Success is something that happens all by itself once you've decided to have it happen and let go of the process. How many things in your life are you absolutely certain that you can be successful at? Take some time to answer this question because your answer will establish the upper limit of your success.

What I never used to understand about life is that success is our natural state of being. Failure is a learned experience that a lot of us decide to master through our determined efforts. And master it we do because success in everything, even failure, is our natural state of being.

So why do that? If success is what we are all born to do in whatever we turn our hand at why on earth do we decide to become masters of failure? The reasons can be as varied as grains of sand. Maybe we are trying to gain the approval of others by living up to their expectations, maybe we value the experience of being miserable more than the experience of being happy. Who knows and you know what? It doesn't matter. Understanding the reason behind something isn't necessary to change it. It might amuse us and stimulate our minds but it's not essential work on the road to living success again.

Success is easy once you realise that it's your equilibrium state and you don't have to work at it. If you've less success than you'd like to experience it's because you've been working hard at mastering failure. I'll say that again because it's so important. If you have less success than you would like to experience it's because you've been working so hard at failure.

To experience success you just have to let go of the struggle, the striving and the constant trying. Forcing your will results in failure because it is resistance to your natural balance. The energy of resistance is you doing something while telling yourself you can't do it. Get used to the feeling of success because it's the key to creating more of it in your life. Success feels easy, it feels natural and you don't have to convince anyone or anything that you've got it. It's a natural part of you and never leaves your side.

That doesn't mean you can do nothing and success will develop in your life. I'm not saying that. You still need to go through the process of learning, experiencing and creating because they are just as much a part of you as success. What you never have to do though is question whether or not success in any endeavour will come. Of course it will, it's assumed! Put your focus on the learning, the experience and the creation of whatever you are doing. This is where it needs to be. Keep it there and success will follow.

Whatever you are doing you will make mistakes, that is also a given. No-one does anything without finding out how not to do it along the way. But what you must do is refuse to see any mistake, regardless of their number and frequency, as a predictor of your final outcome. See them as valuable learning experiences that help you get it right the next time and success is on it's way. See them as indicators of your talent and abilities and you're working hard at failure.

It's natural to feel disappointment when your results are wide of your intended mark, but it's not natural at all to see them as proof that you will never make your mark. That's failure thinking.

I always like to draw a comparison between us "mere mortals" and the reverred genius' of the world. The Mozarts, Picasso's, and Einsteins. These are not special souls possessing something you don't have. The only difference between them and you is that they knew how to let success happen.

We tend to imagine that they never made a mistake or experienced frustration in their skills when we witness their virtuosity. How wrong we are. I remember reading an art instruction book that featured some of Vincent Van Goghs very early attempts, before he had mastered his skill. He suffered from the same problems of perspective, line and form that we all do when we first learn to draw. The featured picture of a man had a head that was too big, feet at strange angles and looked flat and lifeless. If Van Gogh had decided from these learning experiences that he had no talent for art and couldn't succeed then many museums would have empty places on their walls today.

So the question I have for you is this. What masterpieces are you withholding from the world because you're working hard at failure instead of allowing success? We all possess the same spark of genius as Da Vinci, he just allowed his to express itself.

Claire Hunt is a modern day Merlin, Merlin's mentor and founder of the Online Merlin Community. For a FREE subscription to Lucid Dreams, the Merlin's newsletter, visit us at http://www.merlinsouls.com