The great picture of our lives

**adrianh** · 07-Oct-12, 11:17 AM

@JustloadIt - If nothig changes except your attitute then it means that one can in essence create your own good luck if you are open to accepting oppertunities that come your way.

Mathematically the odds are against us from the start.

@tec0 - your cup is always half empty because you expect the universe to fill it for you. My cup is always at least half full because I fill it myself through the descisions I make. Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose, but I am ultimately responsible for the way i perceive and react to the card that I dealt.

**Justloadit** · 07-Oct-12, 12:04 PM

Originally Posted by adrianh

@JustloadIt - If nothig changes except your attitute then it means that one can in essence create your own good luck if you are open to accepting oppertunities that come your way.

Adrian,

Absolutely, I have noticed this myself. There some days which are crappy, and it just seems everything you touch turns to sh!t, and simply put, it feels as this, simply because you focus on the things that go wrong, and then use the negative evaluation " You see, everything is going wrong!", but in essence, it is that for that particular day, week, month, year, decade, you simply are highlighting the negative. The moment you can turn your attitude around, and look at the positive things, by focusing on the positive things, it seems that all is going well. Just thin about it, the fact you woke up and your loved one is lying next to you is a good thing, the fact you got out of bed is a good thing, the fact that you enjoyed your first cuppa in the morning is a good thing, the fact the sun is shinning outside is a good thing, the fact i can year the birds singing outside is a good thing, the fact i jumped into my car and started is a good thing, and so on. There are so many positive things happening i our lives that we tend to forget that they even happen.

Once you start accepting all the little positives, you then have the right frame of mind to tackle the world, and all of a sudden, every call, every encounter becomes an opportunity. One must be cautious off course and not simply dive in now, but evaluate the situations.

**Blurock** · 07-Oct-12, 12:07 PM

Originally Posted by Dave A

Jim Collins in Great By Choice concludes that luck (both good and bad) comes to everyone. What differs is what we make of it - our return on luck. If you're doing the right things, when good luck comes along, you get a great return. When you're not doing the right things, you don't get the same return.

Get the odds stacked on your side.
Good habits.
Good discipline.

It looks like it's a lot more important than most people give credit for.

I fully agree. I have also seen another formula; Focus X Knowledge X Behaviour = Success.

The more disciplined people are the more successful ones. Gary player once replied to a comment on how lucky he was in golf. He said that the more he practised, the luckier he became. It takes habit forming discipline and determination to keep on practising while your mates go for a beer.

It seems as if some of us are still struggling with the term "decisions". Lets use the word choices then. To go and have a coffee at a coffee shop is not a life changing decision or choice. It is not the coffee that causes the accident. That could have been caused by not being observant, not having your brakes checked, not maintaining a safe following distance or a multiple other causes.

I think what Dave refers to here is the life choices we make. We make big choices in which direction we want our lives to go, but then we do not support those big choices with good discipline and habits.

You will never to cross the ocean if you do not plug the holes in your boat.

**Citizen X** · 07-Oct-12, 12:12 PM

Originally Posted by Blurock

I fully agree. I have also seen another formula; Focus X Knowledge X Behaviour = Success.

You will never to cross the ocean if you do not plug the holes in your boat.

The only place you'll find success before work is in the English dictionary! Nothing X Nothing is still nothing 0 X 0 = 0

**adrianh** · 07-Oct-12, 12:49 PM

@vanash

The only place you'll find success before work is in the English dictionary! Nothing X Nothing is still nothing 0 X 0 = 0

You are wrong. Given probability theory some will have lots of good luck and be successful without working hard, some will have terrible luck and get nowhere.

We have to accept that some people simply seem to be luckier than others. (pure probability) This does not mean that one shouldn't work hard at your own destiny, it means that you cannot use the destinies of other to measure your own. If Johnny casts a die 6 times and get 6 in a row, what are the chances of you getting a 6 on the next throw...1 out of 6 which means that your luck is not affected by what went before.

