Lazaris... The Dimensions Of Success: The Success Cube The secret to consciously creating success is not to make it the central target of your desire, expectation, or imagination. Rather, accomp-lish the means. As we suggested in the first part of this article on success: Aim at being powerful, creative/productive, and aware/alive. Seek the enjoyment/happiness/joy, the access to re-sources, and be willing to adventure. Open your mind and heart to dominion. As you aim at the means of success, the ends - the actual manifestation - can occur. The ends will follow. As the means are accomplished, the ends will follow. When Success Doesn’t Happen What if they don’t? The techniques work. Too many people have created too much success with our suggestions. You can’t fault the technique. The concepts are sound. Metaphysics works. What if success doesn’t happen. There are basically four things you can do. You can blame yourself which leads to blaming others - someone or something. To do this you must retreat into a consensus reality def-inition of success. You must rely on a less-than/more-than continuum in order to assess blame — even self-blame. This approach may appeal to many, but we do not recommend it because it only defers responsibility, which eventually you will take. And it is a lie. You can rummage around your fears of failure. However, we caution you: Failure is not as scary as it used to be. After all, you have, each of you, dealt with failure many times. In many ways, though unpleasant, it is familiar. It is fashionable to fear failure. It can be valuable if you discover a thread or root of humiliation, perfection, or peer pressure that trips you up. We would look, but not dwell. Do not get caught up in your fears of failure. It is much more valuable to evaluate your fears of success. In your explorations of human potential, you have encountered the idea of fearing success. There are numerous fears associated with succeeding. Some of the most common: 1) FEAR OF RESPONSIBILITY for creating, maintaining, and sustaining the success once it has been created. It’s easier to be mediocre, for there is always potential improvement and praise. When you get the "A", however, you must maintain and sustain. The initial praise quickly turns to whispers and then is hushed. 2) FEAR OF FREEDOM from the past. You often have spoken or unspoken "failure-loyalty pacts" with family, friends, or with a destructive image of yourself. Honored, they imprison. 3) FEAR OF BOREDOM, the fear that life will lose its zest and appeal. Is there life after ambition? After success, what’s left? Not knowing can scare you. 4) FEAR OF USURY OR BETRAYAL accompanies success. When you look at a successful person and think it is all right to use them because, "they can afford it" or "they should expect it by now," you are setting your own fears in motion. When you think you will be nicer, more attentive, or laugh a little more with a successful person because they are successful, when you want to be around a successful person in hopes it will "rub off" or you will benefit by "being in their wake," you are creating your own fears of being used or betrayed when you become successful. 5) FEAR OF LONELINESS is like a fog. So much of your interaction with friends is about overcoming failure or about creating success. Once done, what do you talk about? What is the foundation of your friendships? Is there room to be successful? How often have you heard: "Yes, but are they happy? They may be rich, but look how lonely?" 6) FEAR OF VISIBILITY frightens many. There is a fear of criticism and ridicule. There is a fear of humiliation and rejection, not for failing — as we say you have done that many times — but for succeeding. 7) FEAR OF THE FUTURE creates its own limiter of success. We have often said: The problem is NOT that the world is going to be destroyed and that there will be no future; rather, the problem is that the world WON’T be destroyed and there WILL be a world and a future for which YOU are going to be responsible. The Success Cube The fourth thing you can do is to look at your success cube. The Success Cube is a concept we introduced to more fully explain the phenomenon of success. Many of you can create success, but you reach a limit and the success either stops or it falls away. It is almost as if you bump into a ceiling or something. Others of you can create seemingly unlimited success in certain arenas of your life, and have absolutely no success in other areas. It’s like the success is contained or bottled up. It does not spill over into the rest of your life. Most of you are running as fast as you can and, successful or not, it is just not working. It is just not working any more! Inadequate explanations give way to hackneyed phrases which, in turn, give way to "ho-hum" shrugs and absent shakes of the head. The search for meaning deteriorates to a breathy resolve to try again. "Maybe it will be different this time," is punctuated with a heave and a sigh rather than an exclamation! Each of you has a limit to your success. Those limits can be defined by blame or by fears of failure and success. However, one of the most controlling and unknown limiters of success is defined by the dimension of success: This is your Success Cube. In a three-dimensional reality it only makes sense that your success would have three dimensions. It makes sense, but you seldom con-sider more than one dimension: how much. If that fails, how many. Your success has height which is the measure of how much. How much prestige, money, position, possession, or…the criteria are set by your outward image - your as-sessment of how others see you and how you want to be seen by others. The height of your success is also determined by your beliefs and attitudes