Redefining Failure

The following is an excerpt from David Cameron's e-book, A Happy Pocket Full of Money. It is a great reconceptualizaton of failure and this can help you avoid the fear of failure, a crippling emotion.

Most people have been programmed to fear failure. They give up to avoid failure, or they do not even attempt just so that they may not fail. Failure, however, is an illusion. Begin to see it as an illusion.

Failure, suffering, is an essential component to success. It is what helps you correct wrong thought if you approach it with an attitude of learning. Through failure, you learn how to succeed. By trying and failing, you refine your thought and point it ever closer to success. But this is so only if you do not give up.

Through failure, you get to know success and how to get there. How else would you know what success tastes like if you did not know what it does not taste like? And how would you get there without knowing how to? Think about that.

Failure is an integral part of success. Failure is actually a successive moment that leads to ultimate success. Failure is not the opposite of success, a separate entity from success.

Failure is success, it is the same thing but they are on different ends of that spectrum, the spectrum of achievement. It is just like hot and cold are different ends of the spectrum of temperature, or a thermometer. Failure and success are both different vibrations of the same thing.

Failure is not failure as such. It is only truly failure when you accept it as the end. But if you accept it as a blessed part of the process, a part that helps you succeed further, and know what this further success tastes like, then you can never ever possibly fail, ever. Failure is an illusion. Stop fearing it; love it for the gifts it brings you.

Taken from A Happy Pocket Full Of Money, pages 127 and 128 of 236 www.ImagesOfOne.com

New Perspective on Creativity

If you're like me, you think being creative is for hobbies and extra-curricular activities, while being proactive is for business. Really think about what it means to be creative at work.

Last night I was reading an e-book, Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron. In one part he was describing the act of being creative using similar language to that usually denoting what it means to be "pro-active."

I first ran into, or absorbed the concept of being proactive when I worked with the Stephen Covey Group in Caracas in the early 1990s. Stephen Covey's first habit of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is simply: Be Proactive. What he means is that we don't wait to live a life of reactions to events, but we design our lives and work to merge our vision with reality.

Being pro-active is really more of an attitude, or way of being, rather than an activity.

David Cameron explained the same wisdom in terms of an attitude of creativity, in contrast to reactivity.

I think this is a valuable insight to broaden our understanding of what it means to be creative. This is on my mind because I'm developing an e-course entitled, "Creative Communication @ Work." My use of the word "creative" really does mean being proactive, not being creative in the sense of sending purple emails or wearing black nail polish to work, although I have no problem with either of these options.

You will not be surprised to know that I like the word, "creativity" much more than "being proactive." The former is much more humane sounding and the latter sounds more like business jargon to my ears. If you tell me to be creative, I'm excited; if you tell me to be pro-active, I feel pressure to perform. Ahhh, the power of words.