Allow Setbacks to Encourage You

Many times, we look at high achievers and assume they had a string of lucky breaks, or made it without much effort. Usually, the opposite is true, and the so-called superstar had an incredibly rough time before he or she attained any lasting success.

It may motivate you more toward your own goals to know that some of the most famous and well-known people in modern times had to overcome as difficult obstacles as anyone before they finally reached the top It takes persistence and total commitment to your goals, but it’s possible!

You may not know the background of a certain laundry worker who earned sixty dollars a week at his job but had the burning desire to be a writer. His wife worked nights, and he spent nights and weekends typing manuscripts to send to publishers and agents. Each one was rejected with a form letter that gave him no assurance that his manuscripts had even been read. I’ve received a few of those special valentines myself through the years, and I can tell you first hand that they’re not the greatest self-esteem builders.

But finally, a warm, more personal rejection letter came in the mail to the laundry worker, stating that although his work was not good enough at this point to warrant publishing, he had promise as a writer and he should keep trying.

He forwarded two more manuscripts to the same friendly-yet-rejecting publisher over the next eighteen months, and as before, he struck out with both of them too. Finances got so tight for the young couple that they had to disconnect their telephone to pay for medicine for their baby.

Feeling totally discouraged, he threw his latest manuscript into the garbage. His wife, totally committed to his life goals and believing in his talent, took the manuscript out of the trash and sent it back to Doubleday, the publisher who had sent the friendly rejections. The book, titled ‘Carrie’, sold over five million copies, and as a movie, became one of the top-grossing films in 1976. The laundry worker, of course, was Stephen King.

The main message – believe in your ability to turn obstacles into opportunities. Too often people try to storm their obstacles as if they’re forts that need to be taken. It’s better to step back and ask yourself: “Did I cause this obstacle by my own actions or lack of them? Did someone else cause this obstacle? Is this obstacle one that grew out of the natural progression of circumstances?”

This last question may seem complex, but it holds a secret to the way you can set and reach your goals and achieve your destiny!

Reproduced with permission from the Denis Waitley Ezine. To subscribe to Denis Waitley’s Ezine, go to www.deniswaitley.com or send an email with Join in the subject to subscribe@deniswaitley.com Copyright 2006 Denis Waitley International. All rights reserved worldwide.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

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P.P.S. : Do you want to find out why you can live in paradise and fulfill any of your dreams if you want to? On my homepage you can read all about the principles on how to create the life you want, in English or in German.

You have a Choice, but no Guarantee : The Family Man

Concluding my mini-series of articles about inspirational movies today, “The Family Man” is one of these must-see-at-all-cost. You’ll enjoy it too, I guarantee it.

It is all about a single and very successful Manhattan businessman who thinks he has everything, with a lifestyle that the world envies – until his girlfriend Kate (Tea Leoni) of 13 years ago contacts him and he is confronted with his choice not to marry her at the time.

By some twist of events, Jack Campbell (Nicolas Cage) wakes up one morning to lead an alternate life of being Kate’s husband for a few weeks, happily married with two kids, selling tyres in the suburbs.

Why would that happen, you might ask? Because over his obsession with business, he has completely neglected his personal life – and that’s catching up with him now. You can’t be out of balance for long, nature will always restore it – a Universal Law that can not be broken.

As human beings, sooner or later we have to experience life from all angles consciously open to us – but we have our priorities, and therefore choices to make. For me this film is very relevant and believable.

What would have happened, for example, if I had not decided in 1984 to live and work in South Africa?

At the time, my biggest dream was to no longer live in Germany where I was born and raised – the two years in London I had done previously weren’t enough to satisfy my curiosity about people who live, learn and grow in cultures different from my own.

As difficult as our decisions seem to be at times, we should be grateful every day that we have the freedom to choose and that we do have the right – and obligation – to become what we can be and want to be. This, by definition, always includes our choice against everything we do NOT want to be.

Fortunately, the constitution of our country ‘guarantees’ that we may pursue any dream we have, as long as we take the responsibility for our actions – not everyone can enjoy this freedom and comfort.

Be that as it may, if you want ‘guarantees’ buy a toaster. In my opinion it is more important to be aware that whatever we do to others will eventually be done to us, one way or another. That’s something that I will personally guarantee, for what it’s worth.

If we all recognised that truth, I believe there would be a lot less suffering in the world, and more prosperity. But we decide to the best of our knowledge, so I must assume that right now most of us just don’t know better.

One dilemma we often face in our choices is that we have to temporarily sacrifice something when we opt for one route over the other. We can never really take a wrong turn though : at the end of the day, one way is as good as the other – may be it’s a bit longer or more difficult than the alternative, but it is always exactly what we need to experience at the time.

