Planet earth is one big two-ended stick where all pairs-of-opposites meet. Only when we learn how to work with these opposites do our lives unfold as we want them to.

There can be no experience of success without experiences of failure along the journey. The exhilarating feeling of victory requires temporary defeats along the way, or there is nothing exhilarating about it. If you succeeded at everything you try on the first try, the accomplishment would feel empty.

Failure is meant to motivate you to strengthen your resolve. It is meant to inspire you to reach deeper and access more of your unrealized potential. A person climbs the jagged mountain because he wants to experience more of his unrealized potential. That is what being human is all about. Without failure, your potential remains unrealized, and your life becomes boring.

A story can tell you of the sweetness of victory, but you cannot experience it for yourself until you have gone through the struggle and failure it takes to get there. What a glorious union of opposites –– failure followed by success! It elevates your consciousness above that of the conditioned rat that runs down the same tunnel looking for cheese. It offers an exhilarating feeling of triumph that has taken man from believing there is ‘a man in the moon’ to walking on the moon!

It is always easier to succeed at something new when you are willing to fail your way through. Failure does not handicap you, only you can do that. Babe Ruth held the record for most strike-outs and most home runs. Now that is a great example of failing your way to success.

When you decide to create yourself anew, you can be sure that opposition will resist you. Creative change threatens the Conditioned-Self that is habitually expressing through you. This SELF is very satisfied with its current tendencies and habits. It does not intend to relinquish its position without putting up a fight.

When ocean crabs get caught in a trap, they just sit there. When a maverick crab boldly steps upward toward freedom –– the others pull him back. If the maverick crab persists, the others often continue to resist his bold move until they pull his legs off. This is what it can feel like when you decide to make internal changes. That collection of ideas that you deemed as true will tug at you, and say ‘no, no, no,’ to anything new. The world, too, may tug at you and insist you remain the same. They will say, “a leopard cannot change its spots.”

You are not a crab, nor a leopard are you?. You are a human being, with the immutable right to create yourself anew. When you see the rightness in your decision to create a new you, you allow no limiting decisions of your past or restricting opinions from the world stop you.

Remain focused on your ideal, in spite of any hounding voice from inside of you that screams, “Get real!” What you consider ‘real’ is entirely up to you.

All your limits are self-imposed! You can refuse to accept this fact as true, or you can use it to rescue you. There is just no way that you can work your way into a reality of prosperity when your imagination dwells on scarcity. Even fleas can be taught to believe in limits that dwarf their potential. A flea circus is simply a bunch of fleas in a shoebox that are conditioned to jump low.

1. Borrow some fleas from your dog and place them in a shoebox.
2. Place a piece of glass over the top of the box, and wait. You’ll hear a slight ‘tick, tick, tick,’ but soon it will stop. The fleas no longer bump their heads against the glass top because they have been conditioned to jump lower.
3. Remove the glass top and you have a colony of fleas jumping below their potential. They no longer attempt to jump out of the box!

You are not a flea. Stop living your life in a flea circus and jump out of the box.

You are only shipwrecked on a desert island when you imagine a threatening world of scarcity. It is crucial that your imagination supports you, if you intend to create a prosperous future to live into. “To thine own self be true;” dare to imagine great things and life will unfold marvelously for you.

Your physical world is always a consequence of the kinds of thoughts that fascinate you. Why be fascinated with the mud when you can be fascinated with the stars?

There is no better way to learn something new, than to share it with others. When you make it a habit to share knowledge that profits you –– it sinks deeper into your own subconscious mind. The person who takes the time to share knowledge, always knows the subject matter best.

There is no quicker way to convert an empowering idea into a belief than to go out into the world, acting as though it is already so. Go out there and express yourself in ways that allows the belief to demonstrate through you. Do this and, it is yours to keep.

It is a noble aim indeed, to give away what you want to hold onto. You not only serve others, but as important –– you are serving yourself. Those students who volunteer to tutor classmates always get the highest grades. You cannot know anything meaningfully, until you share it with the world.