When I first left my prestigious legal career to dare the writing life, part of me was terrified that I would fail. Of course I didn't want to starve. But worse yet for my precious ego, I couldn't bear looking stupid. I dreaded feeling like I'd chased a hint of a rainbow and slammed into the rusted barbed wire of reality. “She should have kept her day job,” crooned the gremlins in my mind.

Today I know you can only thrive by doing something that you love. It's just common sense. Doing something you love gives you invincible strength and peace of mind. There is no way to fail. Here's why:

1) You breathe fire when you're inspired. When we do something we love, we tap into dynamic mastery and limitless grace. When I love, I become extraordinary. I can move mountains and I am thrilled to do so. Nothing is an obstacle to an explosion.

2) Doing what you love turns a moment into a moon walk. Using your talent alters your brain chemistry, expands time, boosts your immune system, and makes you more attractive to your cat and to your sensitive people friends. The creative mind realizes new possibilities and makes different choices. One creative thought tends to lead to another and another and pretty soon you're in the rapture zone and can do anything—except fail.

3) Doing what you love guarantees you peace of heart. Personal integrity inspires an ease of soul. I feel proud when I take a stand for my own life. When I'm ignoring my love and gifts, I am jumpy and irritable or depressed and lethargic. No matter what my life looks like, I am failing every minute by not doing my dreams. It's the undertow of “soul failure,” the haunted feeling that we're not living what we came to live.

Okay, so what would happen if you tried for something and didn't get it? That form would simply turn into another. In the creative life, everything catalyzes us into further expression. I have an artist client who ripped up a painting into tiny pieces and then used those fragments in a mosaic design. There is no wasted love. Even science says, that pure energy can never be destroyed.

If you don't get a certain result, I bet there's a better fit for you down the road. For example, I sent a self-conscious manuscript of This Time I Dance! Creating the Work You Love to literary agents who rejected it. That “failure” prompted me to totally ignore “the market” and write, design and self-publish the book of my bones. Later my self-published book was discovered, praised, and bought by Tarcher/Penguin. I'm glad those first few agents refused my original manuscript. That “failure” gave me nothing left to loose and prompted me to pray and wail on paper. It led me to my greatest joy yet.

But people do fail, you think. No, that's interpretation. Some may choose to wear a momentary outcome as a poisonous badge of honor, lift a bitter glass of cynicism and toast the death of dreams. But that's a choice. It's the choice to stop dancing, to stop learning, to stop believing, and trusting the integrity of your journey.

I never fail while dancing. As long as I'm listening to the moment and moving, I'm going forward; there is no going backward. So dear one, our success is inevitable. There is no wasted love. There is no wasted creativity. There is no wasted peace of mind. And there is no way to stand still in your life, when you're dancing.

©2007 Tama J. Kieves. All rights reserved.