A Community of Good Fortune – Let’s Build It Together!

“Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you’re generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky. This is important. It’s like inviting yourself into a community of good fortune.” – Twyla Tharp (from The Creative Habit)

“A community of good fortune”. Isn’t that a great idea? I love the above quote from Twyla Tharp. It takes the term “luck”, which I’ve always thought of as a passive idea and thus never liked it all that much, and turns it into an active endeavor that you can bring into your life. Such a simple twist, but quite profound.

I’ve always felt that the best way to invite good things into your life is to make sure you’re bringing good things to the lives of others. Call it karma, call it “do unto others”, call it “paying it forward”. Whatever label you want to put onto it, the fact remains that when we do good things for others, good things happen to us.

My wife calls this “How can I help you”? My friend Jamie Baumgart calls this the “What can I do for you?” mentality. My twitter pal Steve Lawson calls it “Becoming an awesomeness node” (I LOVE that one!). Jonathan Fields calls people who do this “kindness-marauders”.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the last 24 hours since I launched the Kickstarter campaign for my Nick Drake Tribute CD. I feel so amazingly fortunate that there are people out there willing to support my music endeavors and my life as an independent artist. It’s humbling and heart-warming. And I believe that much of my good fortune comes from my desire and practice of spreading the good fortune around.

So, with that in mind, I wanted to become an “awesomeness node” and hip you to a couple other Kickstarter projects that I’m backing and that you should support too. These are all fantastic projects from independent artist that need our support to keep doing what they’re doing.

Will you join me in the “community of good fortune”? We’re all in this together, and we can only build it if we ALL participate. So take 5 minutes today and talk about someone else that is doing something awesome. Blog about it, Tweet about it, post it to your Facebook wall. You’ll become an active member in a growing community of good. And you might just be amazed at how it comes back to you!