The Elements of Success

By David Dellman

Water, fire, air, earth, and spirit...

 

Since ancient times, people have studied and learned from the basic elements so critical to our material existence. Any imbalance of one element over the other could have catastrophic results. But the lessons of the elements transcend the material. When we put these

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vintage House Publishing
• Release date: May 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9780578899817

David Dellman

David Dellman is an HR professional and entrepreneur with over 27 years of experience leading corporate HR teams. He is a Certified Senior Professional in Human Resources and a SHRM-SCP. David graduated from seminary with an M.Div. and holds a master's degree in an education related field. As a magician, David has toured with a grand illusion show and entertained families in the comfort of their own living room. He currently performs a mentalism and mind reading act. He is comfortable in front of thousands or in front of ten. David's other published works include two novels: The Mentor's Gift and The Christmas Garden. He lives with his wife Janis and their Amazon Parrot Phoebe in the Baltimore area. For more information, please visit: https://daviddellman.com/ https://themagicofdaviddellman.com/ YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/daviddellman Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/davidjanisd

Book preview

Introduction

"The purpose of life is to discover your gift.

The work of life is to develop it.

The meaning of life is to give your gift away."

—David Viscott

Hope begins when you stand in the dark, looking out at the light.

—David Baldacci

If you are standing in the dark, I hope this book will be the light that takes you to a place of hope. If you are struggling to find your purpose or mission, this book could provide the tools you need to discover and embrace it. If you are neither standing in the dark nor wondering what your life purpose is but want to live a better, happier life, this book will give you the support you have been looking for in your quest to create it.

The lessons you are about to study are not mine. They did not originate with me. Philosophers have been discussing the meaning of the elements and their application to our lives for thousands of years. The story, however, of how those lessons impacted my experience—the story you are about to read—is unique to me. It is mine and personal.

The Elements of Success is a guidebook for living well and not only achieving what you want with your life but enjoying the journey along the way. This book is about balance. You will learn to walk between extremes in a place of harmony—harmony with yourself and harmony with outside forces that place their demands on you every day.

Some books tell us to climb every mountain and go for our dreams with reckless abandon. Others ask us to bloom where planted. There is merit in both approaches, and there is a time and place for each method. Life is sometimes about making hard choices, selecting one path and leaving another behind. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to choose, but not always. In many instances, we can have both. We can have our proverbial cake and eat it too. Having everything you dream of is often more about moderation than it is about extreme sacrifice.

Be patient and intentional about bringing balance into your life. You should climb every mountain, but you should also give all you’ve got to the job or career you have put your hand to do right now even if that job or career is not the one you hoped you would have.

While it may be true that we cannot chase every dream, it is also true that we can achieve far more than we may think possible. You can learn to appreciate and grow from your present circumstance. You can also change your circumstances. Knowing when to do which is one of the keys to successful living. By successful living, I mean having peace, contentment, and happiness both in the here and now and in the future. Success is not a future state; it is a present moment experience, and it can be yours when you learn to balance the elements of your life.

This book will teach you to walk in that happy place of balance and harmony that is crucial to success. We need to dream, but we also need to execute. We need to plan, but we also need to feel excited about our lives. We need balance. If you let your passion, your fire, get too far out ahead of your common sense (air), then you could end up in a dire financial state (earth), and in despair (water). I should know because I have done it not once but many times.

It is from water, our imagination and emotions, that we first encounter our dreams.

Fire inspires us to act.

Air creates the plan.

Earth gives us the grit and determination required to bring our dream into reality.

These are the elements of success, and they are a part of our mainstream culture and our heritage. When we speak of passionate people, we describe them as being on fire. We love to say of practical people that they are down to earth; when we sense a trend, we say it is in the air, and less commonly but not at all uncommon, we describe possibilities as an ocean of dreams.

There is a fifth element, spirit, that is equally important, but in our materialist culture, it is too often ignored or marginalized. I will address the realm of spirit in the latter part of this book in a way that I hope you will find nonsectarian.

In ancient times and cultures, some personified the elements. Each element had characteristics and personality, and each was called upon at different times for different purposes. Some associated the elements with magical creatures.

