gently forward and back evenly. You are keening.
• Lower your forearms between your legs as close to the floor as your back will allow. In this position, rock from side to side.
• Next, lie back flat. Place your right foot on the ground, then lay the left foot on your right knee. Rock right and then left several times. Reverse.
• Now bend your knees and bring your bent legs as close to your chest as possible. We call this the clamshell. In this position, rock to your right side. Then return to your back and open the legs, still bent, from the hip. Close the legs and reverse to the left.
• Coordinate your arms. Join your fingers into a steeple and stretch your arms long on your side as you roll right, keeping your hands over your head. You will find you need a bit more momentum to reach the full side stretch. Circle the arms down in front of your chest as you roll to your back, bending your knees up toward your chest in the clamshell. Reverse.
• Now, as you rock to your right, proceed to your stomach by pulling your forearms under your shoulders and also turning your toes under so the metatarsal is pushing into the floor. In this position, rock back onto your shins and into a kneeling position. Next, return to your stomach and reverse your movement through your side to your back. Repeat the series to your left.
• Any time you wish, you can push to your feet from the kneel and continue to a standing position. From there, return through the kneeling position long to your side and then the clamshell as you lie flat on your back again.
This series might seem a bit “new agey,” and so it is. It is a variant on the classic yoga movement called the Sun Salutation, and it is close to the movement executed by Hua Chi in Chapter Seven 3,000 times a day. However, it is also the extent of the body’s possibilities from stillness to standing. One move evolves organically into the next with no demarcation. Thus rocking becomes rolling and lying flat becomes standing upright. It all circles imperceptibly back from the ending to the beginning, as, assumedly, do we (145).
Chapter 11: Stronger for the Mending
MASTER OF THE MUNDANE
By definition, we overlook the mundane in our lives-the workaday struts that hold us up and the surroundings that provide the backdrop to the drama of our lives. And thank God. Imagine attending to every turn of a faucet, every nick in the floorboard, or every gust of wind. It would be like trying to have a conversation in the middle ring of a circus. Too much. And yet selectively turning the beam of your attention on the quotidian can provoke and inspire.
Even breathing must sometimes be relearned for pain, like stress, confuses our natural rhythms. Remember it is in on the preparation, out on the work. Seated, feel your body prepare an action as you inhale-say, moving your hand toward a cup-and then on the exhale do the work and move the cup. Again.
Or try this.
Go to a museum and find a painting of the most commonplace subject you can imagine-a still life of a pitcher on a table, a valley, a single house. Ask yourself what the artist saw in this subject that made it feel worthy of capturing on canvas. Can inhabiting the mind of the artist help you to see what is glorious about this everyday object?
Now think of a time when your routine was disrupted-perhaps moving house required you to learn again where to find the flour in your pantry or a dry cleaner you could trust. What felt invigorating to relearn and what felt comforting to settle into anew? Can you find one small part of your life to undo and start over fresh? Unpack your silverware drawer and reorganize it as if for the first time. Find a new salutation or closing for your emails. Sit in a different seat at the conference table. What kind of impact does this have on your thinking?
Finally, know that your disasters are themselves but mundane things. Having a great surgeon insert a new hip socket is far less severe than finding yourself alone in the shower with heart failure. Perspective always reduces our misfortunes to more manageable proportions (163).
So often we refer to people who have recovered from disaster as “fighters,” but I think this is the wrong tack. Fighting is acknowledging that you might lose or might not perform to someone else’s standards. I prefer to think of life as a pursuit, constantly chasing, never quite reaching your ideal … and learning to get over it.
We must be clear: attaining perfection as you recover is never the goal because it is, of course, impossible. Deadlines are too short. Bodies won’t cooperate. Colleagues are not fully committed. Perfectionism is the ultimate waste of time because you’re pursuing the nonexistent (164).
Chapter 12: Shut Up and Dance
PLEDGE TO MOVE
• I will set aside a few moments each day when, though the past is slippery, there are no debts owed and I can be free.
• I will look then for my community, for those who carry themselves with awareness, who know their space and, grateful for their time, have asked the questions that go beyond ego.
