“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
—Winston Churchill
 

n 2015, a coaching mentor of mine whose school I had graduated announced that he was opening registration for a big event he was doing in Arizona. He was going to have some other speakers fly in and talk about their experiences of reinventing themselves. I asked him if I could please be one of those speakers, to which he enthusiastically agreed. He had always been a huge supporter of meditation and the work I was teaching.

The event was scheduled for April, which was about a month and a half away. It dawned on me that it would be really fun if everyone who attended could walk away with a physical reminder of my talk. A flyer didn’t seem exciting enough. But creating a little booklet did!

A year prior, I self-published a 36-page kids’ book. I did all the research on what was involved and taught myself everything I needed to know to do that. So I thought I could do the same thing with this booklet. I had been writing posts and stories from my training for a year and a half since I’d left the Zen monastery, so I had a good collection of written work to add to this book. But as I started to compile this “cute little booklet,” it ended up getting bigger and bigger!

At some point, I paused to do a little research to see what I would need to do to have this book ready in time for the event. It was going to be tight, but I pressed on.

Then I had the idea to add some of my cartoons I drew while I was at the monastery. Those few turned out to be ten total – and I still needed to color them! (Yes, I decided to do the book in color).

My partner Karen and I were reading and editing what I had compiled until the late night hours.

Fast forward to the last few days before my deadline. I was at the window of time when I had to submit the book to successfully have it shipped to Arizona. It looked good. Everything was where it needed to be. I checked and double-checked everything before I uploaded the manuscript to the self-publishing platform. And then I pushed “Go.”

The next morning, I received an email saying there was trouble with the formatting. Oops. Okay, I saw what I needed to do to fix the highlighted quality issues. I corrected it and resubmitted it. Only to receive another email telling me that it didn’t pass. Failed again! Now, this was starting to get alarming because every time I submitted the book to be reviewed, it took a day for a response to come back from the publishers. I didn’t have that many days left!

Another failed attempt, and I missed the shipping deadline for it to get to the event on time. I felt the voices swarming around my head with their panic, frustration, and anger. So I went outside onto the porch to just sit. It looked like this book was not going to become a reality for the event after all. I was ready to call it quits when I looked up at the beautiful day in front of me. The trees’ branches were swaying in the light breeze, and the birds were singing. In that instant, an insight dropped in to give the publishers a call. There was no phone number to be found anywhere on their website, but I kept digging around until I found a way to contact support.

A moment before, I had been listening to the voices proclaim their “sage” advice – that “this must be a sign from the universe. It just wasn’t supposed to be.”

When I got on the line, I spoke to a nice woman who saw what the issue was with my book and she helped me push it through so that it passed inspection. I thanked her profusely. Then I asked her about the shipping because I had missed the deadline. I told her about my event and that I was trying to get the books there for all the guests. She informed me that shipping was possible (my heart rose), but I had not factored in the production of the book and that takes some time since there were many other books in the queue before mine (my heart fell). She heard my crestfallen sigh and asked me to hold for a moment. She disappeared while the gleeful “hold music” mockingly played in the background. When she returned, she told me that they were going to move my book up to the top of the production line so that I could meet my deadline. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She said I should pay for expedited shipping and that would ensure the books make it to the event on time. I was thrilled! More profuse thank yous!

After I hung up the phone, I was elated that this book made it to the finish line and won. Not only that, but I received confirmation that my three boxes of 75 books made it to the hotel a few days ahead of schedule!

What I knew was that if I had listened to those voices, I would have given up right then and there. But fortunately, I had the practice and the experience to know that an insight was only possible for me in the silence – not with the voices. It was in that momentary shift that I received good information. Information to keep going despite the perceived “failure.”

As a result, this book was underneath all the guests’ seats in preparation for my talk on April 12, 2015.