If "necessity is the mother of invention", then desperation may be the father of innovation.
One my recent book discoveries provides a bit of daily inspiration from the brilliant mind of Napoleon Hill. The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published "Napoleon Hill's Positive Action Plan: 365 Meditations For Making Each Day A Success." I now find it impossible to start my day without getting my daily dose -- I'm completely addicted.
One of the gems from the past couple days:
Many Succesful People Have Found Opportunities In Failure And Adversity That They Could Not Recognize In More Favorable Circumstances.
Samuel Johnson once observed that the prospect of being hanged wonderfully focuses the mind. You yourself may have found that your mind seems sharpest when you are faced with the greatest difficulties. Desperation often proves you really are better than you think. But with the exception of an immediate threat to your life or health, there are few situations that require instantaneous action. When the world seems to be conspiring against you and nothing is working out right, pause for a few moments to think the situation through -- then develop the most appropriate plan of action, the one that has the greatest likelihood of success.
How true is that?
How many times have we spent fretting over some impending doom we saw coming our way -- but once the worst was upon us we managed to make it through because our innovation-under-pressure produced a seemingly impossible solution to our predicament?
Those cliches tell us "every cloud has a silver lining" and "it's always darkest before the dawn", etc. I'm betting those bits of illumination are coming from the light bulbs going off above our heads.
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