• Taking hands we shall circle wide, laying our shoulders back and letting the light bathe our faces as we move in a single whirling mass.
• Then we can open our circle to flow concentrically inward until it spirals, revolving from forward to backward and inside to outside.
• There the beginning is the end and the end the beginning.
• And so we dance (179).
Chapter 1: Terms and Conditions
Age is not the enemy. Stagnation is the enemy. Complacency is the enemy. Stasis is the enemy (6).
TAKE UP SPACE
When your muscles stretch rather than constrict, you expand your share of the planet. You take up more space, not less. Dancers know this intuitively. They are taught to move so that every gesture is not only more precise and elegant but bigger. We call it amplitude. It is not enough to state an arabesque; it must be opened in every direction to its full expanse. In order to be seen, the dancer must occupy maximum volume. You can think the same way in your everyday movements.
• When you walk, think of yourself striding, not just taking mingy steps.
• Greeting a friend, reach your arm out, whether to shake a hand or give a hug, with amplitude and full fellow feeling. Be robust.
• During a meeting, spread your belongings out across the table instead of gathering them tidily in your lap. Speak out. Take up mental space as well (8).
Expansiveness is a factor of the following four ingredients:
1. Intention is the umbrella term for our desires, ambitions, and designs for the future. Intention defines our next move, and the next, and the one after that. It’s how we plan and control our life. Without it, we’re either marching in place or losing ground.
2. Honest appraisal of the past is how we deal with the inevitable setbacks, failures, and embarrassments life hands us. Without it, we cannot self-correct or recover. We will be forever mired in regret and guilt, wanting to change what we’ve already done to create a new outcome. Only happens in science fiction.
3. Anger about the past is the killer emotion. It’s noise not signal. Crank it up to high volume and it cancels out the sound of our best intentions.
4. Energy and time are self-explanatory, but as tools they are force multipliers. If you have an abundance of time and energy but waste it by getting stuck in the stale routines of the past, you have no chance of moving forward (9).
Make a contract with your future. Facing new habits requires accountability. Here are the terms and conditions of our agreement:
• Acknowledge you have choices. Make them.
• Your body will be a big part of this deal and you will be ready and able to use it.
• You will be okay to reidentify yourself often along the way.
• Obstacles-you will meet many-go around, over, under, or through. Again often.
• Bounce back-yes, many, many times.
• Up is preferred to down.
• Stamina is your bailiwick. Train. Train more.
• Bend in the wind. Get stronger for the mending.
• Dance is being in motion. You are doing it. Do it more (11).
Chapter 2: The Life We Choose
The best choices are made instinctively. Bit by bit, these choices fill out your character over the course of a lifetime. Your pledge materializes out of observing the choices you make (16).
My pledge is a daily choice. We all see the distinction between a chosen life and an unintentional life when we apply it to other people. It’s why we admire the self-made individual and resent the heir. The former satisfies our sense of equity; the latter offends it (why him, not me?) (17).
Many carry the misconception that we should become more comfortable and that things should become easier as time goes by. This is a belief system designed to undermine you. In life, there will be problems. This is guaranteed. We must learn to use our obstacles, transforming them into advantages (19).
PRACTICE PUSHING BACK
Pushing against a fixed object is the physical equivalent of the emotional resolve we must have as we push against obstacles. Physical resistance is called isometrics. Like a pledge, the isometric grounding we gain by pushing into a wall or the floor can be thorough and unrelenting.
Remember, as a kid, pressing the back of your wrist against a wall for a minute or so, then stepping away and watching the stored power lift your arm of its own accord with no additional effort on your part? Static resistance training using the body’s weight generates great power in the muscles. This is the basis of calisthenics.
Try simply pushing your palms together, fingers pointed upward. Press as hard as you can, as long as you can. By pulling your stomach in and curving your head forward, you can accomplish an upper-body stretch. The same stretch can be had by locking the fingers and pulling out with the arms.
Design your own isometric moves by pushing any part of your body against any surface. You can keep this resistance isolated, as pushing your hand into a wall for the muscles of the arm, or you can extend the resistance by pushing the feet into the ground and elongating all the muscles in the body.
