Aaron Shields’s Mind Terroir

Meet three failures:

1) One of the greats in the field wrote an essay doubting the future of his chosen form of the medium. After trying to convince everyone in the company to greenlight his project, he found only one supporter. His project was later terminated and he was fired.

2) He graduated last in his class in his chosen field from an institution not well know for what he wanted to pursue. After college, he couldn’t find a job and his father even wrote a letter begging for help to get his son a position.

3) He was told he didn’t have enough musical talent to join the choir. Later, when his band tried to secure a record contract, he was told that guitar groups were on the way out, making his future success unlikely.

Who were these three men?

1) After being fired from Disney, John Lasseter took a position with Pixar and went on to change the field of animation with his landmark film Toy Story. Now, Lasseter is the chief creative officer at both Pixar and Disney.

2) After being forced to take a position as patent clerk, Albert Einstein went on to change the world of physics.

3) The boy with no musical talent was Paul McCartney and the band that had no future was The Beatles.

All three of these men share one thing in common: passion for their chosen fields.

Passion can propel you through all types of failure and it is rare to achieve real success unless you are passionate about what you are doing.

Passion causes the mind to be naturally creative. As psychiatrist Carl Jung noted, “The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”

What are you passionate about? How can you apply your passion to your work?

Tags:   Creativity · einstein · Innovation · jung · passionNo Comments