Wake Up and Live - Chapter 1 - Why do We Fail Success as a Paradox...

(Excerpt from The Strangest Secret Library – available on
Amazon.)
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Why Do We Fail? - 1
Chapter 1
WITH the time and energy we spend in making failure a
certainty we might have certain success.
A nonsensical paradox? No; fortunately it is a sober, literal
truth, one which holds a great deal of promise.
Suppose a man had an appointment a hundred miles north
of his home, and that if he kept it he would be sure of
having health, much happiness, fair prosperity, for the rest
of his life. He has just time enough to get there, just enough
gas in his car. He drives out, but decides that it would be
more fun to go twenty-five miles south before starting out in
earnest.
That is nonsense! Yes, isn't it? The gas had nothing to do
with it; time had no preference as to how it would be spent;
the road ran north as well as south, yet he missed his
appointment. Now, if that man told us that, after all, he had
quite enjoyed the drive in the wrong direction, that in some
ways he found it pleasanter to drive with no objective than
to try to keep a date, that he had had a touching glimpse of
his old home by driving south, should we praise him for
being properly philosophical about having lost his
opportunity? No, we should think he had acted like an
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Why Do We Fail? - 2
imbecile. Even if he had missed his appointment by getting
into a daydream in which he drove automatically past a
road sign or two, we should still not absolve him. Or if he
had arrived too late from having lost his way when he might
have looked up his route on a good map and failed to do so
before starting, we might commiserate with him, but we
should indict him for bad judgment.
Yet when it comes to going straight to the appointments we
make with ourselves and our own fulfillment we all act very
much like the hero of this silly fable: we drive the wrong
way. We fail where we might have succeeded by spending
the same power and time.
Failure indicates that energy has been poured into the
wrong channel. It takes energy to fail.
Now this is something which we seldom see at once.
Because we commonly think of failure as the conventional
opposite of success, we continue to make false antitheses of
the qualities which attend success and failure. Success is
bracing, active, alert; so the typical attitude of failure, we
believe, must be lethargy, inertia, a supine position.
Report excerpted from The Strangest Secret Library

Why Do We Fail? - 3
True enough; but that does not mean that no energy is
being used. Let any psychologist tell you how much energy a
mature person must expend to resist motion.
A powerful struggle must be waged against the forces of life
and movement in order to remain inert, although this
struggle takes place so far beneath the surface of our lives
that we do not always become aware of it. Physical inaction
is no true sign that life-force is not being burned away. So
even the idler is using fuel while they dream.
When failure comes about through devoting precious hours
to time-killing pursuits, we can all see that energy is being
diverted from its proper channel. But there are ways of
killing time which do not look like dissipation. They can
seem, on the contrary, like conscientious and dutiful hard
work, they often draw praise and approval from onlookers,
and arouse a sense of complacency in us. It is only by
looking more closely, by discovering that this work gets us
nowhere, that it both tires us and leaves us unsatisfied, that
we see here again energy is being devoted to the pursuit of
failure.
But why should this be so? Why, if, with the same energy we
must use in any case, we might be succeeding, do we so

Why Do We Fail? - 4
seldom live the lives we hoped and planned to live? Why do
we accomplish so little, and thwart ourselves senselessly?
Why, when we start late, or run out of gas because of
carelessness, or miss road-signs through daydreaming, do
we think we are being properly philosophical when we give
ourselves and others excuses for failure which will not hold
water? No one truly consoles themselves by considering
that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, that to
travel hopefully is better than to arrive, that half-a-loaf is
better than no bread. Such proverbs are the cynical
distillation of experience, but they are nothing to live by. We
deceive no one, although our compromises and excuses are
accepted by our fellows as long as they are in the same boat.
The successful man or woman listens to such whistling in
the dark with amusement and incredulity, privately
concluding that there is a great deal of hypocrisy loose in
the world. They have the best of evidence that the rewards
of well directed activity far surpass all the by-products of
failure, that one infinitesimal accomplishment in reality is
worth a mountain of dreams.
Even as we tell of the compensation of failure we are not
quite comfortable. We do not truly believe - although our
proverbs sound as though we did - that one must choose

Why Do We Fail? - 5
either success or the good life. We know that those who
succeed see the same sunsets, breathe the same air, love
and are loved no less than failures; and in addition they
have something more: the knowledge that they have chosen
to move in the direction of life and growth instead of
acquiescing in death and decay. However we may talk, we
know that Emerson was right when he wrote: "Success is
constitutional; depends on a plus condition of mind and
body, on power of work, on courage." Then why do we fail?
Especially, why do we work hard at failure?
Because, beside being creatures subject to the Will to Live
and the Will to Power, we are driven by another will, the
Will to Fail, or die.
It is possible to get back the energy that is now going into
failure and use it to healthy ends. There are certain facts -
plain, universal, psychological truths - which, when once
seen, bring us to definite conclusions. From those
conclusions we can make a formula on which to act. There
is a simple, practical procedure which will turn us around
and set our faces in the right direction. It is the formula, as
we have said, on which, consciously or unconsciously, every
successful person acts.

Why Do We Fail? - 6
The procedure is simple, the first steps of putting it into
practice so easy that those who prefer to dramatize their
difficulties may refuse to believe that anything so
uncomplicated could possibly help them. On the other
hand, since it takes little time and soon brings its own
evidence that, simple or not, its consequences are
frequently amazing, it should be worth trying. A richer life,
better work, the experience of success and its rewards:
those ends are surely worth one experiment in procedure.
All the equipment needed is imagination and the
willingness to disturb old habit-patterns for a while, to act
after a novel fashion long enough to finish one piece of
work. How long that period is will vary, of course, with the
work to be accomplished, and whether it is all dependent on
oneself or of the unwieldier type which the executive and
administrator know, where the factor of other human
temperaments must be taken into account.
In any case, some results from the experiment will be seen
at once. Often these first results are so astonishing that to
enumerate them here might alienate readers of a sober
habit of mind. To hear of them before coming to them
normally would be like hearing of miracles, and some of the

Why Do We Fail? - 7
effectiveness of the program might be lost by the intrusion
of the very doubts we are out to banish.
Once more: however remarkable the results, the process
is straightforward and uncomplicated. It is worth trying, for
it has worked in hundreds of lives. It can work in any life
that is not more truly dedicated to failure than to success.

Why Do We Fail? - 8
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