Isometric stretches are fundamental and are done in nature by all living creatures, for pushing away from gravity is how we stand. Make a conscious effort to drive into the ground with your legs and feet. Then resist this movement by pulling your stomach back and your buttocks up. This will deliver a body-renewing stretch any time, any place (22).
When the poet Donald Hall asked his friend, sculptor Henry Moore, for the secret to life, Moore-just turned eighty-had a quick pragmatic answer: “The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is-it must be something you cannot possibly do!” (24)
Chapter 3: Your Body Is Your Job
William Pullen would agree that exercise elevates the mind. An avid runner, this British psychotherapist realized his mind reached a new plane of tranquility when he was out jogging. Finding that movement had much to teach him, he wondered, “Why learn only from the spoken word or thoughts when the body is so informative?” With a technique he termed dynamic running therapy, he was able to integrate running into his professional practice and his therapeutic method. He now uses DRT to help his patients deal with many forms of difficulty-from stress to depression to the ability to handle crisis (31).
MARKING YOUR DAY
Like the dancer, you have dozens of ways to mark your day-creative, substantial ways of integrating physical activity with whatever else occupies your time. Take the stairs instead of the elevator when you’re shopping. Park in the farthest spot in the parking lot. Walk or bike to work. Practice keeping your abdominals engaged and your shoulders back during meetings (34).
Chapter 4: Make Change Your Habit
How can we become comfortable with change in order to remain one step ahead of what is past?
Here are five suggestions.
1. Take On a Persona
While most of us don’t go to the extreme of creating a persona, it can be useful to think of a before and after. The moment you marry, have a child, divorce. Even if you do not actually take on a new name, give yourself the option, with a milestone, to adopt a generational tag (43).
At the other end of the spectrum, you might try dissolving your identity completely (43).
You cannot reveal or use anything from your past-not what you do, where you went to college, who you know. Your only revelations involve the present or future. Would that work for you or against you? Would the situation be good, bad, or ugly? Your objective is to free yourself to be whatever and whoever you need to be right now (43).
DROP THE PAST BY LETTING GO
Here is a simple exercise that allows you to stand in the middle of your living room and challenge your status quo by changing your physical center.
Stay firmly planted with your weight evenly distributed between both feet.
As ever, be aware of your breathing: in on the work, out on the release.
Take your arms into a high V with an inhale. Then exhale and let the arms flop.
Next, reach your arms out from each shoulder to both sides on the inhale, then exhale, letting the arms cross the front of your body as you drop. Bend your knees with the drop.
Last, lift both arms to the left side and inhale; exhale, dropping your arms across to the right, bending your knees. Then reverse to the right.
Repeat this set of three until your body has memorized what to do next without the brain having to think. Your body makes its own connections.
Now we’ll widen your center by swinging. First, broaden your stance. Then drop your whole torso, bending over your knees in one flop. That’s your new center. Swing your torso to the right and then the left. Having your weight down the middle or off to the side of your center changes what we call your placement, where you carry your weight in your feet and legs.
These are different identities for your body. Be aware that being very grounded conveys a sense of confidence and security that is slightly diminished when you are off center. Think of locating a new center as finding a new you for the day. Shall you be striding forth strongly or-pitched slightly forward or back-just a tad vulnerable? Each placement has its advantages for both your skeleton and your character. You will feel it, others will see it.
Carried to an extreme, being too far off your center is but a way station to a fall. This you can use as a heads-up to go with the flow. While I am not looking to promote falling in your life, if you feel a fall coming, here’s a clue. Try not to fight back (45).
2. Have the Courage to Fail
Imagining yourself in a future makes leaving the past more appealing. Be brave. Hit the deck without pause. Use your momentum down for your recovery. That’s the only way it works.
The same is true of your decision-making process. Hesitation can cause injury.
3. Combating Procrastination to Create Change
For the procrastinator, the only bad choice is no choice (46).
4. Beware Entitlement
Get out of your own way; do not expect what you have been in the past to make your today. The wealth of our past does not entitle us to anything other than-with luck-another shot at tomorrow. Do not believe that if you set the target in the past, envisioned the result, prepared for it, executed on point, and made it happen that the universe is now whispering in your ears, You were right. How’d you get to be so clever (49)?