The undine is a creature of the water. First named in the alchemical writings of Paracelsus, they may take many forms but are best known as mermaids. Mermaids are beautiful and artistic. They sing with an unearthly loveliness, and to a lonely sailor at sea, they can be a source of strength and comfort just as our dreams can comfort us.

Salamanders are creatures of fire. By salamander, I don’t mean those cute little lizard-like creatures but a magical being. While it may have the shape of the salamander, we all know and love, the elemental salamander lives and breathes fire. They are passionate and difficult to contain.

The sylph is a being of air, a winged creature with a human shape like a fairy or angel. When they are around, they bring clarity of thought, sobriety, and decisive action. Angels are known as messengers or message carriers. So it is with the sylph.

Gnomes live in the earth. They are practical, hardworking, enterprising, and thrifty. If we are ever to make a dream come true, we need to learn the lessons of the gnomes; we need the willingness and the will to work hard.

Studying the elements and the creatures associated with each element will contribute greatly to finding the right balance in your life.

I have enjoyed three main passions in my life: writing, religion, and performing or speaking. I have known the sweet taste of success and the bitter sting of failure in all three areas. I have devoted years of effort to my dreams and often extended myself financially or otherwise in an attempt to realize a dream. While it is true that you can accomplish more when you devote your full-time energies and resources to an endeavor, the broader and less romantic question is: Is it prudent?

Is it prudent to overextend?

Is it prudent to neglect our family or our health in the pursuit of any goal?

It never ceases to amaze me how gullible I can be when I want to achieve a goal. I have told myself that I need to invest in my success by spending beyond what is reasonable. I have rationalized, telling myself that I am investing in my future, which is not entirely untrue, but discipline needs to apply to finances as to all areas of life. When we overspend in the hope of buying a better life, we limit our ability to enjoy the life we have in the here and now.

Performance magic and my career as a speaker have been areas of vulnerability for me. I have spent thousands of dollars on props hoping the prop would make me a more attractive magician than my competition. But booking agents and meeting planners pay for a personality, not a prop. The best entertainers do not rely on a novel prop. People go to their shows or pay top dollar to book them because they like the person, not because they have the coolest prop. In the performance magic business, as in most entertainment art forms, if you can do something no one else can do or can do something better than anyone else, that distinction will get you noticed. But likability is the factor that will get you a referral or a repeat booking after your foot is in the door. You cannot buy likability. You have to earn it, and there are no short cuts.

I have made similar mistakes as a speaker, investing thousands in coaches or courses that promise a fast track to success. There is no fast track to success, and we are where we are, right here and right now, in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, because we need to be. We need to learn the life lesson of our present situation before life will give us a new circumstance. Being faithful to what you have and where you are is the best way to advance.

Our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.

–Don Williams, Jr.

It is best to remain flexible about what we want, our goals, and our future.

Have you ever heard the saying, Man proposes, God disposes? It is the title of an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Edwin Landseer. The painting portrays an expedition gone wrong as white polar bears consume the remains of the explorers. A grizzly end, no pun intended, but the point is that most of us make grand plans. Those plans don’t always work out the way we envisioned, and that is okay. We can learn more from our mistakes than from our successes if our attitude is right, and we can enjoy the journey along the way. Enjoying the journey is what The Elements of Success is all about.

I want you to be happy right now. Our culture teaches us to believe that happiness is contingent. For some, it may be contingent on going to the right school or marrying the right person or securing the right job, but when happiness is contingent on any outside circumstance, it is always elusive. Once we achieve what we thought would make us happy, we do not discover joy. Instead, we find ourselves looking into another horizon, another contingency, another mountain to climb to be satisfied finally.

Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work, said, Happiness is the center around which success orbits. Happiness is here and now, it is not a someday when. I hope this book will give you a roadmap for living each day in a state of joy because that is what you deserve.

You have a calling, a life’s work. You may already know what you want to do, have, or achieve in your lifetime. But like so many, you may have been listening to the voice of fear instead of hope. Maybe you have convinced yourself that you couldn’t make a living doing whatever you long to do. Don’t be afraid to fail, and don’t worry about detours or course corrections. They are all part of this beautiful experience we call life.

"Sometimes,