I’d lost $8,000 and neither the sending nor the receiving bank knew where it was. Lost in the banking ether between Florida and Edinburgh. "It’s up to the sending bank, we haven’t received it," said the receiving bank. "We’ve sent it. It’s up to the receiving bank," said the sending bank.

"Where on earth is my money!" I said.

Why the problem? All the numbers I’d been given were correct – SWIFT accounts, addresses, everything. So the lost money was a result of some idiosyncrasy on the part of the banks.

And so, for six whole weeks, my money floated around. I received it… eventually… and even got a "consideration" from one of the banks whose New York transmitting branch had sat with the money until we tracked it down. But finding it took a lot of haranguing on my part. ($8,000 is peanuts in the world of international finance.)

This experience taught me a lesson. Now, whenever I send any money from my bank to anywhere – whether to set up a monthly transfer to pay the gas bill or get funds to my kids in Europe – I send a dollar first as a test. If the dollar arrives, I send the full amount.

For the past eight years (since my $8,000 "incident"), I’ve done my "dollar test." Three times, the dollar either didn’t arrive or arrived after some delay. In each case, a call to customer service of the relevant company resolved the "why" and further transactions with them proved trouble free.

Could a dollar save your day?

"I don’t dance," Jane said to her cousin Ray as they watched an older couple dance at the wedding. "I’ve got two left feet. It’s just too embarrassing."

"I used to be terrible," Ray said. "But then I took some lessons."

"I couldn’t even take lessons," Jane said. "I’d be embarrassed to have the teacher see how bad I am."

"I know what you mean," Ray said. "I feel that way about golf."

I used to feel that way about public speaking. I dreaded the thought of it. And when I was forced to make a speech, I did a terrible job – which only made me dread the next speech even more. It was a vicious cycle.

Then, in the early 1980s, I became editorial director of a newsletter business in South Florida. And suddenly, instead of just sitting behind a desk all day, I found myself in a position where I had to conduct meetings and give presentations at industry functions on a fairly regular basis – something I was ill-prepared to do. So I decided to enroll in a Dale Carnegie program for public speaking.

Somehow, I registered in the wrong course. Instead of focusing on speechmaking, it had a broader goal. And, as I’ve explained before in ETR, that program changed my life. It taught me the importance of goal setting and taking action. But it also, inadvertently, taught me to be more comfortable as a speaker.

My speechmaking skills improved almost accidentally. Every week, we had to read a chapter of Carnegie’s classic book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and then come to class and make a two-minute presentation about how we were going to put the principle of that chapter to work in our lives.

On Thursday evenings after work, I would drive a half-hour to the place where we met. During that drive, I thought about what I was going to say. It was difficult in the beginning, but each week it got a little easier.

By the end of the 14-week course, I was performing at a near-professional level. I had won several awards in competition, and was routinely rated at the top of the class. The final session was a sort of commencement ceremony. Relatives and friends were allowed to attend, which tripled the size of the audience we had to speak to. Everyone did pretty well, as I remember. I gave the last speech. I was still a little nervous when I got up to the podium, but I had learned a lot by then. So I took a deep breath and did my thing.

I got a strong round of applause. Several people I didn’t even know came up to congratulate me, and one suggested I should become a comedian. I wasn’t foolish enough to take his advice to heart, but it did make me happy to think that I had made so much progress in so little time, starting from practically zero.

How did I conquer my fear of public speaking? The same way that you conquer the fear of anything else.

So… What Are You Afraid Of?

There are entire systems of psychotherapy devoted to curing people of their fears. The most effective are those that gradually expose the phobic person to whatever it is that they’re afraid of. If you feared snakes, for example, the treatment might begin with looking at photographs of snakes. Then, once you were comfortable with that, you might move on to watching videotapes of snakes. And then on to looking at snakes in cages… and then looking at them uncaged but at a distance… and then, gradually, getting closer until you could actually handle them without emotional discomfort.