5. Change by Knowing When It’s Over Learning to recognize the end is a skill that comes with age. When you are still young, being able to recognize that the past is complete is a rare accomplishment (49).
Chapter 5: Kick into High Gear
JUMP FOR JOY
Jumping is one of the greatest movements the body has for building and expressing optimism. We all know this-jacks jump, ropes jump, frogs, horses, kangaroos, everybody jumps-so let’s take off now. But it requires energy, and you are going to have to practice building it like anything else.
Here are three different jumps to get you started. If you are a novice, try them in three stages: practice them first with your fingers, and then use feet still seated. Next get up. No music yet.
Jump One: Sky Jump
Stand with both feet together. Bend your knees. Jump straight up. Reach to the heavens with your arms. Repeat many times-at least three.
Jump Two: Ski Jump
Feet together, jump out to the right; arms go high to your left. Then jump back to center. Reverse. Repeat. Many times-at least four.
Jump Three: March in Place
Feet slightly apart, weight on your right, lift your left knee high. Then jump onto your left foot and bring your right knee high and slap that knee with the opposite hand. And reverse. Repeat many times. Try six.
Jump Four: Traveling
First to the front, weight on your right foot, jump forward to the left foot. From there back to the right foot. Then place both feet together. Reverse. Go for four each leg.
Same pattern, only now jump to the side, right and left. And then to the back. Repeat many times. Try eight. Note, as ever: the body prefers moving forward to going backward.
Now let’s really kick it up a gear and mix in the music.
Here are three samples of irresistible can-do music. Go for stomps and joys-stomps and joys are literal dance forms, like the minuet or gigue-high-energy New Orleans marches full of energy. Try “Boogaboo,” a joy by Jelly Roll Morton, and jump. Or “Stompin’ at the Savoy” by Louis Armstrong. Do what it says.
Try on a jump blues such as Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home.” I defy you to stand still. Jumps are jitterbug, and it is that high velocity and power that got us through World War II.
Then there is always the Ur powerhouse march, the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “Ode to Joy.” The chorus in the last movement, combined with Beethoven’s messianic power, confirms the human potential within us all. This piece is guaranteed to stir you to a recognition of the power that music has to inspire us and get us going.
You can, of course, choose whatever music you like. Look for the maximum-octane music your body already has loaded in its muscle memory from past listenings, then get jumping. It’s visceral; the body takes over and the brain takes a rest. Your reward will be the runner’s endorphins. Literally get high: jump (61).
Too often, aging can promote a condition identified by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania as learned helplessness. This shows up when we are conditioned to expect pain or discomfort and we make a peremptory retreat to avoid those nasty outcomes. We see no way to escape, thus become defeated, acting as though we are completely helpless (63).
The way to boost your mood for real, in a sustained way, is to line up your actions and your values. Practice optimism. Torpor creeps in when we approach our daily lives with dread, and dread emerges when we do not support our pledge. Could we have forgotten our pledge? Go back and look at it now. Where are you coming up short? What in your life is not contributing to fulfilling it? What can you plug into to regain your focus? Short on energy? Go for the marches (63).
When you are kvetching, ask yourself, What are you complaining about? What is the change that you would like to see happen? Is it something you can fix? Then fix it. Beware making plans that require coordinated efforts with other people, a protracted time line, elaborate equipment, multiple authorities or experts. I repeat: find what you can do for yourself and then fix it (66).
Fight fight fight-keep chipping at the status quo bias, keep chipping at the funk. Fight fight fight until you can make change-not stasis-the constant. Ultimately your values, faith, beliefs most dearly held are what will support your finale. Visualize. Remember your pledge.
In 1908, when he was just beginning to work as an artist, Matisse wrote, “My destination is always the same but I work out different routes to get there.” In a life filled with many difficulties-cancer, world war, painful divorce-Matisse’s work never abandoned his pledge to find joy in the world around him. “What I dream of is an art of balance, purity and serenity. Devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter.” In late photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Matisse holds a living dove in his left hand and, with his right, sketches this bird as an exuberant celebration of life. Ultimately, optimism is a discipline and it was this that steeled Matisse to work through his very last days. “There are always flowers for those who want to see them” (69).