about yourself, about success, and about the relationship between the two. Most of you understand height. Your fear of success is often a fear of heights. The width of your success is a measure of how many; a measure of the number of areas in which you allow yourself the experience and the benefit of success. Some will be successful at work, with a very unsuccessful home life. Or vice versa. Some will be intel-lectually superb and an emotional clutz! Not vice versa, though. The width of your success is based upon your deservability — how much you honestly think and feel that you deserve to be suc-cessful. It is also the manifestation of your thoughts and feelings about the concepts of success. A lot of old wives with their tales have limited the width of your success. Your fear of success is often just a fear of stepping outside of your boundaries. The depth of success is the dimension that most of you ignore. You can understand height and width of success, but depth eludes you. Yes it does. It eludes you in life as well. Depth is the emotional and aesthetic richness YOU receive from your success. It is the creativity and productivity you stimulate in yourself. It is the hope and courage that the success, with all its height and width, gives you. It is the peace. You give love, and you work on receiving love. How often do you stop and just let yourself be loved? How often do you allow yourself to change because you know somebody loves you? That is the richness — the depth — of success. This elusive dimension comes from the choices and decisions you make about yourself and your interaction — your interface — with success. The choices and decisions you make about your encounter with success defines the depth. Your depth is also determined by your internal image — not how you want others or how others actually do see you, but how you honestly see yourself. The lack of depth is why your success is never enough even though everyone tells you that you should be happy. The frustration of unfulfillment is a lack of depth. The circles that never become spirals — when you feel like you are going around and around and staying in the same place, never improving, never learning more, or never expanding — the circles that never become spirals define the shal-lowness and lack of depth. The shallowness haunts. The lack of depth haunts, erodes, and will eventually conquers success. All success. The Secret 1. Define your Cube of Success. Define it as an abstract, as it applies to life — your life. Also honestly look at your Success Cubes (plural) in the various areas, arenas, of your life. What is your Success Cube around work, around love, around friendship, around recreation, around your spirituality? Each Cube may be different. You need to know. Use meditation to define and describe the three dimensions — height, width, and depth — of your success. Also use pencil and paper. You may need to practice drawing. More importantly, you may need to practice honesty. In your heart and mind, and then on paper, draw your Cube and Cubes. Look, understand, perceive.
2. Recognize that you created this Cube out of the raw materials of reality — beliefs/attitudes (height), thought/feelings (width), and decisions/choices (depth). You did it. It was also your outward and inward image and your issues of deserving that determined the Cube and Cubes, but you dictated the terms. You did it! Acknowledge that it was you. Others may have given you the raw materials and the substance of those materials, but you took them and you continued to use them. They are yours. Acknowledge it, for yourself. Then forgive yourself for the Cube and Cubes you have created. Forgive yourself for living there. Forgive yourself for the prison you made and for imprisoning your-self within. Then give yourself permission to change.
3. Meditatively get inside your existing Cube. If it is high with very little width and virtually no depth, then be inside this shaft-like cylinder. If you have lots of width with no height or depth, then feel yourself lying down in your coffin-like Cube. If your height is okay and the width is acceptable, notice how flat you feel — how up against it you feel. Be inside your Cube. As uncomfortable as it is: LIVE WITH IT! You have been living with it so far, living with it a little more is only going to help.
4. Stretch your Cube. In the meditation, do what you have to do to change the shape and size. SHAPE AND SIZE. Redesign your Cube. Give it what it lacks. Work with all the dimensions. If you only make it higher, you make lose volume in the width or depth. You may create more money or recognition, but pay for it in your home, friend, recreation, or spirit-ual success. You may pay for the added height by eliminating any emotional or aesthetic richness that was there already. To increase only the width can cost you in height and depth. To add only depth is martyrhood! Increase ALL dimensions with attention to those which are lacking. Create a new Cube and a new series of Cubes. The subconscious understands the pictures you create far more than any of the words you might say. The subconscious will un-derstand and respond. A Final Word As well as stretching your Cube in meditation, stretch it in fact. What are the beliefs/attitudes and images that define the height of your success? Change the pictures and change the stuff of which the pictures are made. Work with your thoughts/feelings and decisions/choices so you can fill the new Success Cube you have created. Find the walls. You may not see them with your eyes, but you can see and feel them with your heart and your mind. You can move them with your desire, expectation, and imagination… and your imagination… and your imagination.
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