The body says what words cannot.
Martha GrahamRead
Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of focusing on a single positive reason to pursue one's goals rather than being overwhelmed by numerous excuses.
Martha Graham's quote highlights a common human tendency to dwell on obstacles and excuses instead of focusing on the potential for success. It suggests that while people may create countless reasons for inaction, a single compelling reason can be powerful enough to inspire them to take action and achieve their desires. This speaks to the importance of mindset and the ability to shift one's perspective from limitations to possibilities.
In practice
During a motivational speech to inspire students to pursue their passions.
The body says what words cannot.
Nobody cares if you can't dance well.
Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.
What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a strange, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
If the first plan which you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan; if this new plan fails to work, replace it in turn with still another, and so on, until you find a plan which does work. Right here is the point at which the majority of men meet with failure, because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
It's not fun to get out of bed early in the morning. When the alarm goes off, it doesn't sing you a song: it hits you in the head with a baseball bat. So how do you respond to that? Do you crawl underneath your covers and hide? Or do you get up, get aggressive, and attack the day?
Life's not about sitting at home in front of the TV waiting for your life to begin. Get out there and take some chances.
Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success may be crowded with grand possibilities.
If you stay up late and you have another hour of work to do, you can just stay up another hour later without running into a wall and having to stop. Whereas it might take three or four hours if you start over, you might finish if you just work that extra hour. If you're a morning person, the day always intrudes a fixed amount of time in the future. So it's much less efficient. Which is why I think computer people tend to be night people - because a machine doesn't get sleepy.
The game is not won by a pep talk on Saturday. It's won by preparation of your club from Monday until game time. If they're not ready on Saturday, you're not going to get them ready by trying to inspire them with a dog-eat-dog sermon on that day.
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