Keep It Moving: Lessons for the Rest of Your Life

by Twyla Tharp

Some lack the confiden...

Some fear f...

Some need more data and more planning before they...

Some have too many di...

It’s all th...

We tend to think of procrastination exclusively as a short-run issue and fail to detect the damage it do...

we all want financial security and know that saving money for our later years is the best way to achieve it. But short-term needs appear—a vacation, a better car, a fa...

This is how long-term goals are overwhelmed by short-te...

get past the distraction of immediate...

Studies show that the procrastinator’s brain is very good at feeling future rewards without doing the work.

Jane the Procrastinator can become Jane the Second without passing the trial because she already feels the reward to come without experiencing the ordeal.

Facing any onerous or unappealing task

ask yourself: How little can I tolerate right now?

what’s the least I can do to ...

We don’t file our tax return on time because gathering the scattered stubs and receipts is annoying.

What I’m recommending is thinking small—very small—so you can ignore the real or imagined monumentality of what you’re facing.

what’s the bare minimum you can do on day one?

For the procrastinator, the only bad choice is no choice.

Accumulated successes, whether baby steps or big leaps forward, can create a creeping entitlement where we start to believe the world owes us.

Creeping entitlement is why we get angry at friends who don’t respond to our calls or emails immediately (our time is precious; we should not be kept waiting).

Entitlement is way more disabling than empowering.

Eventually, entitlement stops us in our tracks.

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—a...

Creeping entitlement is not an issue when I’m confined to the relatively meager resources of the dance world.

It’s very easy to go from being grateful that an assistant asks if you’d like some coffee to demanding a freshly ground cup as your birthright. You don’t even notice that you’re changing. That’s how creepy entitlement can be.

I wage my war on entitlement on two fronts.

I don’t exempt myself from the rules that I expect everyone else to follow

strategies that consistently snap me back to now, reminding me that from moment to moment, all I’m entitled to is the desire to do my best.

broke the four-minute mile with a time of 3:59:4. Spectacular. He was recognized around the world for the achievement. But practically the next day, following just two more races, he reported back to work at St. Mary’s. Showing a thorough grasp of the need to move forward with his life, as well as a good deal of perspective and humility,

Making an adjustment of this magnitude from one area of accomplishment to another requires both courage and confidence.

“I’d rather be remembered for my work in neurology than my running.

imagine the yin/yang symbol and then trace it with your finger. You will find that if you start clockwise on the circle, you will finish counterclockwise. Sometimes a path that makes sense in hindsight could never be comprehended at its start.

Thus we are neither repudiating nor repeating the past but, rather, respecting it as we move on. Each day prepares your next.

Visiting the past has its place in a life well lived, but a visit to the past needs to be exactly that—a visit.

Poignsnt and important counsel

Let’s learn to leave it there.

Irving and Marilyn are trained to deal with the past.

For scholars, this is a daily practice.

comfort zone is the present: they hike, ski, and fully exist in t...

I noticed their vigorous disregard for where they planted their feet in the muddy ground, heedless of the possibility of a sprained ankle or knee. Coping with the consequences of the future unknown is part of their adventure.

still find novelty in one another’s company as they awake every morning at the same time and poke each other, asking, “Are you still alive?”

A little poke is a great beginning for large discoveries.

Whatever is going on when I wake up in the morning, I engage in an all-over body assessment.

Optimism is a choice, and it’s yours to make. You want a victory-lap kind of outcome to your day, you gotta work for it.

I get to my stereo and, as quickly as possible, cut to the chase.

nothing promotes the victory rush like certain pieces of music.

my all-time favorite go-to piece of music when I feel shitty and that is just too bad. John Philip Sousa, college fight songs, national anthems. Fight...

Music blasting, I direct myself to my home studio and get moving.

there simply cannot be sustained forward movement in your life without the energy that optimism brings.

jacks jump, ropes jump, frogs, horses, kangaroos, everybody jumps—so