Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life

by Twyla Tharp

Don’t go searching for things that confirm or fuel your sense of indignation. It will become a default mind-set promoting more of the same.

Attempting to freeze your life in time at any point is totally destructive to the prospect of a life lived well and fully.

This is not a worthy goal.

the forces that create inertia in our lives are difficult to resist for they...

Behavioral scientists refer to this as status quo bias. We succumb to this bias with habits large and small, from an inability to give up our three cups of coffee a day to staying with a partner long after it’s clear that the relationship is over.

there is another habit I’d like to undo.

We let our bodies constrict, inviting the world around us to close in.

The mind will follow the body’s contraction. On this path, our concerns narrow down to the most elemental functions: what to eat, getting enough sleep, keeping an appointment. Contraction is not inevitable. You can resist and reverse.

to move is the provenance of all living human beings.

With the time you’ve got, choose to make your life bigger.

Opt for expression over observation, action instead of passivity, risk over safety, the unknown over the familiar. Be deliberate, act with intention. Chase the sublime and the absurd. Make each day one where you emerge, unlock, excite, and discov...

Why not evaluate your accomplishments as beginnings rather than endings.

Amass the experiences and grow into the person you were meant to be.

Pablo Casals was asked late in life, “Why practice at age ninety-one?” “Because I am making progress” was his answer. Right!

Practice growth. This is one habit I encourage you to cultivate.

Moving out is moving on, time and space working in tandem. Expansiveness

Intention

Honest appraisal of the past

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 don...

Anger about the past

Energy and time are self-explanatory, but as tools they are force multipliers.

We make a choice. We invest our time and energy. We reap the reward or take the hit. Whatever the result, we are constantly working on what comes next. We earn our life.

Make a contract with your future.

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 th...

Bounce back—yes, many, m...

Up is preferred to down.

Stamina is your bailiwick. Train. Train more.

Bend in th...

Get stronger for the...

Dance is being in motion. You are doing i...

abandon our infatuation with the status quo and jettison our aversion to every form of risk, acknowledge we are getting older; pledge to get over it and get moving.

That’s the deal.

Our pledges can help free us from the indecision that holds us hostage, a prisoner of inaction.

To me, a pledge is revealed over time, like a Polaroid picture coming into focus. The moments when you make choices—move across country for a job or stay in your hometown, have another child or don’t, phone a friend in need or give them space—come together in a constellation that maps what matters to you most.

have probably grappled with a barrage of choices in one way or another over the years.

There is no surefire way to make a correct choice, but I offer this: the only choice that is certain to be wrong is the one you don’t make.

Your bigger, freer, better life starts with a choice to act.

While it is true that some choices are best made with ...

other choices, in situations equally intense, are made with grea...

The inevitable effect of time and trauma will dull these quick, gut-level choices.

The best choices are made instinctively. Bit by bit, these choices fill out your character over the course of a lifetime.

a pledge is not a goal.

If you can mark it as “done,” it’s a goal.

Your pledge becomes a distillation of your life’s work in action. You don’t want to get to a point where you feel you are finished. Remember, when we are frozen, we are dead.

Know what you want to do and do it.

How well did I marry what I wanted to do and what I actually did? If I’m satisfied with the answer, I’ve chosen the day.

The life we choose pays ...