Tag: opportunities

BE PREPARED AND BE LUCKY!

I cannot count the times that I have heard someone say “You are so lucky because _____.” This could refer to many things in my life. I have heard how lucky I am that I have such a great relationship. I have heard how lucky I am that I was able to write three books. I even heard how lucky I was to make it through covid and my open-heart surgery. I will admit that there was a good amount of amazing people and grace involved in all of those situations. Do you know what else was involved in those situations? A hell of a lot of hard work.

When I had the good fortune and grace to meet Margie, I treated her with respect and worked on learning about her and improving myself. Do you know what the result was? I was lucky enough to have a great relationship with the most beautiful lady in the world. If I was a jerk, didn’t care about her wants and needs and didn’t work to improve myself, then I wouldn’t be so lucky. Even though she would still be an amazing and beautiful lady. It was, and is, both of our hard work that makes us lucky enough to have such an amazing relationship.

Lucky enough to have written three books? Unless you have written one yourself, in which case I cannot imagine you saying that, you would have no idea the hard work that goes into creating a book. To be honest, I didn’t either when I wrote my first one. I thought you just put some words on paper and someone turns them into a book. Oh no, there is editing. There is formatting. There is choosing fonts, covers for images, titles, pricing, promoting and a million other aspects that may have changed my mind into pursuing being an author had I known about them. Just one of my books took 5 years from start to finish. The last one caused me to give up most of the very short Wisconsin summer to create. That meant sitting inside looking at the warm weather and sunshine while I sat inside typing away. Anyone who knows me would understand what a torture that was.

Lucky enough to make it through open-heart surgery? Once again, I will admit some very talented, and when it came to me patient, people in the medical field. Still, there were 5 days a week spent at the gym. There is oatmeal for lunch every day, when there is doughnuts sitting in the break room. There is a 4-mile walk in the park with your mother after working for 9 hours. If I would have ate how I want (Pizza every day) and just worked out when I felt the urge (That would be next to never) the odds I would have been so lucky to recover from my surgery would have been next to nothing. If I did, it would have been longer and a lot more painful.

In any area of life, if you want more luck there is one way to assure that will happen. That way is to work your butt off. You will find yourself surrounded by more opportunities and luck. If you know someone who seems to turn anything they touch into gold, you might want to look at how hard they work behind the scenes. With that in mind, I am going to leave you with this quote from Thomas Edison. It also speaks about how to create more opportunities in your life.

OPEN THE DOOR!

I have always heard the saying, “If life closes the door, open a window.” Which made sense to me. Sometimes the way we think things should work, are just not the way they do work. On occasion, we need to look for alternative ways in which to approach a situation. Never have I stopped and thought about the aspect of the actual act of a door closing. Of course, in these sayings this is actually a metaphor. Still, it holds true whether in a metaphor or in reality. If you knew inside a room was a million dollars just waiting for you, no strings attached, and suddenly the door closed in front of you what would you do? Would you say, “Oh well, that would have been nice.” and walk away? Would you start to look for that ‘window’ or another way in? In most cases, when faced with that situation in reality, the first thing most of us would do is reach out and try the door handle. If it didn’t open perhaps we would investigate why. Even if we found the door to be locked, we may try forcing it open or picking the lock.

Why is it then, when faced with this metaphorical situation in life we seldom try to open the door? Is it due to a lack of passion? Perhaps our why is not strong enough? It is said Walt Disney was turned down by 300 banks before his loan to open Disneyland was approved. That is a lot of doors that were shut on him. In some cases, past experience has taught us we cannot open the door. Maybe that was true then, but think of how much we learn each and every day. With additional skills and experience we very well could open doors that in the past remained closed to us.

Another thing to consider is perhaps we are approaching opening the door in the wrong way. Has this ever happened to you? You see a store with its lights on and the open sign on. You walk up and pull on the door, it’s locked. You look inside and see people wandering about. You pull even harder thinking the door may be stuck. No such luck. You step back to review the hours of operation on the door and find they indeed should be open. Ready to yank on the door with all of your might, you must step aside for another shopper. This person walks right through the door…by pushing it. Sadly, I must confess this has happened to me on a few occasions. Doors in life are much like this. We can pull with all of our might and never get in. If we change our approach and push with even the slightest effort, in we go.

Think of doors that have closed in your own life. Have you tried to open them? Have you changed your approach? Before we give up or start looking for a window, perhaps we should give that door a pull, and a push as well. You know, just in case.