Take a deep breath, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.
Frank Sinatra
The meaning of the quote
In the 1936 film Swing Time, Fred Astaire signs up for a dance lesson, pretends he can’t dance and lands flat on the floor. His teacher, Ginger Rogers, tells him in song to get up and try again.
The song is Pick Yourself Up, written by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields. Frank Sinatra recorded a fast swing version in 1962, and the quote comes from his recording.
The quote packs 4 steps into one line, and the order matters.
Breathe
A fall sends your heart racing, and that is when people send the angry reply or quit on the spot. The deep breath comes first so you calm down before you decide what to do next.
A 5-minute breathing exercise called cyclic sighing, built on long breaths out, lifted people’s mood in a Stanford study, as the Greater Good Science Center reported.
Get up
Getting up means not letting a fall decide who you are. Toddlers learning to walk fall about 17 times an hour, as the British Psychological Society reported, and they get straight back up because the toy they want is still across the room.
Adults stay down longer, and one bad grade turns into “I’m not a maths person.”
Dust off
Dusting off means keeping the lesson from a mistake and brushing off the embarrassment, so you don’t carry it into the next try. Thomas Carlyle lost his only copy of a finished book to a fire and had to write it all again, a story told in Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes.
Start again
Starting again doesn’t mean going back to square one, because the second attempt begins with everything the first one taught you. On January 20, 2009, in the middle of a financial crisis, Barack Obama used the song’s words to ask a whole country to start again in his first inaugural address.
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.”
Exercise:
Which step do you skip?
Most of us are good at some of these steps and skip others. Your last setback can show you which one you skip.
- Pick a recent setback. A test, a tryout or a message that never got an answer.
Write down what you did in the first hour and the first week after it. - Match it to the 4 steps. Breathe, get up, dust off, start again.
Circle the step that’s missing from what you wrote. - Practise the missing step next time. If it’s the breath, do 5 minutes of cyclic sighing before you answer bad news.
If it’s starting again, set a date for your second attempt before the week is out.
Everyone ends up on the floor sometimes.
The quote tells you what to do next.
About the author
On April 26, 1950, Frank Sinatra walked onto the stage of New York’s Copacabana nightclub for a late show, and his voice gave out. His vocal cords had hemorrhaged, and doctors ordered 40 days of complete silence.
By 1952 Columbia Records had let his contract run out and his talent agency had dropped him. At 37, the singer once called “The Voice” was written off as a has-been.
Sinatra begged Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn for the role of Private Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity and swallowed his pride to play it for $8,000, far less than his co-stars earned.
In 1954 that role won him the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Variety called it the greatest comeback in show business history.
The Oscar opened a second career at Capitol Records, where albums such as Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely put him back on top.
In 1962, 26 years after Ginger Rogers sang the song to Fred Astaire on the dance-studio floor, Sinatra recorded Pick Yourself Up for his album Sinatra and Swingin’ Brass, where you can find this quote. He sang it as a man who had sat through 40 silent days, got up from being a has-been, dusted off his pride for $8,000 and started over at a new record label.
Resources
- Swing Time (Film)
- Pick Yourself Up (Wikipedia)
- Cyclic sighing can help breathe away anxiety (Article)
- How Frank Sinatra staged his great second act on the silver screen (Article)
- Fail again fail better (Article)
- Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes (Article)
Leave feedback about this