@justloadit - its all in your frame of mind. That's the good thing about working for yourself, especially from home, if I'm in a bad frame of mind I can choose not to answer the phone and do whatever it takes to change that mindset. But when you are an employee you have to suck it up and deal not only with your own frame of mind but those of others too. My frame of mind can swing dramatically and extremely fast...maybe that is why I never fitted into the...chug along like a robot mindless mindsets within the corporate world. Corporates don't like people who swing too far too quickly because we are too unpredictable.

**Blurock** · 07-Oct-12, 05:18 PM

Originally Posted by Vanash Naick

The only place you'll find success before work is in the English dictionary! Nothing X Nothing is still nothing 0 X 0 = 0

Yes, input determines output. There are people who win the lotto etc, but that is not sustainable. It is a once off and easy come, easy go. Same applies to inheritance. I've seen many of those.

**Citizen X** · 07-Oct-12, 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by Blurock

Yes, input determines output. There are people who win the lotto etc, but that is not sustainable. It is a once off and easy come, easy go. Same applies to inheritance. I've seen many of those.

Sustainable transformation..I conceed!

**Blurock** · 07-Oct-12, 07:47 PM

How often do we start our daily activities, but never achieve our daily goals because we get sidelined by trivial matters.

The following attachment illustrates how we can allow trivial things to negatively impact our lives. I hope I am not infringing on any copy rights, but it was too good not to pass on.

Garbage.doc

**ians** · 08-Oct-12, 07:43 AM

Good one Blurock, i agree and guilty of carrying garbage, getting better at it as i get older, learning slowly not to allow silly things to spoil my day.

Watching a young lady being beaten continuously while driving along the N3 could have affected my day on Saturday, do i pull the vehicle over and stop the Ahole, or do i just mind my own bussiness and look the other way, i chose to look the other way, if she didnt like what he was doing she must report him for assault. Some people will say i should have done something about it, some women would say it is better i just leave them, other wise i make it worse for her because once i leave, he hits her even harder. From experience, i did the right thing, you beat the living daylights out of the boyfriend and the women starts beating you because you are interfering, or you beat the living dailights out of the 2 guys hitting a women you find out later she is a women of pleasure and get arrested because they are plain clothes police officers. Bye the way it is very unpleasant sitting in a police cell and wasting time in court.

People talk about the little things and big things which alter our path in life, all of them affect our lives in one way or another bussiness or pleasure. Do i get up in the morning and go for a walk? Do i eat fruit for breakfast or coffe, in same way or another it is going to affect the outcome of your life. Not just the R2 million contract you sign. One thing i have learnt about life is no matter how good you are at something, be it bussiness or pleasure, if you are not a peoples person, you will not succeed as well as a person who is a peoples person, especially if you require sponsorship or trying to sign a deal or a contract. You may say bulldust, i see it everyday.

Some people might think the little things they do in their personal life do affect the outcome of their bussiness, think again.

Just to add, i have woken up one morning and thought, today is going to be a great day, walked though the kitchen to my office, caught the corner of the top cupboard which was left slightly open just above the my eye, it knocked me to the floor and i couldnt stop the bleeding, that was just the start to the day, it got a whole lot worse as the day progressed.

I had dreams of going and living in the USA, made enough money to keep me going for a while, was going to stop in the UK for a year or 2, i was about to leave had a few thing to finalise here in SA, while finalising those few things had a motor vehicle accidents which changed my entire life, i lost everything, savings, dignity, motor vehicles you name it, ended up with 9 judgements and out on the street phiysically disable. That small silly little decision that day to race with the porsche could have been one of the worse i have ever made, at the time it just felt so good.

**adrianh** · 08-Oct-12, 08:26 AM

That small silly little decision that day to race with the porsche could have been one of the worse i have ever made, at the time it just felt so good.

Yes, but you could also have been hit by somebody else racing that day. The point is this: Don't beat yourself up, $h1t happens, the important thing is how we deal with it.