Other articles by Dale Dauten:

The Corporate Curmudgeon: 'Law of attraction' just a distractionThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Pressure plays a major role in leading people to greatnessThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Been there, done that won't cut itCorporate Curmudgeon: Bad times could offer best time to take chancesCorporate Curmudgeon: Excellent boss helps underling excel in job The Corporate Curmudgeon : For boomers, bromides may be best medicine Corporate Curmudgeon: Forgive the cliché, but 'Make yourself useful'Corporate Curmudgeon: Top leaders get creative at crunch timeThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Leadership can utilize recession as an assetThe Corporate Curmudgeon: Piglet's profundity: Forget about fright

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A decade or more ago, I came across a quote that struck me as nonsense, but it keeps coming back into my mind, going something like this: "Worry is prayer for what you don't want to happen."

Here are the events that made me wonder if it wasn't true. For a dozen years, my newspaper columns ran in the Chicago Tribune. It was not only my biggest paper, but it led to speaking and consulting appearances in Chicago, which I had come to think of as a second home.

Occasionally, the Tribune would leave out my column, and that would worry me. (I had heard that one of the ways newspapers measure the popularity of columnists is by how many complaints they get when the column doesn't run.) So when readers from Chicago complained to me that my column was missing, I routinely would encourage them to let the paper know that it was missed.

This went on for years, until one day when one of the editors called to tell me that they were dropping my column. They'd been given orders to cut back on columnists and had chosen mine because of how many complaints they had to deal with when it did not run.

"But," I countered, "doesn't that mean that your subscribers like the column?" Yes, it did; however, space limitations meant that it was inevitable that I'd occasionally be squeezed out, and thanks to staff cutbacks, they didn't have time to respond to readers' letters and e-mails.

Later I wondered if my apprehension hadn't been the very thing that provoked the outcome I was seeking to avoid. You remember that old bit about "be careful what you wish for" — well, for me, it's "be careful what you worry about."

What got me thinking about not worrying was talking with Gene Morris, a retired engineer. He spent two decades of his career with the Arizona Department of Transportation, and during that time he led a number of innovation projects, including the introduction of rubberized asphalt as a highway surface.

I met with Morris in his home in the Arizona retirement community of Sun Lakes, south of Chandler. As he reminisced about his work, he mentioned more than one occasion when he had resigned or threatened to resign. Hearing this from someone with his credentials and achievements was a surprise — but then again, perhaps the willingness to walk away is one reason for his credentials and achievements.

In one instance, Morris was given a quality-control job and found it frustrating, feeling that he was reduced to nagging the district managers. So he went to his bosses and told them that he couldn't stay in his job, telling them, "Give me a district to run, and I'll show you how it should be done."

That was not an option, so he said he would begin a job search. Eventually they invited him to create a job for himself. That job was research engineer, and it gave him the time and resources to experiment.

Years later, when a new director came in and reorganized, Morris' research unit was disbanded. He resigned, and he immediately received a job offer from a company whose owner had admired Morris' work.

But Morris was skeptical. He knew the man to be temperamental and to have fired talented engineers in the past. So Morris said to him, "The only way I'll come to work for you is if I have an ironclad contract that states that the only way you can fire me is if you actually walk in on me sleeping with your wife." The owner replied, "Let's write it up."

You have to admire the leverage that comes with being an innovator. Morris was conscious of that leverage, saying, "Innovators always know they can find another job, so they are willing to do things others are scared to do." In other words, innovators need courage but have one less worry.

Who else has that kind of walk-away courage? The wealthy. The more money you have, the more options, the more leverage, and thus it's easy to be a good negotiator; it's easy not to worry.

If innovators have the strength of the walk-away in common with the rich, that gives new meaning to the old expression "a wealth of ideas."