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Copyright 2010 Jean Burman
Some people lead uninspired lives. Lives that have not been fully lived. Lives that have not been tested in any way. For one reason or another… at some point along the way… they have chosen to tread the safe path [or maybe the safe path has chosen them]. They live each day underwhelmed and uninspired in the hope that [one day] things will get better.
We can’t know before we have done it… how successful we might ultimately be.
We have to do it… we have to try… and sometimes we will fail.
But we can’t underestimate the power of failure in achieving that ultimate success.
It is human nature to resist change. To play it safe. To make compromises.
We stay in that dead end job [or that damaging relationship] way past any reasonable expiry date… and dream of the day… when we can DO… BE… or HAVE something better. We make plans and we dream… but somehow… with each passing day the plan becomes just that much harder to do and the dream becomes all the more impossible to imagine. We stop taking risks. We stop living life.
But what if the unthinkable should happen?
What if we were to suddenly lose everything?
Job. Home. Health. Marriage. Family. Friends. Life as we knew it.
What if we lost what we had worked our whole lives for?
What if we lost… everything?
And what if we had nothing left to go on with but… ourselves?
If that scares you… it should.
It happens to someone… somewhere… every day.
But despite what you might imagine… people rarely die from it.
On the contrary… they have been known to thrive from it!
Sometimes failure isn’t the disaster we initially thought it might be. And sometimes… it can be the catalyst for achieving great things. With nothing left to lose… some of the wildest most “way out of this world dreams” can [and do] come to life!
Without a safety net… things look a little bit sharper. We are forced to look at life in new and different ways. We have to become inventive and innovative in everything we do. We have to strategise a new approach to [pretty much] everything.
The importance of DOING WHAT YOU LOVE… has been the resounding and reaffirming message coming at me from almost every direction this week. It has been whispering to me through news articles… dropping into my inbox on a daily basis… and screaming out from pod casts on the net. The Universe has been speaking… and I have been listening. So I couldn’t help but write about it here!
JK Rowling in her address to the Harvard Alumni Association talked of the fringe benefits of failure and the importance of imagination in the achievement of any form of success. She spoke in candid terms about the failure that would eventually lead to her greatest success. With a small child and a broken marriage behind her… and a degree gained half-heartedly in an area of little interest… JK found herself with nothing… and at the lowest possible ebb.
“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself I was anything other than what I really was and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that REALLY MATTERED to me.
HAD I REALLY SUCCEEDED AT ANYTHING ELSE… I may never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged.
I WAS SET FREE… because my greatest fear had been realised… and I was still alive... and I still had a daughter whom I adored… and I had an old typewriter and a big idea!
And so ROCK BOTTOM became the SOLID FOUNDATION upon which I rebuilt my life.
Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you’ve lived so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case… you failed by default”
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
Despite our fear of it… failure is rarely ever an entirely bad thing… or something to be avoided at all cost. Sometimes it leads us to the truth. The truth of what [and who] we truly are… or could be.
When push comes to shove… we must do what we love. If we don’t know what that is… then we need to find out!
Doing what we love is our [soul] purpose in life. Success is our reward for finding it.
[Acknowledging my good friend - fellow blogger - and successful author Andrew Griffiths who recently posted this video clip on his blog for the inspiration of all. Thanks AG... it worked for me!]
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