Chapter 6: Hope Less, Plan More
The older you get, the more you need motivation to keep going. Anticipation is a powerful prod. Like all motivators, anticipation works on the pleasure principle-the desire to increase pleasure, decrease pain. Often what we anticipate is a desirable occasion: a reunion, a vacation, a second date, the prospect of sex. As Samuel Johnson said, “Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them” (74).
Your fear of disaster can be translated into action by thinking ahead and addressing the issues you see percolating. But careful: too much cautious anticipation breeds fear, and like anger, fear is dirty fuel (79).
The other pathway to counter Murphy’s Law is by visualizing success. The next time your brain is crowded with troubling thoughts or you’re dreading a future event (a tough meeting, a boring obligation, a painful encounter with relatives), picture a sequence of actions that can make you happy with the outcome. Rehearse them in your mind. Then sleep on it. You’re not relying on hope. You’re engaging in active anticipation, and your odds of a pleasant experience will be improved dramatically (79).
Chapter 8: Bounce Back
Resilience goes by many names. Educators prize it as grit, commanding officers inculcate it as endurance, my weight trainer measures it in terms of recovery time. I prefer the term bounce back, which I share with professional golf (104).
Here are six thoughts to help you acquire the resilience you will need for your inevitable comebacks.
1. Get Past Imposter Syndrome
2. Framing
In a comeback, you must train your mind to find what’s useful in any difficult situation.
3. Get with the Better Program
Now that you see more clearly what happened, find the lesson. Do the work. Look at your mistake, figure out what you did wrong, and fix it for next time. Find changes to make, however small or incremental. Maybe you wake up earlier in the morning, or alter your evening routine, or choose a different friend to call on for sound counsel.
4. Can’t Build a Cathedral? Build a Bridge
Note I said “do it better,” not “do it best.” You will get old, cold, and stale if you only accept a perfect, triumphant comeback. Remember, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I rank my dances into three buckets of achievement.
First, there are the Ur pieces, the breakthroughs that exhibit a seamless union of intention and result. They don’t happen often-maybe a dozen times in more than 160 attempts-but I treasure them. Next are the two or three dozen works that have aged well and are still performed by other companies. That leaves well over one hundred dances. These are my “bridge” works, the pieces I did while I was groping for a breakthrough or attempting to bounce back. Some of them are clearly transitional pieces, showing minuscule progress from one to the next. Some are placeholders, works to fulfill an obligation or fill out a program. These lesser pieces are as important as the more durable work because they connect me from one effort to the next until the day something wonderful materializes. They keep me going. When I can’t build a cathedral, I build a bridge to get there.
5. Motivation
While you plot your ascent, be sure to look closely at what motivates you. The most easily made error in a bounce back is doing something for the wrong reason (113).
The ultimate purpose of bouncing back is not to repay the world with your scorn. It’s to launch yourself into a better position, a higher perch (114).
6. Gaining Closure
Finally, our efforts gather focus, and we make a leap forward, leaving the error behind. One cycle ends and a new one begins. And it feels earned. We recognize this because our audience and our loved ones tell us it is so (115).
Chapter 9: The Swap
TO BE A MORTAL, SOUND OFF
Immortals feel no pain, make no great physical effort, and never cry out as they move. Dancers-like immortals-generate the illusion that there is no pain in their efforts, only ease.
But mortals make noise. As you practice these simple isometric stretches, sound off! As you exercise, you are allowed to grunt, squeal, cry. Sound off.
First: put your palms together and stretch the arms straight up from the shoulders. Use these long arms to stir the torso first clockwise, then counterclockwise. Express your deeper feelings. Go ahead.
Now reach laterally-right, then left. Feel the obliques to the left of the torso as you reach right, then reverse. How are they today? Massive GRRR.
Finally, arch back and then forward. With each repetition, increase the depth. Arch back, breathe in, then arch forward, breathe out (128).
