06/20/2024
The Disney Fantasy��
I don’t have to tell you, but Disney is a huge hit.
Millions of families flock from all over the world to see this fantasy land.
In addition to the parks around the world, Disney also has a cruise line and resorts in places like Paris, Hawaii and Tokyo.
Each place is an adventure where people can spend days exploring this magical world.
But one aspect of Disney that fascinates me is that Walt Disney himself did not have it easy.
In one of his first jobs, at an art studio, he was fired for lacking imagination and having no good ideas!
You don’t have to dig too far to find stories about Walt Disney’s failures.
After the appearance of Mickey Mouse and the success of Snow White. Disney approached financiers to bankroll his next biggest fantasy, Disney world.
As the story goes, his requests for funding were rejected 300 times before he finally received backing.
The story of Disney is strewn with FAILURES.
At the beginning of his animated film adventures, three out of five films lost money.
Most of this was due to World War II. Creating an animated film was expensive too.
But he persisted, with some successes and some failures.
It’s quite fascinating when you think about it. Here is someone who is highly successful. At the same time he has left behind a path strewn with failures.
And it got me thinking, how infrequently most people admit failures - myself included.
If we normalize failure as part of the process of finally getting it right, we can continue to pursue our dreams.
We beat ourselves up for our failures, we try to hide them, or we replay them over and over again in our minds until we’re living a life revolved around the fear of failing again.
But what if, like Walt Disney, we were able to accept our failures? What if failure was just a natural path to finding what works for us?
It took Walt Disney years of work to get to his first success - Mickey Mouse. Failure leads the way to what would become a winner.
The problem is that most of us don’t fail enough. And that’s easy to say in our motivation overloaded society, but think about failure for a minute.
In order to fail you have to try and do. You have to put yourself out there. You have to go through the process.
It is from successive tries that you find what works.
It is from practice that you become accomplished.
My late friend Frankie used to refer to himself as a twenty year overnight success!
From a poem by Timothy Mason: Gently, like water cracking stone. The droplet finds the granite’s fault and changes the face of the mountain with persistence and patience.
One of the best ways that I’ve found to change is by creating a discipline that lets me safely stumble, learn, adjust and win.
For me, that’s setting aside time every day to work on myself. I love it. But some days my motivation sucks. I might be working on some writing and the words don’t flow coherently. I might be working on a meditation and my mind wanders. Other days everything falls into place. Some days it’s just okay.
But all my best work has come about by consistently trying and taking the good with the bad. With food, the more I dig inside for how I am feeling, the more readily I can use my inner wisdom to reflect on what is working for me.
Some days I can stay focused on the eating goals I have. Other days I am tempted to divert. As long as I am in for the long run, I can pull myself back to where I am going and reset again. My failures don’t define me. I don’t quit today because of a temptation that happened yesterday.
Failure Finds Winners.
So, two questions for you today.
1) Where are you avoiding failure because you’re afraid of what it means?
2) What daily habit can you practice that will let you fail your way to finding winners?
Hit reply and let me know.
Follow your higher calling,
Vincent Dufort
P.S. If you’re ready to work on mindful eating, I’ll be keeping the 30 Day Mindful Eating Challenge Open for another week. Respond to this and I will add you to the challenge. The price will go up once the initial group has signed up.
