"A dear friend of mine..." Problem. "Two Beds in a Hospital" Solution.

"A dear friend of mine..." Problem.
"Two Beds in a Hospital" Solution.

Once upon a time in a faraway land there lived a man who got depressed.
This person was normally very happy, energetic and a great source of inspiration to anyone he come in contact with.
His condition saddened his friends.
It was hard to see a person of this intellectual and spiritual magnitude begin to loose ground.
When "rock bottom" loomed it's ugly head for the umpteenth time his friends suggested an extreme measure.

They put the man into a hospital.

The faraway land was a poor country.
They didn't have separate rooms for patients in their hospitals.

Several patients shared one room.

And the inevitable happened.
There was another man on a bed next to our hero's bed.

And his condition was WORSE.

This second man didn't want to live.

In "normal" countries doctors don't allow this sort of "neighboring".

But in the faraway land they had their own way of performing healing miracles.

The two men talked and talked and guess what happened.

The first one got well in no time flat.

Moral:
1.There is only one way to get well in this situation:
AT ANY COST FIND PEOPLE WHO FEEL AS YOU FEEL (anything will do - form a club, a group, a forum, a newsletter "For Those Who Feel Sad"...)
2.You will immediately realize that your problem is not "your" problem at all - it is common to thousands.
3.Register your condition and share, register and share.

To Dien: There is only one way to TURN a failure into a success force.
Register your failure, describe it, follow it, document it and share with ANYONE interested in failures (through books, letters, seminars).

By and in itself, without registering, without consciously turning your failure into an "information product" a failure IS NOT and never will be a success force.

Simon

Sounds like the beginning of a good booklet!
---number of ways to turn failure into a
success and the -- number of people who did...
You fill in the blanks with the numbers.
Somebody go for it!

Hi Simon,

That was a pretty good fable... I believe stories can be one of the most effective way of communicating a message... :)

> To Dien: There is only one way to TURN a
> failure into a success force.
> Register your failure, describe it, follow
> it, document it and share with ANYONE
> interested in failures (through books,
> letters, seminars).

> By and in itself, without registering,
> without consciously turning your failure
> into an "information product" a
> failure IS NOT and never will be a success
> force.

Interesting thought, Simon.... :)

I'm not sure if I would go that far....

I feel that it may help to reflect upon your own experience. To think, how could I have done it better? That could help for next time.... But I like to go back to the story of how a baby learns to walk, which I quoted from Joe Sugarman's book....

We try to stand up, we stumble, we try again.... Eventually, we'll be standing and walking happily! We did that as children, and we can do it again and again in so many different areas, whether it is in physics, in online business, or in anything else....

But I think it's important to push yourself, to get up and try again. To keep pushing your limits to achieve things you haven't achieved before....

A baby doesn't have to make an info product about falling down all the time.... (Though you might say the loud crying that sometimes accompanies a fall could be a type of "information product"!) I think despite ourselves, by trying again and again (and reflecting on the experience) we can't help but learn, and do better and better.... :)

Cheers,

Dien

At the risk of being branded negative, the fact
that there's no money in being negative is
nonsense! Take aa. Someones making a lot of money
out of a bunch of ex (or current) drunks sitting
around listening to other drunks talk about how
much they drank.
And, remember the quote from "Gone With the Wind"
when Rhett says "there's as much money to be made
from the destruction of a civilization as the
building of one".

I am sorry, this is EXACTLY what Sugarman did.

1.Infoproduct #1 - "Success Forces" - book
2.Infodroduct #2 - seminar talks about failure/success.
3.Tape
4.Booklet
5.Newsletter
6.Directory/stories about failed businesses.

Joe was serious about the following parable:

There Lived A King Who Was Contrarian.

Everything in his kingdom was unusual.

For instance, the king's subjects were prohibited to look back.

Once the inhabitants turned adults it was IMPOSSIBLE for them to turn back into babies.
(Strange kingdom indeed. So unlike OUR world :))

Moreover, it was unequivocally prohibited in the kingdom to use any metaphor comparing adult people to babies.

The king thought and rightly so, that this way his people don't get confused by the metaphors.

"Adult is adult is adult" - the king used to say - "and should do as adults do."

There was another peculiarity in the Kingdom.

They rejected TRIAL AND ERROR.

They rejected the very possibility of LEARNING by trial and error.

This is what their chief wizard Sugarwiz taught them in his famous book "The Paths of Success":

"You NEVER know the major factors of your success, you never know the factors of failure that brought you to failure, and NEVER will.
"Hence, don't waste your time on modifications"
"For you can't be sure that you modify ESSENTIAL feature."
"Act on the totally different plane.
"Trial and error is one of the most powerful failure forces/activities."

The king's subjects and Sugarwiz' students took their mentors very seriously.

Here is one of the case studies.

How To Act On The Different Plane Of Reality.

OutNet was booming in the kingdom at that time.
One of the entrepreneurs failed miserably.
His business was about some new technology.
It doesn't matter what technology.
What really matters is that our hero failed.

So, he decided to turn his failure into HUGE success.
Without giving his company/technology another try that ultimately would lead him to errors.

He decided to start collecting information and rumors about the failures of people and companies like his.

He spent two days to build his site.
It was an overnight success, attracted million visitors and was sold... for 10 million Kingdom Dollars.

(visit the site at the link below, then come back)...

Glad you are back.

Was it about his former line of business?
No.
Was it about some modification/variation/fine tuning of his previous business venture (trial and error)?
NO.
Did the idea "grow up" from his personal experience?
Yes.
But in a very peculiar way.

By the following Law of Nature the man had no choice:

Once you RECOGNIZE yourself as X (failure, music/dog lover, divorced man/woman)
you should act on the X plane of reality.

Simon


Profitable Parody on FastCompany Rated R (WARNING: CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS)

Hi Simon,

Great post to get those brain cells churning in new and unexpected ways.... :)

It took me a while, but I GET it....

> How To Act On The Different Plane Of Reality.

This little snippet is, in a way, a summary of the "heart" of Simon's post (I think)....

He's talking about the difference between TWO different approaches....

The first approach is the "incremental" approach.... This is the sort of approach where you might ask: What if I make my product bigger? smaller? longer? shorter? a different color? and so on....

Small, incremental changes.... This is what Simon means by a "trial and error" approach (if I've understood right)....

On the other hand, there is the second approach -- the COMPLETE change. Something quite new and different. A surprise, but a surprise which works....

A completely new, startling idea. A REVOLUTION.

That's what Simon is getting at, I believe....

The difference between "small mouse-sized incremental changes" and a "whale" of a "revolution"!

Thanks Simon.... you're delving into some deep stuff!

Dien