Life is supposed to be a wonderful collection of always new experiences but we too often focus on the negative experiences of our past and so live our life in their presence and create our future in their shadow. Each of your experiences have taken place only once but you may have re-lived them a thousand times in your mind, thereby giving them a thousand times more power than they are due; a thousand more places in your life than they are due; and a thousand more strings to pull you with than they are due.

Ultimately, negative experiences can be transformed into positive lessons and so can become the ticket to your success rather than the excess baggage that prevents it.

Goldsmiths from other towns became curious about his activities and one day they called to see him. He told them what he was doing, but was very careful to emphasize the need for secrecy.

If their plan was exposed, the scheme would fail, so they agreed to form their own secret alliance. Each returned to his own town and began to operate as Fabian had taught.

People now accepted the receipts as being as good as gold itself, and many receipts were deposited for safe keeping in the same way as coins. When a merchant wished to pay another for goods, he simply wrote a short note instructing Fabian to transfer money from his account to that of the second merchant. It took Fabian only a few minutes to adjust the figures.

The story you are about to read is, of course, fiction. But if you found it to be disturbingly close to the truth and would like to know who Fabian was in real life, a good starting point is a study on the activities of the English goldsmiths in the 16th & 17th centuries.

The Beginning…

Fabian was excited as he once more rehearsed his speech for the crowd certain to turn up tomorrow. He had always wanted prestige and power and now his dreams were going to come true.

He was a craftsman working with silver and gold, making jewelry and ornaments, but he became dissatisfied with working for a living. He needed excitement, a challenge, and now his plan was ready to begin.

For the last few years, wherever I go, people want to discover how to become a career renegade. They all want to know how to turn something, whether it’s knitting, painting, writing, or growing grapes, into enough cash to call it a living. Especially when everyone around them keeps telling them it’s just not possible.

The conversation inevitably turns to the two giant questions that stop nearly everyone in their tracks:

1. What if the thing that makes my heart sing doesn’t pay enough to support me?
2. Or, what if it could be lucrative, but only if I was at the top of the field?