When you're in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it.
Interpretation
In difficult times, trust in your capacity to overcome challenges while questioning other aspects of your situation.
This quote by Twyla Tharp emphasizes the importance of self-belief during challenging periods when one feels stuck or in a 'rut'. It suggests that while it's essential to critically assess one's circumstances and options, the one thing you should not doubt is your own ability to rise above the difficulties and find a way forward.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience and personal growth.
Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
No one is born with skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.
I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
Without passion, all the skill in the world won't lift you above craft.
I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.
I always feel like it's two key ingredients when it comes to following your dreams, making something happen that the average person deems difficult. If you truly believe it, that's step one. Step two, is, you know, the hard work that goes along with it.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Start at the end and work back.
The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur.
There's this really awesome theory of human motivation - that human beings all want three things. One is to be competent, one is to belong, and one is be free, as in to have choice: to not be told what to do but to choose what to do.
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