I don't dance. I mean, I can dance, when I want to, but it's not really a part of my daily routine. When a friend of mine recommended that I read Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, I was skeptical, but I trust my friend, so I bought the book and halfheartedly started leafing through it.
And then I stopped, went back to the beginning, and began to seriously study it. Because it's awesome.
I'm a writer, not a dancer, but everything she talks about with regard to creativity is bang on for me and my creative process. Today I'm reading along and she has this exercise where she asks the reader to "make someone else lucky". I mean, what is luck, to you? When something happens that you weren't expecting, or that you were, but it comes in an unexpected way?
So try this on. I'd like to be lucky, say, by having a stranger pay for my gas. That would be very lucky, wouldn't it? I've pumped a lot of gas and not had that happen. I would consider such a thing a great stroke of luck. And yet, I have the opportunity EVERY DAY to make someone else lucky all by myself.
Just by being aware of other people, and by spreading the love, I can hand out luck all day long.
And what's better than that? Yes, I'd like to "get lucky"--in all the senses of that term--but I don't, by definition, have complete control over that. If I'd like to be lucky, though, there are a couple things I can do.
- Hand out luck to others. Generosity inspires generosity. Kindness begets kindness. It's a lot easier to get lucky in a world where everyone is handing out luck. Some of it is bound to land on me.
- Keep my head up. Luck comes by a lot more often than I think, and sometimes I'm not ready for it. Opportunities decay quickly. They need attention.
I remember this one time I was playing basketball, and we were losing by a couple with just seconds to play. I had the ball, crossed over the guard at the 3-point line, shrugged off the other guard, and floated the ball up over the outstretched hands of the center. It was a perfect shot. I'd practiced it thousands of times, and I was ready when the chance came.
I missed.
The ball clanged hard off the iron. I tumbled to the floor, knowing the chance was gone, and lay there. The ref just stared at me in horror as the ball--which had come loose and was rattling around on the floor--bounced on my back. I was lying on the end line, and the ball was now out of bounds. We lost the game.
When the ball smacked off the rim, if I'd kept my head up, another chance was right there for me, but I missed it, because I thought I had already failed. That was a painful way to learn that lesson. I've tried to keep that in mind ever since.
One of the smartest people I know said, "the luckiest people I know are the ones that are the hardest to discourage." It makes sense.
So go out and make someone lucky today. Steemit is one of my favorite places to hang out just because essentially that's all I do here--hand out luck. Yeah, it's only .20 at a time, but hey, it's something. It's what I have. And I find that on Steemit, I get lucky all the time.
~Cristof
