Expect to succeed—even if you don't.

So often as a creative consultant, I'm asked what my advice is for basic success in anything and everything from creative project planning for your boss' all-inclusive, multi-cultural holiday party featuring a traditional Nigerian Christmas, to writing a confident letter to HR so that you can create your own job title as Director of Photography for the new website for that antique shop in Topeka. My answer is almost always the same: "See the success as if it's already there, and then, take that feeling, and let it fuel all the excitement and ideas it can!" Some ideas will be great and some horrendous, but the whole point is in the doing. In coaching and in cognitive behavioral therapy, this is often called "acting as if." It's a practice that primes the thinker to feel what it's like to be where he or she wants to be. More to this point, the science has shown that, very often, our emotions and biological systems can't tell much of a difference between the feelings of our imaginations and the arrival and actualizations of our goals.  (Read a full text on how acting, and imagination create experience, empathy, and more here.) The more you do this, the more practiced and proficient you'll be come. Try it now. I'd like you to picture yourself in your ideal job. You're in a chair you like. You're talking with people you enjoy working with. Janet just had a great idea for that new project way before the deadline! You smile and feel excitement in your belly!

Now, look at the above scenario and notice how you feel when you're thinking about whatever relatable scenario you have for your own life: planning a trip with your partner, starting that new business you've been putting off. Take that exact thing, that exact wonderful feeling, and feel it as if it's right there in front of you! Notice how you can't stop smiling! Notice how many multitudes of ideas pop into your head! Notice how "in the zone" you feel or  how going "with the flow" becomes your natural state. (Read more on flow psychology here.)  You see yourself succeeding, getting that promotion you've known is coming, and that relationship you're picturing seems so good! You sit better. You stand better. You speak clearly. You're willing to take chances. Go right ahead! Try that new cardio salsa class; take that trip to Indonesia; write that book based on that epiphany you had in tenth grade. When you act from that joy and that right feeling, you don't rush from a place of fear and make rash leaps into a void of no return; rather, you act with a level head and being willing to fail a bunch and figure it out as you go. In this much, practice doesn't make perfect as much as it just makes learning and grows a belief that your goal is possible.

All successes start with an idea of what's possible. A thousand years ago, could anyone have predicted the iPhone? Think even farther back to the wonders of the ancient world. Could the rulers of the Egyptian dynasties—in all their belief in the bedazzling power of the Pyramids of Giza and the Egyptian people's unwavering confidence in the most advanced knowledge entrusted to the great Library of Alexandria—have conceived of some of the poorest people on our planet now having access to the ubiquitous LIBRARY OF EVERYTHING that we call Google? Nope. All these miracles or creativity first had to be imagined and believed possible by their inventors. It's the faith in what could be possible, (what psychologists refer to as growth mindset. Read here.) that creates ideas, technology, etc. It's this growth mindset that I really believe fosters a willingness to experiment and make mistakes that lead to eventual success. I can attest to this in my own work. Some of the best music mixes I've made have been by accident, and I sometimes write scripts and stories after a mishap like falling down in my kitchen while saving a chocolate cake from splattering onto my kitchen floor. This kind of "pro-mishappenstance" mentality is even more useful and even fun when one considers, that, to paraphrase Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, art and the arts—on even the broadest of spectrums—are not, nor have they ever been fatal to a well-lived life. There are no botched surgeries caused by a smudged painting, no loss of life from a flubbed lyric at a Kanye West concert, and neither your health nor your finances will likely ever be compromised by your hatred for Salvador Dali's Mae West lips couch, (despite your mother's thinking to the contrary). Your creativity can afford mistakes.

Last, but never least, I want to leave you with the notion that you should find joy in the steps: the journey, the air you breathe, the path you travel. Life doesn't wait for you to be happy when it's over. Choose to be happy now! Choose to expect to be happy with all that life gives you. You will fail, and you will succeed. You may have to change plans and mix it up, but staying expectant of good things will make you enjoy and see all the good that is, and seeing this positive growth will most likely encourage exploration in you. You'll find yourself getting more done and being happier: happily failing and succeeding, and dreaming maybe a little bigger and a little more boldly each time. So, take chances, fall down, get up, make mistakes, innovate, invent, and reinvent—and expect to succeed even when you don't—and in the words of the late Joseph Campbell, follow your bliss!