I’ve worked toward and I’ve worked against. Working toward something is way more satisfying and enlivening.

When you’re working toward something, there’s a sense of anticipation, a vision, there are steps you can take to make something happen, and there’s something to share, generate ideas for and talk about. Working toward something is engaging in creation, and so is often experienced as something like power.

Working against, on the other hand, is to stop something from happening. When you consider something not happening, you are working with something that doesn’t yet exist and you try to keep it out of existence. Doing anything is inherently creative, so the best you can do is create something else, which actually serves a purpose other than what it was created for. There’s no such thing as generating ideas to make something not happen. In other words, there’s no such thing in existence as non-existence.

To work powerfully, you have to work toward something.

The same is true in life. The pursuit will be dissatisfying, powerless and endless if all you do is try and “not be” a failure or “not be” fat or “not be” anything! “Not be” doesn’t exist!

Once I got that all I could do (in existence) was to create, I found a whole bunch more I could do and a whole bunch more I had to take responsibility for.