Likewise, if you were afraid of public speaking the therapy would be to make a very short speech in front of a very small audience and then to gradually expose yourself to longer speeches and bigger audiences until you were comfortable speaking for an hour or more in front of a large number of people.

That was what happened to me. The Dale Carnegie course I took turned out to be a therapeutic program of graduated exposure therapy to public speaking.

Fears of specific things – snakes, public speaking, flying, etc. – can be overcome with gradual exposure. But what about more general fears… like the fear of failing?

To answer that question, we’ve got to figure out what, exactly, we are afraid of when we say we are afraid of failing.

Imagine that you are alone in a quiet room trying to solve a difficult crossword puzzle. You can’t do it.

How do you feel?

Now imagine yourself competing in a national crossword puzzle championship. It is down to four finalists – you and three others. The four of you are standing up on a stage in front of large puzzles with markers in your hand. Six hundred people in the audience and millions more on TV are watching you. The timekeeper gives the signal and you are off, filling out the answers as fast as you can. Before you have finished one-sixth of your puzzle, the first winner is declared. Before you have finished a quarter of it, the second winner is rung in. Now it is just you and one opponent. You are halfway done and feeling hopeful. Then you hear the buzzer. He has finished well ahead of you. You are standing there with your marker in your hand. The other three contestants are smiling.

How do you feel this time?

When I tried this little experiment, I had two distinctly different emotions. Imagining the first scenario made me feel a little angry. Imagining the second one made me feel embarrassed.

In the first scenario, I am just an ordinary puzzle player playing an ordinary game. I fail to accomplish my goal, but I am not embarrassed. In the second scenario, I am a national-caliber puzzle solver. I fail… but in front of a large audience. This adds shame to my anger. And that feels much worse.

So perhaps we can say this about the fear of failing: A big part of what we are afraid of is embarrassment – being shamed in front of other people.

Humiliation and Humility

When embarrassment is extreme, we call it humiliation. If you pass gas at a fancy dinner party, you feel embarrassed. If you spill wine on your hostess’s designer dress, you feel humiliated.

Humiliation is what happens to embarrassment when it is mixed with pride. The prouder you are, the more failure hurts.

Which brings us to our cure for the fear of failure: humility.

I’m guilty of pride myself. I’m proud of my writing, for example, and the success I’ve had in business. So I have to keep reminding myself to be humble about those things. But I am not proud of everything I do. I take no pride in my ability to dance or to sing or to speak foreign languages because I do those things so badly. And because my ego isn’t involved, I am not embarrassed to ask stupid questions, to show myself as a beginner, and ultimately to fail again and again as I attempt to master those skills.

The truth is, when I started out in business I wasn’t very good at that either. Again, that made it possible for me to ask lots of questions, look stupid, and make mistakes… which accelerated my learning curve.

The Secret of Accelerated Failure

That last observation brings us to an important principle of success. At ETR, we call it "the secret of accelerated failure."

The principle of accelerated failure is this: To develop any complex skill, you must be willing to make mistakes and endure failures. The faster you can make those mistakes and suffer those failures, the quicker you will master the skill.

We teach this secret to our managers. We encourage them to allow their employees to fail. Not to fail stupidly. Not to make the same mistakes over and over again. But to feel free to fail at something so long as it was done in the pursuit of knowledge.

If you play golf or practice Jiu Jitsu, you know this to be true. If you tense up and focus on not avoiding mistakes, you will learn very slowly. If you relax, let the mistakes happen, and learn from them, you will advance quickly.

It starts with being humble. Humble enough to accept the fact that when you begin anything new you are likely to do it poorly.

Humility Is Nature’s First Gift

Pride prevents us from admitting we are incompetent. But we are all incompetent when we’re learning.

Think of how a baby learns to walk. He begins by crawling and then advances to "forward falling" (as my brother calls it), and then to walking like a little drunk, and finally to walking masterfully. Babies don’t feel shame because they are not proud. There is a reason that pride does not invade the human psyche until six or seven years of age. There is simply too much to learn before then. If toddlers had pride, it would take them years or even decades to walk and talk properly.

