Skip to main content

Morning Rules of Successful People 2

2.  Get to the work towards your main goal.
  Oh, a couple of the people I researched go for cryotherapy or kiting on the sea before this.  I thought I might smash a crate of frozen lemonade bottles on the floor and stand naked in the gas that escaped.  Or hang over the Meare by a rope round my waist hooked over the boathouse clock tower.
  I remembered early this morning that goal setting has been around for longer than you might think. Amelita Galli-Curci, the great nineteenth century prima donna, talked about putting on horse blinkers and positively moving forward to a goal, taking them off, waiting for her critics and rivals to start the carping, putting them on again. Less positively she said that when one of her rivals, Dame Nellie Melba, sang for example “Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark” you would think it was about a deafening, bloody big turkey.
  I have more than one main goal at the moment, so I have a pad and a fountain pen with my plans for each goal written out.  I leave the pad open wherever I happen to finish each evening and go back to it first thing next morning. Most recently I handed in the proofs of My Tutu Went AWOL!  A Drag Ballerina in Iraq.  Since March I've spent a lot of man hours telling editors not to argue with me about the spelling of camiknickers as I’m the one who has been wearing them onstage for thirty years; or insisting that a muscle boy as big as that can't be used as a body double on the inside cover for the Royal Marine Stacks, as Stacks was on rations in Afghanistan and had bulked down; or can we not mention in the blurb about me trying to confiscate the President of Estonia’s custard creams to give back to the camels?  Which nitpicking has at times made me lose sight of the main goal I set when I began the book – to tell the stories I witnessed first hand of squaddies in extremis.
  Having a goal makes you first ask yourself ‘why?’, before ‘what?’, ‘how?’ and the inevitable at times ‘will you please just get back on your rocker?’
  Set ridiculous goals.  Like mine to become a Prima Ballerina assoluta.  I set out to get paid enough to live on for dancing the Swan Queen, Giselle and Nikya; and have achieved this goal. True, I ought to have set out to earn enough to buy great swathes of Chelsea…but that's the current goal.
  How did I do it?
  I kept my mind on it at all times.  I spent a certain amount of time each day in the mindset of a leading ballerina from the Mariinsky. When I did ballet barre each morning, I was in a studio being coached by Komleva.   When I sat sewing my ballet shoes I gave imaginary interviews about my amazing career.  I plaintively recalled serious injury.  My terror as each new leading role as given to me.  I imagined receiving letters of praise and abuse. I outlined the pros and cons of working with different partners in the company.  Perhaps most importantly, I saw myself exalted taking curtain calls in front of a roaringly adoring full house.  And, yes, my kidneys nearly packed up through, apparently, the emotional stress of performing Giselle’s Mad Scene and suicide this method-acted way - Mr Wong, chief Chinese herbalist, had to be  called in during my acupuncture session to have a tut over my doubtful tongue – but this is also a sign that positive affirmations work.
  And a reminder to be careful what you wish for….

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

     I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media:   We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden.  He's between tour dates of  The Bodyguard,  and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements.  The latter, he says, being all about making his product better.   Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February.  I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters.  That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world.  That's why you've been noticing the combat photos.  I...

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

  I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include:    The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford.   The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life.  The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington.   The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric.    Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded,...

How to...Self-Assessment Tax

   As we near the end of the year a performer's thoughts will turn to the dreaded self assessment tax return.  Eight years ago I made a pact with myself never again to put myself through those two days of surfing receipts; forging official contracts for looking after Lady Carter's pug Mr Timothy; wondering if I would get away with claiming for two pints of Fullers Honeydew, bought to silence a city boy smoking outside the Rising Sun in Cloth Fair, after he saw me help myself to some of the festive flora on the railings of St Barts church to arrange in my hair having forgotten my tiara for a Christmas gig at Club Kabaret .    I now do a mini-tax return each month when my bank statements come, and simply tot up the running total on April 6th when I submit my HMRC self-assessment return.    Of all the self-employed professions, performers and cab drivers most frequently underpay tax; ergo they are the two professions most likely to be audited by HMRC ...