Obviously, we sometimes need to give up familiar and comfortable positions to obtain a more comprehensive picture of our place in the universe – and in “Family Man”, Jack Campbell at first has a rude awakening to a life without his Ferrari and penthouse.

But once he discovers that the treasure of a happy life with family and friends is worth so much more than any material comfort, he doesn’t want to go back to his previous existence.

Can we reverse our decisions? No, but with our new perspective we can adjust our course for the future. Be aware of your choices before you hit dead-end.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

More Power Than You’ll Ever Need : Bruce Almighty

I have never liked Jim Carrey as an actor much, most of the movies he stars in tend to be a bit silly in my view – but “Bruce Almighty” is different, I enjoyed it.

The script is very clever : Bruce Nolan is desperate and complains to God that he is not doing a good job because everything is going wrong in what he perceives to be his mediocre life in small town Buffalo/New York.

So God now gives him all his super-powers for a while to prove that Bruce can do better himself.

Morgan Freeman as God – in an immaculate white suit – now calmly goes on vacation, while Bruce goes overboard to get everything he ever wanted on earth. His main ambition as a TV reporter is to become the news anchor on his network, although one of his colleagues is first in line for that.

You can imagine all the havoc Bruce creates in people’s lives now, not only in town with his new Ferrari, but also in far away places when he ropes in the moon for his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston) who desperately wants to marry him.

The film is very entertaining, and many of us would probably overlook the message it has for us. One of them is that even divine strength ends where human free will sets in : Bruce arranges the most outlandish situations for himself to look good professionally, but alienates everyone else in the process – he still doesn’t know that selfish behaviour without any consideration for others will eventually come back and haunt you.

Treat others like you want to be treated yourself. Why? Because the world you experience is a mirror-image of who you are inside, your attitudes and behaviour. This is one of the Universal Laws of Human Nature that can not be broken or ignored.

Nevertheless, Bruce now becomes famous as a newsman who is always first on the scene of dramatic action – but he cannot cope with literally millions of prayers addressed to God every day.

He finally surrenders to divine will and voluntarily hands back the guidance for his life to a higher authority.

At that point it dawns on him that he never really needed the extra powers granted to him : like you and me, he had all the qualities and talents required to make his life successful to begin with, but wasn’t aware of it.

All it took was some respect for, not power over his fellow man. ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ – Lord Acton wrote that in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887 and he has never been proven wrong yet.

The receiving process starts with giving. When Bruce eventually settles back into his old job with humility and begins to share his appreciation in the local community, he wins more influence than he ever had before and is transformed into a happy human being.

His genuine concern for the wellbeing of others makes him a better reporter, and no doubt he now earns his future by first mastering what he is confronted with here and now.

There is no such thing as a mediocre life, we all have something important to contribute wherever we are – just know it, do it and be yourself.

Until next time, all the best from : Berend

A Beautiful Mind : Genius and Madness Are Close Neighbours

Have you seen “A Beautiful Mind” with Russell Crowe ? The film is based on a true story about a brilliant mathematician coming to grips with schizophrenia, and it won four Academy Awards in 2001.

I’ve seen it a second time last week and was again captivated not only by Crowe’s performance, but especially by the fascinating illustration of how powerful the human mind is.

While Professor Nash teaches at a famous American university, he is approached by secret service agents to decipher a code which the enemies of democracy use for their subversive activities, threatening national security. For years he works with the agents, exploring millions of connections and possibilities to uncover the mystery – until his wife finds out about his hidden life and supports him on the way out of the mess.

It turns out that all the persons involved in the undercover plot are totally fictitious, they only existed in the Professor’s mind – so real for him, that he had developed a complete second identity around his scenario. His weird behaviour under these circumstances was obviously labeled “madness” by his “normal” peers – and yet he won a Nobel Prize for his academic work a few years later.

Genius and madness are close neighbours, they say – assuming for a minute that you and I don’t fall into either of these categories, what is the lesson for “normal” people here ? As far as I’m concerned, I show more consideration for the unusual conduct of people these days.

Who am I to judge others for things I don’t understand ? I know that I have some blind spots, and may be that odd fellow I saw in the mall yesterday is a genius working out the quadrature of the circle. What’s more, I am reminded that I, too live in my own world, like you do in yours.

A lot of things occupy my mind every day which directly influence my actions because I am absolutely convinced that they are perfectly sensible.

Most of the time you wouldn’t find strange what I do, I suppose, but I am sure that some people wonder who the fool is that spends an hour on a perfect Sunday afternoon writing articles like this.

What’s on your mind ? Do you want to be president of your bowling club ? Climb Mount Kilimanjaro ? That’s OK, but I personally couldn’t be bothered.

The point is that we are who we think we are, literally. I am not a professor, and I don’t want to win the Nobel Prize – but I want to write and that’s OK, too. Who knows, may be they’ll give me the Pulitzer Prize one of these days – call me crazy.