Jumpstart Your Dream Life

The Beauty Behind Mosaics: Lessons On How to Create Lasting Work

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Recently, I stepped into a mosaic shop.

All sorts of mosaics were on display: historical scenes, religious symbols, buildings, animals, and replicas of well-known paintings. Some were glossy, while others were matte. Some were black and white, others vibrant.

But when I saw the mosaic making demonstration, one thing was clear: creating mosaics from scratch is hard. From inception to the final touches, a lot of thought, planning, and labor goes into creating each individual piece of work.

I had always wondered how mosaics were created, so it was interesting to see the process laid out (more on that later).

But first, where did mosaics come from?

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J.R.R. Tolkien’s Writing Process On Creating Good Work

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One dreary day, a professor was sitting at his desk when a fateful event occurred. As he marked examination papers, he noticed that a student had left a page blank. For some inexplicable reason, he jotted down a sentence: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

This line sparked J.R.R. Tolkien’s idea of The Hobbit, which was published in 1937. It was an immediate success. Stanley Unwin, the Chairman of the publishing firm, asked him if he had any other similar stories to meet public demand.

In response, Tolkien wrote a full account of tales and named it The Silmarillion. Some of the tales were sent off to Unwin, who decided that they weren’t commercially publishable. Instead, he asked Tolkien if he could write a sequel to The Hobbit.

Disappointed, Tolkien agreed to Unwin’s request and went back to work. The publishing firm did not expect a profit and decided to incur a probable loss of 1,000 pounds. But when they published the story during 1954 and 1955, what came next surprised them.

The trilogy immediately captured the public eye. It was adapted to radio the following year, and has since then gone on to sell over 150 million copies[1]. Later, The Lord of the Rings was turned into one of the highest-grossing and critically acclaimed film series of all time. The trilogy is considered one of the greatest book series of the twentieth century.

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Use Failure As Feedback

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Most of us are afraid of failure.

The time and effort wasted, the humiliation, the headaches – it’s just too much.

Most of all, what if our failure confirms our worst fear: that we’re not good enough?

As we grow older, fear of failure becomes more and more real.

Eventually, not trying anything new seems like a better option because we’d rather not know the limit of our capabilities.

Failing in any area of life can be terrifying when you look at it that way.

But recently, I’ve been looking at failure from a different perspective. It’s one that a lot of entrepreneurs and innovative companies use to test out new ideas.

Here’s how it works.

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