Today's
Meditation:
I
don't believe in luck. Those people who have succeeded
in life usually have done so as the result of hard work, of
being able to see opportunities when they've come up, or a
combination of the two. Those people who win tons of
money in lotteries or inherit vast fortunes aren't
necessarily lucky--many people who have come into money that
way have become quite miserable, very unhappy with their
"new" lives.
My
biggest problems in life have come when I haven't recognized
opportunities. Because I haven't seen them until too
late so often, I haven't been able to take advantage of
them. I suppose many people would say that I've had
bad luck, but I don't see it that way at all. I see it
as having missed opportunities, and I don't get down on
myself for having missed them. After all, there was no
one around when I was growing up to teach me to recognize
and take advantage of opportunities.
Most
of us are in that same boat--we haven't been taught how to
recognize the opportunities that come our way as
opportunities, so we squander chance after chance to make
more of ourselves or improve our lives or lifestyles.
That's okay, because that's how life is--what's not okay is
to recognize the problem and not do anything about it.
Now
that I know how many opportunities I've let go by, it's up
to me to teach myself how to recognize them and take
advantage of them. And the burden isn't completely on
me--there are plenty of books and tape programs out there
that can help us to learn to do these things. This is
material that should be taught in schools, but it isn't, so
we have to find other teachers outside of the classroom who
have focused on this sort of thing as their own area of
expertise.
Bad
luck? Sorry, but there's no such thing. The
universe functions too well for that to be true.
Sometimes it's true that things are completely out of our
control, but even if something negative happens to us, there
will be something important for us to learn in it. If
we can smile at our bad breaks and move on with our lives,
learning in the process, life becomes much brighter.
Bad luck tends to be an excuse for not wanting to look
deeper.
|