We all want a little luck in our lives, right?
Check that. We want buckets of the stuff. We want luck stalking us and spamming us and kneeling at our feet.
But what is luck, really?
Some would have you believe that luck is a mythical beast, and that those who say they are lucky are just lying to make the rest of us feel better.
Some would persuade you that luck is kind of a meandering and vaguely dipsy do-good fairy, whose Wand of Fortune makes a random appearance every now and again (but is never to be relied upon for a star turn at children’s parties.)
But most of us would agree that luck is out there, somewhere. We just wish there was a way to summon it to us (heeeeeere lucky lucky lucky! Come ‘ere luck! Here boy!) and make it stay (down luck, down! gooood boy.) Ok, enough with the doggy talk already.
But yesterday, I was standing at the kitchen sink, thinking about the word luck while I stared at my boxes (did you know that moving house is supposed to be more traumatic than divorce? And I have moved so many times that I should be in permanent therapy really. Seriously. I can’t even tell you how many times I have moved because then you may think I’m a little strange or something. AND I have a nine week old baby and 2 other kids. Feel free to send me chocolate. Or red wine.)
Anyway, I was rolling the word “luck” around in my head and noting the ways that we use it in our conversation. Because very often the way we use a word gives us a powerful insight into the nature of the word itself.
So, when we use the word luck, we say things like “We’re in luck” or “I’m feeling lucky” or “Oh, that was lucky”. An object can be a lucky charm. Or we can look forward to “My Lucky Day”.
And it occurred to me that we seem to have an understanding that luck is truly a state of being. We are in it or feeling it or being it.
It is not something that “happens” to us, any more than happiness just “happens” to us, or fear just “happens” to us.
It is a state of mind, a feeling that we can choose to feel.
If my hubby buys me flowers for example, this makes me ridiculously happy (mainly because this just isn’t something he normally does.)
But he doesn’t have to buy me flowers for me to feel happy. In fact, he doesn’t have to do anything at all for me to feel happy. He could even buy me flowers and I could feel miserable because he never buys me flowers and the one time that he does buy me flowers only makes the times that he doesn’t really stand out.
So if we can choose to feel happy despite our circumstances, then equally we can choose to feel lucky. To be in luck, in the state of luck. So why wait for something to happen in order to justify the feeling? That’s like saying “I’ll just wait for something to make me happy first before I feel it.”
(And there are many, many people who do this all the time. Ironically, they are often the same people who are total ninjas at feeling fear without any justification at all.)
So why do you need evidence to appear before you can feel lucky? Perhaps feeling lucky first is the best way to get more of it?
Do you have a back up plan lurking somewhere?
Is it propping you up?
Is it standing by your side, stroking your brow?
You can almost hear it whispering a creeping sleepiness that causes your ambition to get all snoozy and want to crawl back to bed and snuggle under the blankets.
You get comfortable. You stretch and yawn and pat your inflatable life raft reassuringly.
Yup, still full of air.
And so you drift off to sleep.
But listen!
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss…….
How do you expect to face the giant swells ahead of you in a life raft with a slow leak?
Your back up plan isn’t designed to hold your purpose.
It can’t possibly contain those wriggly, restless passions that keep you awake at night, snoring in your ear, stealing away that comfy blanket and squatting beligerently on your chest.
Your purpose needs ballast. Something weighty with a solid platform. How do you expect to surf tall and straight on a flaccid fall back that has had most of the air sucked out of it?
Your purpose wants room to accommodate others, those you can serve, inspire and encourage. How could you ever hope to shift them, move them, transport them, when your safe little boat has barely enough room in it for you?
No. You want to cross an ocean? You need a ship!
Never rely on your back up plan to house the monster that is the thing that you really want to do.
Because even if you hit that iceberg and go down in a watery blaze of glory, that little life boat will only get you so far. It may prevent you from freezing over in despair. It might rescue you from suffocating from failure.
But it sure as hell isn’t going to be enough to support the journey you really want to take. That you must make.
Are you clinging to your back up plan? Or are you focused on launching, maintaining, repairing and clinging deliriously to your ship?
Ah the wonders of the interwebs…
Two days ago I chatted for almost three hours (!!) with my new Twitter friend and future musical muskateer @HelenKim. (We have some very exciting plans in store for our readers over the coming months…) Being a former whizz with a cello, Helen and I have a lot in common – and one thing we share is a passion for bringing the music we love to the people who just don’t know they love it yet. (Watch this TED talk by Benjamin Zander to see how an audience can be transformed into lovers of classical music in barely 15 minutes…)
And today Helen “twintroduced” me to Greg Sandow (@gsandow), a music critic, educator and writer whose blog I have been digging into this morning.
This particular passage struck me as being worthy of sharing;
Ecosystem. The classical music world, I think, sometimes forgets that it needs one. Instead, we substitute a kind of entitlement. “This is our art. It has to exist.” When funding is plentiful, it might be safe to think that way. But today?
Added later: What I’m saying here isn’t simply about funding, management, or the cultural position of classical music in our wider world. It’s a human thing. If you’ve written a modernist piece — or any piece; or if you run an orchestra — don’t you want to look out at your audience and see people you care about, people whose thoughts and feelings and needs and loves and hates are a central part of everything you do?