Humility is a much underrated virtue. It provides us with at least three significant advantages:

• It makes us more endearing. Humble people – especially accomplished individuals who remain humble – are well liked.

• It makes it easier to get cooperation. Humble people get more cooperation from others because they don’t try to force strong-minded people to accept their ideas.

• It makes it easier and faster to learn. Humble people are able to ask questions, make mistakes, and experience failure without embarrassment. This attracts good people to them who want to help. Humble people get the best teachers and get the most from their teachers.

If Humility Is the Solution, How Does a Proud Person Become Humble?

Now we are coming to the most important part of this discussion – a practical plan for defeating the fear of failure. Here’s how you can do it:

1. Begin by accepting the truth. You are a good person, but that doesn’t mean you are naturally good at everything. Look in the mirror and think about the skill you want to accomplish. Say out loud, "I accept the fact that right now I am incompetent at (name the skill)." Repeat this exercise until it doesn’t hurt.

2. Admit your incompetence to an indifferent audience. Once you can say it in front of a mirror, say it in front of a living human being. Begin by admitting your incompetence to someone who doesn’t care. Admit to your Spanish teacher that you are incompetent at public speaking. Admit to your public speaking coach that you are incompetent at speaking Spanish. Repeat this exercise until you can do it with grace and good humor.
 
3. Admit your incompetence to a judgmental audience. Admit that you are no good at languages to your Spanish teacher. Admit that you have two left feet to your dance instructor. Do this not once, but every time you make a mistake or fail in some way. Do it with grace and good humor. As pop psychologists say, "own" the feeling.

4. Admit your incompetence to someone who can punish you. This is the ultimate test. The next time you volunteer for a difficult assignment at work, admit to your boss that you might fail before you succeed. Do it with grace and good humor and you will be amazed at the result. Your boss won’t can you on the spot. (Unless he is really incompetent.) Rather, he will admire you for your humility. After all, he knows you are not yet competent. All he wants is your commitment to carry on until you are.

At Agora Inc. and at ETR, our most productive and successful executives are very comfortable about saying, "I’m going to try such and such. I’ll probably screw it up completely. But if I eventually succeed… just think what good will come of it!"

That’s what you want for your company. That’s what you want for yourself. Defeat your fear of failure by being happy and even eager to try and fail until you finally succeed. That’s how Edison invented the light bulb. That’s how Michael Jordan, a very mediocre basketball player in high school, became the greatest hoops player of all time. They weren’t afraid of failure. You shouldn’t be either.

[Ed. Note: Admitting that you might fail at a goal is the first step toward achieving it. The second step is to find a mentor who can give you techniques and motivation to move forward. We've got just such a mentor for you. Learn the details here.]

Here’s another roundup of look-alike and sound-alike words I frequently see confused:

• A bomb is defused; something that’s spread around is diffused.

• A flare is an illuminated signal; something done with style displays flair.

• If you read something carefully, you’re poring over it, not pouring (which you do only with a beverage or other liquid).

• If you’re reluctant to do something, you’re loath to do it; you loathe something if you hate it.

• An interesting discovery will pique your interest, not peak it.

Finally, this verse may help you avoid another common misuse:

An apiary’s home to bees;
An aviary’s for the birds.
Which proves that we should watch our words,
And learn to mind our P’s and V’s.

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was a direct-response copywriter. He is author of the wordplay books Cruel and Unusual Puns and Acronymania, and is now writing a book that also blends language and humor.]

Your success in life will be largely determined by your ability to find your true calling, the right work for you to do, and then putting your whole heart into doing it very well.

The happiest people are those who have carefully thought through who they are, what they want, where they are going, and then decided exactly what they need to do to get to their goal. Asking yourself five targeted questions can help you home in on whatever path is right for you.

#1: What do I do easily and well?

When you are seeking your true calling, you must look at the activities that have always been easy for you but which have been difficult for others. Often, you will get comments and compliments on how well you do a particular task. You will be surprised when you hear those remarks, because you never even thought about it that much. It just seemed natural for you from the very beginning.