Aretha Franklin was mentored by the great Mahalia Jackson, known as the “Queen of Gospel.” Jackson had been born into extreme poverty-she grew up in a three-room house shared with thirteen relatives and a dog. Losing her mother by age five made matters worse. Released into the care of an aunt, she was alternately neglected and abused for the rest of her childhood. But Jackson had been blessed with a priceless voice. Not only did she eventually land a recording contract and become the first gospel singer ever to perform at Carnegie Hall, she used her formidable voice as a force for the civil rights movement.
The depth and power of these women’s performances came not just from talent but from living through unimaginable hardship. They sang with what we commonly refer to as “soul.” We might also call it gravitas.
“Gravitas” comes from the Latin, gravis meaning “heavy.” Acquiring this quality means that we become more connected, solid, grounded in wisdom (131).
Gravitas is one of the better swaps to be made as we sense our loss of immortality. We recognize it in people who have a certain dignity in how they comport themselves. They do not flail about rhetorically or physically; they present a clarity and simplicity in their thinking, movement, and speech. There is a seriousness, a thoughtfulness, seated deep within them. These people have come to a place of peace in dealing with consequence (132).
Chapter 10: Build a Second Act
Techies have a word for any short-term inelegant solution. They call it a kludge (it rhymes with “stooge”). The Microsoft Word document on your screen vanishes when it’s time to print. Coders write a few lines of code that fixes the matter and allows you to print but does not solve the underlying bug. The code insert is a kludge.
When we are young, often we rush and are tempted to kludge. We come up with a fix and think, “Eh, it’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now.” If you are not careful, as you get older, those quick fixes can become permanently fixed in your ways.
We rely on kludges endlessly in our daily lives, not only with tech crises. Any on-the-spot improvisation to solve a problem qualifies (140).
Have you ever done something stupid and pretended it worked? Maybe you agreed to work on a project that was obviously dreck but provided a good paycheck. As you work, you convince yourself it’s not so bad, still, it’s soul-sucking. You tell yourself next time you’ll maintain your integrity and turn it down while you wait for something more stimulating, but then the prospect arises and you figure, what’s one more? Before you know it, you’re a little richer perhaps, but also miserable.
Examining your past, find the spots where you did something because you needed to adapt (you took that junk gig because you needed the money), but over time the adaptation outlived its usefulness. If you are feeling a twinge of guilt or stupidity with this practice, give up these emotional tongue-lashings and just make the changes.
Your kludges are all the trade-offs and allowances you make to deal with a deflating circumstance-by ignoring, tolerating, or avoiding the situation. Sometimes we’re aware that we’re settling for less than optimal. Sometimes we believe we don’t have any other choice. Like the tax code filling up with loophole after loophole until it is a senseless mess, many kludges are baked into our primary endeavors-to the point where we hardly see them anymore. We treat them as systemic, the way things are. These kludges shackle and slow us down. And they don’t autocorrect. Over a lifetime, they remain in force until dekludging reveals a better way. It’s possible-even likely-that you’re unaware of all the kludges you’ve relied on in your life.
How do we know we’ve been kludging? A dead giveaway is that when you describe a kludge to friends they squint at you and go, “Huh?” And you respond with something along the lines of “Oh, yeah, well, that’s the way we’ve always done it,” and sort of scurry to move the conversation along.
We can’t make perfect choices all the time. But we usually know deep in our bones when we’re on a wrong path-and that we should correct the error. You can call on your pledge to determine whether a choice is the right one. Does it strengthen your determination to go for a bigger life or undermine it?
Ask yourself where you rely on autopilot in your life, where you have fallen into a rut. If you were describing your setup to a friend, what part would make you wince and say, “I know, I know, it doesn’t make sense, but it works for me.” See if you can locate the duct tape you’ve applied. What would it take to peel it off? What would happen if you did? Would it all fall apart? Is there a solution that would make things stronger in the long run, though it may be difficult in the short term (142)?
ROCKING TO ROLL
Try the following sequence in serenity. Think of nothing but your motion and allow one thing to pass seamlessly into the next as you move from each numbered point to the next.
• Seated on the ground, stretch your legs slightly open out in front of you. Rock gently forward and back evenly. You are keening.
• Lower your forearms between your legs as close to the floor as your back will allow. In this position, rock from side to side.
• Next, lie back flat. Place your right foot on the ground, then lay the left foot on your right knee. Rock right and then left several times. Reverse.
