The emperor and his council were stunned when Prince Luan presented the long lost contract that the emperor’s father had signed seventy-five years ago.  As they realized that they couldn’t repay the loan and Prince Luan would take Princess Leizu as payment they were paralyzed.  When the dragons saw that the emperor and his council couldn’t decide what to do the Dragon Council was assembled to address the situation.  They wanted to see if the legal dragons could find any discrepancy in the contract, unfortunately they couldn’t so they went home leaving The Littlest Dragon by himself.  At this point the Old Dragon Sage reenters the story and gives The Littlest Dragon some of the most important advice of his life.

It is times like this when all hope seems to vanish that we have the opportunity to learn about our character, our courage and our resolve.  The dilemma is used as an opportunity to reveal and reinforce the value of learning how to lead a positive optimistic approach to life.  To introduce and affirm one of the most important principles that Napoleon Hill ever taught, the insight “That with every failure and defeat comes with that situation a seed of equal or greater importance.”

I find that by taking this approach one can begin the process of stepping back from the tragedy rather than being swept away by the pain, shock and hopeless confusion that it can bring.  It allows us to switch from reacting subjectively to the situation to one where we can begin to evaluate it objectively.  It puts the mind in gear to look for some benefit from the horrific situation, at times there are many.  By looking at the information that we encounter and learning how to filter it by the possibilities that we can take rather than by necessities we begin to see that very rarely is there a situation without hope or benefit.