My daughter is a natural and spontaneous little actress. From the time she was three or four years old, she has memorized lines and acted in every school play and function that has ever come up. In fact, by the time she was six, she was memorizing every line in the school play, not only her own but the lines of every other child. When the other children forgot their lines, Christina would whisper them and keep the play on track.

When Christina was 11 years old, she appeared at a city council meeting and gave a speech in favor of a permit allowing her school to expand. She stood up at the meeting, on a chair, in front of 150 adults, and gave an impassioned little talk. As a result, the permit was granted – and Christina was on the front page of two newspapers the following day.

#2: What are the things that I have done in life that have been most responsible for my success?

In looking back over your work and your activities, what are the things you have done that have given you the greatest rewards and satisfaction? If you work for a company, what are the activities you have engaged in that have achieved the very best results for yourself and your company? Your previous success experiences are signposts pointing to the sort of things that you should be doing more and more of if you want to deploy yourself more fully for greater happiness and satisfaction in life.

#3: What would I do differently, knowing what I know now?

Is there anything that you are currently doing that you wouldn’t start up again if you had to do it over? Is there any relationship that you are in that you wouldn’t get into if you could make the choice today? Is there any job or part of any job that you are doing that you would not embark upon, knowing what you now know, if you had to do it over?

As many as 95 percent of people working today are under-employed, not working to their full capacity for themselves and their companies. Only 5 percent, when interviewed, will say that they are working fully extended at their current job. Only 5 percent feel that their entire potential is being consumed and that they are working on the outer edge of their abilities. These people also tend to be the happiest, the highest paid, and the most fulfilled in any organization or enterprise.

#4: What work would I choose to do if I won a million dollars, cash, in the lottery tomorrow?

This is a question I sometimes ask my seminar audiences. When you hear this question, your gut reaction is a good indicator of where you are today and possibly where you should be going in the future. Most people, when they think of winning a million dollars, think of quitting their current job and doing something else. There is nothing wrong with that. Since most people have backed into their current jobs, taking them because they just happened to be there at the time a job was needed, most people probably should be doing something else.

Napoleon Hill once said the key to success in America is to find out what you really enjoy doing, and then find a way to make a good living at it. What do you most love to do?

Successful people don’t feel like they work at all. They are doing what they love to do, and they are so busy doing it that their work becomes their play. Their work life and their personal life blends together like a hand fitting neatly into a glove. There is no separation. They are totally committed individuals who are accomplishing far more in a shorter period of time than the average person who is merely going through the motions.

#5: If I were absolutely guaranteed tremendous success in any job I chose, what field would I go into?

One of the major reasons people hold themselves back from doing what they are truly meant to do is that they are afraid they will fail in some way. And being afraid that you will fail is the surest guarantor that you will fail.

But what if you are absolutely guaranteed success in any field you choose? What would it be? What would you want to do if you had unlimited time, unlimited resources, and guaranteed success?

The answer to that question should cause you to tingle a little bit. It should make your stomach flutter. It should send a thrill of excitement and anticipation through you that tells you this is the job you should be doing.

Asking and answering the above five questions can change your life.

You have within you talents and abilities so vast that you could never use them all if you lived to be a thousand. You have natural skills and talents that can enable you to overcome any obstacle and achieve any goal you could ever set for yourself. There are no limits on what you can be, have, or do if you find your true calling.

When you become one of the few people who are doing what they love to do, who are totally absorbed in doing something they really care about, you will make more progress in a couple of years than the average wage slave makes in five or 10 years. You will come to the attention of people who can help you and open doors for you. You will be happy and fulfilled in both your work and your personal relationships. You will have more energy, enthusiasm, and creativity. You will unlock your true potential, and your future will become unlimited.

[Ed. Note: Finding your true calling can help you find happiness, success, and even wealth. Put Brian's strategies to work, and you could have it all. And if you want to find your focal point and learn to maximize your income and minimize your effort, check out Brian's 6-CD Power of Clarity program.]