• Now bend your knees and bring your bent legs as close to your chest as possible. We call this the clamshell. In this position, rock to your right side. Then return to your back and open the legs, still bent, from the hip. Close the legs and reverse to the left.
• Coordinate your arms. Join your fingers into a steeple and stretch your arms long on your side as you roll right, keeping your hands over your head. You will find you need a bit more momentum to reach the full side stretch. Circle the arms down in front of your chest as you roll to your back, bending your knees up toward your chest in the clamshell. Reverse.
• Now, as you rock to your right, proceed to your stomach by pulling your forearms under your shoulders and also turning your toes under so the metatarsal is pushing into the floor. In this position, rock back onto your shins and into a kneeling position. Next, return to your stomach and reverse your movement through your side to your back. Repeat the series to your left.
• Any time you wish, you can push to your feet from the kneel and continue to a standing position. From there, return through the kneeling position long to your side and then the clamshell as you lie flat on your back again.
This series might seem a bit “new agey,” and so it is. It is a variant on the classic yoga movement called the Sun Salutation, and it is close to the movement executed by Hua Chi in Chapter Seven 3,000 times a day. However, it is also the extent of the body’s possibilities from stillness to standing. One move evolves organically into the next with no demarcation. Thus rocking becomes rolling and lying flat becomes standing upright. It all circles imperceptibly back from the ending to the beginning, as, assumedly, do we (145).
Chapter 11: Stronger for the Mending
MASTER OF THE MUNDANE
By definition, we overlook the mundane in our lives-the workaday struts that hold us up and the surroundings that provide the backdrop to the drama of our lives. And thank God. Imagine attending to every turn of a faucet, every nick in the floorboard, or every gust of wind. It would be like trying to have a conversation in the middle ring of a circus. Too much. And yet selectively turning the beam of your attention on the quotidian can provoke and inspire.
Even breathing must sometimes be relearned for pain, like stress, confuses our natural rhythms. Remember it is in on the preparation, out on the work. Seated, feel your body prepare an action as you inhale-say, moving your hand toward a cup-and then on the exhale do the work and move the cup. Again.
Or try this.
Go to a museum and find a painting of the most commonplace subject you can imagine-a still life of a pitcher on a table, a valley, a single house. Ask yourself what the artist saw in this subject that made it feel worthy of capturing on canvas. Can inhabiting the mind of the artist help you to see what is glorious about this everyday object?
Now think of a time when your routine was disrupted-perhaps moving house required you to learn again where to find the flour in your pantry or a dry cleaner you could trust. What felt invigorating to relearn and what felt comforting to settle into anew? Can you find one small part of your life to undo and start over fresh? Unpack your silverware drawer and reorganize it as if for the first time. Find a new salutation or closing for your emails. Sit in a different seat at the conference table. What kind of impact does this have on your thinking?
Finally, know that your disasters are themselves but mundane things. Having a great surgeon insert a new hip socket is far less severe than finding yourself alone in the shower with heart failure. Perspective always reduces our misfortunes to more manageable proportions (163).
So often we refer to people who have recovered from disaster as “fighters,” but I think this is the wrong tack. Fighting is acknowledging that you might lose or might not perform to someone else’s standards. I prefer to think of life as a pursuit, constantly chasing, never quite reaching your ideal … and learning to get over it.
We must be clear: attaining perfection as you recover is never the goal because it is, of course, impossible. Deadlines are too short. Bodies won’t cooperate. Colleagues are not fully committed. Perfectionism is the ultimate waste of time because you’re pursuing the nonexistent (164).
Chapter 12: Shut Up and Dance
PLEDGE TO MOVE
• I will set aside a few moments each day when, though the past is slippery, there are no debts owed and I can be free.
• I will look then for my community, for those who carry themselves with awareness, who know their space and, grateful for their time, have asked the questions that go beyond ego.
• Taking hands we shall circle wide, laying our shoulders back and letting the light bathe our faces as we move in a single whirling mass.
• Then we can open our circle to flow concentrically inward until it spirals, revolving from forward to backward and inside to outside.
• There the beginning is the end and the end the beginning.
• And so we dance (179).