And if not, why do you want to work — and, maybe, live — in such cold artistic isolation?
Isn’t this just a lesson in basic marketing? If you want to create a product, you can do one of two things – continue reading…
Have you ever had one of those conversations with someone when you knew they were not really listening to a word you were saying? I bet you could almost hear them planning what to say next while you were speaking – their eyes taking on a dull glaze as they wait for a pause.
It’s really boring after a while, when you know you’re being heard…just not being listened to.
In the real world, we tend to do what we can to avoid hanging out with these kinds of people. They tend to suck away our energy. Make us feel unimportant. Undervalued and unappreciated.
But – when someone really listens! continue reading…
I know you do it.
When you’re home on your own. When you’re certain you won’t be overheard or interrupted by someone walking in on you.
When you strip off all your clothes, draw the curtain (or close the glass door) and stand wet and naked in the steam…
It doesn’t take long before the urge strikes. And I should know, I’m guilty of indulging myself all the time. continue reading…
Have you ever watched “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” (If you haven’t seen it for a while, check out this episode featuring Robin Williams.) It’s a show that combines stand-up comedy with improvisation (and I do love it, yes I do.)
As a performer, I was trained to practice improvisation as the ultimate way of being creatively in the moment. When an improviser is on form and “in the flow”, the result is dynamic, adventurous, rebellious and unpredictable – but this entertaining craziness all hangs very carefully on a stable craft that makes us – as the audience – feel completely safe, despite the chaos on the surface. This is why “making it up as you go along” is actually a misleading description, because it’s not about marching in blind and simply winging it…
It’s about knowing the rules that work and then playing spontaneously within them.
Taking risks is so much easier when you know there is a safety net beneath you. It gives you the permission to have more fun being “in the moment”, and the courage to dance madly on the tightrope.
So if you want to be more playful and free, really engaged and wildly creative, why not try using the “psychology of improvisation” to help you? Here are 10 improv principles that will help to get you started: continue reading…
Compromises. You make them all the time – humble little decisions to acquiesce that keep the wheels of life oiled and generous.
You may make a simple compromise over where to go for a meal, or what kind of car you buy or who gets to do the dishes. You may argue a compromise with yourself, but more often than not it involves a certain amount of “haggle” with another person.
I like to think of it as sitting on a see-saw, and you’re just taking it in turns to go up and down. It’s probably more fun being up than down, but you can’t have one without the other. (And it’s no fun sitting on a see-saw all by yourself, is it?)
Whenever you choose to compromise, you generally make a choice to give something up in order to get something of consolation back – usually something you perceive to be roughly of equal value. You’re happy to take the highs with the lows because you know that the ride will probably even out in the end.
But at what point does a compromise become a sacrifice?
If a “compromise” is an evenly matched ride on a see-saw between two people of roughly equal weight, then a “sacrifice” is more like a game of tug o’ war, where one side is doing all the pulling, and the other side – you – gets dragged across the floor, through the mud, over the line with nothing to show for it but rope burn and a face full of dirt.
Whether you get up, spit out the mud and walk away red-handed but joyful depends on what you are making a sacrifice for. continue reading…
We’ve all passed a busker standing in the street, trying to be heard above the noise.
In London, you usually catch them playing in the tiled tunnels of the Underground. Tiles give a great acoustic, especially if you are a little rough around the edges, which let’s face it, most buskers are.
No doubt you’ve passed one who has caught your ear with something a little more tuneful than most. Something a little special about them that made you toss a coin or two in their direction.
Perhaps you even stopped to listen at a comfortable distance.
But – as far as gaining an audience goes – the Underground is not the kind of place where people tend to linger. After all, there are trains to miss, carriages to squish into, and fat rats to spy scurrying underneath the rails. (At least, this is what happens in London.)
But what if the busker was really, really good? I mean, seriously talented. Would a crowd begin to gather, travellers clinging to the tiles to listen to the sheer gorgeousness being played by the unlikely maestro?
Surely, with such talent, the trains could wait? continue reading…
There is so much being said in the blogsphere about the importance of being authentic. “You must be truly you”. Why?
Because in a world where connections are made in seconds between complete strangers, there is only one shaky platform upon which this immediate gift of trust is built; the belief that the person behind the blog is being honest and transparent and themselves.
But this is a huge leap of faith, surely?
Especially when a paedophile can pretend to be an 8 year old girl in a chatroom. Where the dull guy can re-invent himself on Twitter as Mr.Excitement and boast about his 10,000 dubiously acquired “friends”.
And yet… as bloggers, we still repeat the “authentic” mantra. As if we had a choice anyway – most one-man-show bloggers either write for others or they write about their cat. If you are relying on yourself for all of your material, then you won’t get very far pretending you are something you’re not.
Better to be the weirdest most authentic fish in a huge pond, right? continue reading…
I love to start the week with something to meditate on – something that stirs up that little fire inside you and inspires a magnetic week, when you sense all the things you are wanting are coming that tiny bit closer to you…
So here on The Tiny Soprano, you will find Monday is now a day for motivation, for micromovements, meditation, for manifesting, for magic.
Today I’ve chosen a poem by Rumi. It symbolises the very essence of what this site and The Tiny Way is all about – from little things, big things grow. continue reading…
