People often complain about their difficulties, curse God for their bad luck, but they never look to the light at the underbelly of tragedy and failure. Without these downtimes, how do we ever know success? There is no one who has ever succeeded who hasn’t known failure. And that is good, for how can you succeed without it? If failure did not exist, and you only knew success, how would you know your were successful? If you were always healthy and never got sick, how could you know health?

This is old news, philosophy that has been around for ages. The Taoist speaks of it in the ying / yang: hot / cold, light / darkness, health / sickness, pleasure / pain. If we didn’t have these pairs then we would not know the good or the bad. It is the way this world is set up. For our benefit.

By keeping our minds open, we are able to see things we would not normally be able to see. Important things.

Here’s another example. A woman was concerned about a defect in her child’s head. She had gone to a couple of experts who said that everything was fine, that the child would grow out of it. Nevertheless, she continued to worry and seek out experts. She just knew something was wrong.

Point of note: good example here of not listening to others or blindly following the crowd. How many less informed mothers or mothers with weaker intuition would have accepted these expert’s opinions?

She decided that in order to work out this problem she would journal. She, like the man with MS, had gone to experts, family and friends for advice but she knew that she hadn’t found what she was looking for. So she began to write.

In writing, she discovered an un-opinionated, neutral partner in her pen and paper. But she was not alone. She knew that there was another presence working with her. She could feel it as she came to greater understanding of what she should do. Seek out additional experts. She did.

Some time later she came upon a doctor who was working on a new disease of the bone, specifically related to children. She brought her child in. After the doctor examined the child, he suggested that they not delay and operate as soon as possible.

After the operation both the doctor and mother were satisfied with the result, the doctor telling the mother that if she had delayed the child might not have survived. The mother was also satisfied with the information and insight that she received from her journal, not only because she had saved her child but she had come to a great understanding through writing how to best deal with a highly charged emotional situation—a situation no one else was able to remedy to the mother’s satisfaction.

Journaling, writing, keeping a diary, any form of jotting down one’s ideas in a quiet place on a regular basis is fundamental to tapping into and maximizing one’s ability to be successful in most if not all areas of life.

Jeff Brown has been writing for over thirty years. He is an astute observer of the human condition and has overcome many personal development challengs by applying the principles he speaks of to his own life. His current novel Black Body Radiation and the Ultraviolet Catastrophe can be found at Amazon.com His newest book, Give and Grow Yourself Rich will be out in early 2008.

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