A business executive at IBM had a plan that he thought would help the company increase sales. Nearly all of his colleagues told him it was not a good idea.

Nonetheless, the man persisted and implemented his plan.

It turned out to be a huge failure. It cost IBM over $10 million – and that was in the 1950s. That’s about the equivalent of losing $100,000,000 today. One hundred million dollars!

Needless to say, the executive was summoned to meet with IBM’s founder & chairman, Tom Watson.

With a racing heart and trembling hands, the man walked into Watson’s office – fully expecting to be terminated.

With a quivering voice he asked Mr. Watson, “How soon would you like me out of the company?”

Tom Watson’s response not only epitomes exceptional leadership, but gives us a hint into the value of profiting from failure.

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Have you ever struggled with motivating yourself to complete (or even get started with) an initiative that you know could be extremely beneficial for you?

You know what you need to do, you have all the resources to progress, and you even feel passionate about wanting to make it happen. Yet for some reason you hold yourself back.

Perhaps it’s inertia. Perhaps there’s some underlying fear.

How can you break through?

By becoming a loser.

Yes, a loser.

Before I explain this provocative approach to growth, let me share some research into human psychology that drives much of our behavior.

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Hard to imagine, right? Today is simply a continuation of yesterday, and tomorrow won’t be too much different.

It all flows together: the past is all there in our memory, some of the moments we remember, others have either faded away or been sufficiently repressed. And the future holds our dreams and fears in pristine purity.

Each day we create more past, reinforce or make alterations to our future thoughts, and simply go about our lives in such a continuum.

The past unfolds into the present moment, quickly becoming a memory as we contemplate our future. A steady stream of past into future, past into future.

Until we die.

But that’s not how it really works.

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Yes, you really did.

The first response that people often have when hearing that they chose their parents – not the other way around – is this:

NO WAY!

Usually with some expletive thrown in there.

The second response is inevitably, “WHY?”

It seems to make no sense. But let’s back up a bit and look at the bigger picture.

We wrote the entire script – not just our parents, but everything we experience in life. Just like when we dream at night – we wrote the script of our dreams. While we are sleeping, we don’t recall that it is “our” dream (unless we are lucid dreaming). Instead, it feels like we are a figure (often the hero figure) who wanders “idly in and out of places and events that it contrives.”

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Imagine if you were given one million dollars to go on a shopping spree at the mall. And all you bought was tons of stuff that you don’t like and don’t want.

Now all that crap arrives in your home, completely surrounding you.

How would you feel?

Not very good, and you would likely ask yourself, “Why did I buy this stuff?”

Only a crazy person would use that precious commodity (money) and purchase things they didn’t want, right?

Such is the brilliant metaphor posed by Wayne Dyer when he suggested that our thoughts are just like money in that they are a precious commodity. With those thoughts we can think anything we want. But whatever we allow into our minds, consider that we’ve now “purchased” it.

We’ve allowed into our sacred inner sanctum whatever it is that we focus our attention on.

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