Power to Destroy Always Greater than the Power to Create

While we spend much of our time attempting to create what matters most or build upon the things we have invested our love, time or money into; it is none-the-less important to remember that at any point in time, our ability to destroy exceeds our ability to create.


This power dynamic, unfortunately appears to be a universal truth. For any individual or group, the instantaneous capacity to destroy exceeds the instantaneous capacity to create.
It takes at least two people to build a relationship, yet only one to destroy it. Twenty years of good will can be undermined in an afternoon. It's kind of scary when you think about all the implications of this principle. Relationship building and the development of intimacy take time and trust, there really is no short-cut. Once one person in a relationship gives up, for whatever reason a long-term relationship is in deep danger. The power is now completely in the hands of the person willing to destroy the relationship not the person attempting to save it.
If you read the 9-11 Commission report, the most stunning thing is how a group of about 30 people spent two years and about $500,000 to put together and pull-off an event that took 3,000 lives, caused $10 Billion in direct damages, shattered our sense of security and unleashed a decade of war. Look at the imbalance of their effort to destroy and our efforts to restore what was lost.
I am not writing about this topic to depress your senses or call upon your destructive impulses but rather to highlight the challenge that creators face when they begin to make progress and have in-fact empowered themselves. When trying to create, you will face many roadblocks and negative feedback. Do not let impatience or frustration draw out your anger.
When you feel angry, regardless of cause, it is always best to carefully choose your response. You may need to take a breather by going for a run or walk to avoid reacting to the situation.
Anger at its best is a call to energize for self-defense but anger at its worst is reckless lashing out that usually inflicts far more damage to our creative efforts and relationships than it dies to our target.
In other articles where I examined developing a personal vision, the focal point of our creative efforts, it was important to note that creating a vision is choice with consequences. In fact, in order to create, you must accept all of the consequences of your choice.
Let's return to anger, the power to destroy and the creative empowered path.
When angry, it is important to revisit both the long-term results that are encompassed within your vision -and- to examine the values and beliefs which inform your spiritual path. When the impulse to destroy rears its ugly head, it is more important to take a stroll on your spiritual path than it is to force progress or undermine your vision.

Confidence or Arrogance: What to do with Feedback

A leader, inventor or artist must have a strong ego to persevere in the face of failures, mistakes and indifference. If you attempt to create what matters most you will receive feedback in many forms and sometimes the feedback will be in the deafening silence of apathy. When you are pushing forward, some will see your actions as confidence and others will see them as arrogance.


To ignore feedback is folly and yet to be weighted down by feedback is to disempower yourself and surely fail. There are several planes upon which critical examination of feedback is important among these are structural, values and financial.

Structural feedback is feedback focused upon whether your approach is naturally delivering the desired result. The focus here is not upon the opinions proffered but rather gaining understanding of what is working and to what degree is it working. To assess what is working, you need data whether it is observed or measured. Your own honest observations may, in fact, be the only available data early on and at points in your creative process.

When the developed parts of your intended creation exist primarily in your head, you need a thinking discipline to conduct experiments. These "thinking" or gedanken experiments were used by Einstein to test his theories. It was often decades before his could be tested with actual experiments due to both cost and technological capability. Both Eliyahu Goldratt in the book, Theory of Constraints and Gerald Nadler and Shozo Hibino in their book Breakthrough Thinking, have outlined approaches to conducting thinking experiments that are useful for both developing and testing solutions..

On the values plane, both your approach and the consequences must be examined in terms of your values. Here you must take in data that is direct and indirect as well as data which is immediate and data spaced over time. When you are creating, your ultimate success depends on the sum of all results including those which are unintended.

Many otherwise successful leaders and creators are undone by the long-term ripple of values flaws and their unintended consequences. Each creative idea has a window of opportunity for its fruition and this window narrows when value-based standards of behavior, methods and outcomes are lowered.

The final plane for examination at this time is the financial plane over which you are working. Given the rate at which the resources available to you are being consumed, how much time do you have to work with? Given the estimated cost of the next step or the next experiment, can you afford to take it? If not now, when?

Actions and experiments that are cost prohibitive may need to curtailed, modified or only conducted in your head.

Whether you are confident, will depend upon your ability to filter and handle input and then keep moving forward. Arrogance will need to be kept in check by honestly assessing the feedback and revisiting the values plane examination.

Materialism: Salt, Fat, Sugar and Limits

Human-beings naturally consume too much salt, sugar and fat when it is plentiful. Science tells us that these three items were both needed for survival -and- were generally scarce in the natural environment during most of human existence. Therefore, we are genetically designed to detect and enjoy the taste of foods containing salt, sugar or fat to help ensure that we seek and ingest at least the minimal quantities for survival.

The dominant feature of snack food is their content of sugar/salt/fat. Remember the Lay's Potato Chip add, "Bet you can't eat just one"? It is possibly the most truthful add slogan of all time. It is true that once, that salty chip hits your tongue, you do crave more.

What happens when we eat too much sugar, salt or fat? Data suggests that we increase our chances of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and heart attacks if we consume too much of these items amongst other things. This provides good long term reasons not to overindulge in these items and yet our taste buds and cravings make limiting these items a hard thing to do.

Materialism is similar to salt, fat and sugar as a dominant driver in human behavior. If truth is, “what works in the world”, then materialism is partially true. Materialism run amok causes social, spiritual and well-being problems just as too much sugar or fat would cause a health problem.

The partial truth of materialism is similar to the eating of potato chips. The first bit of material wealth does meet our survival needs and provide some security. The next bit brings us some comfort. The bit after that brings us a little luxury and then a little more. After a while there is a disconnection between the desire to have more material wealth and the unintended consequences and limitations of material wealth.

Material wealth can be consumed, invested in the ownership of assets or given away to friends, family or others such as charitable organizations. The government will take its fair share of your material wealth as well. I am not opposed to the accumulation of material wealth. A common quote that is misquoted is "money is the root of all evil" when in fact the truer quote is, "the love of money is the root of all evil".

Materialism raises the accumulation of material wealth above all other things as it tends to assign value only according to direct financial measurements of income and assets. With the great support of advertising, personal attributes are associated with the possession of certain material goods. "Success" is defined by the car you drive, the town you live in or the clothes you wear without any consideration to your sense of happiness, peacefulness or self-fulfillment through creative expression.

The path to building a legacy is a three-fold path as first consideration is given to the focal point of your creative expression, “creating what matters most” and second consideration is given to, living a life that affirms your beliefs and values on a daily basis. These are never separated from but purposefully placed above the third essential ingredient which is earning enough money to support your efforts.