So one of the weird outcomes of living with awareness is how often things show up in your life that seem to be placed there specifically when you needed it to show up. The first few instances of this – when resources or tools showed up exactly when I needed them, I would look around in suspicious confusion. My inner dialogue was something like, “How in the world did this happen? I am so lucky. That will never happen again.” But time after time since letting go of so much crap in my head and daily life, I continue to be pleasantly surprised because most of the time whenever something comes up that requires attention, without too much extra energy or worry the “stars align and things work out for me.’’ Or that’s what I used to tell myself….now I know better. Here’s what I’ve learned.
The stars do not align and ‘things’ do not work out FOR me. Here’s the reality. I’ve worked really hard to change my mindset to create my life to be a continuous string of learnings and opportunities that are preparing me to tackle the next opportunity or learning. It’s the personal growth cycle that does not end.
Unfortunately, many people are still operating under the limiting belief that life is suppose to be an ongoing series of wins. These people are blind to or extremely resistant to see the losses in their lives as learning launch pads. They refuse to use this launch pad as a way to steady them for the next opportunity or win. Instead they see them as unfair anchors preventing them from what they deserve. People with this mindset have learned they are victims and people like me are just lucky. The victim feels slighted and the cycle of win/lose continues to justify their misguided position. They wait for luck to find them while they spend their days looking for all the reasons luck hasn’t found them yet.
Here’s what they don’t see. Those ‘lucky people’ are not lucky at all – they’ve invested their greatest resource (time) in themselves vs. wasting their resource waiting on luck. They don’t see how the ‘lucky people’ started investing years before. And they don’t see or choose to believe that the ‘lucky person’ is at the same risk of external circumstances as they are. The victims don’t see how these ‘lucky people’ made a conscious choice to take a courageous and disciplined approach with their time so now they are able to live comfortably off the interest of that investment. Those ‘lucky people’ are actually people who:
• separate their worthiness from anything they cannot control
• find their purpose and values to set their course
• see all people as valuable so they can learn from others
• empower others to compound courage
• develop internal skills to enable them to handle concerns early and often
• eliminate wasteful actions and thoughts from their daily lives
• master communication skills to clearly convey their intentions
• create reliable practices as tools of resilience
• track progress over time to make objective decisions
• think critically about problems to avoid oversimplification
• learn to pivot when outcomes are not on track with their potential
Check out the pivot process tool (link to pivot process resource) to help you with those last two.
I think ‘’lucky people’’ decide to spend time embracing all the unpleasant stuff as a necessary part of the rich, full and beautiful life they are living everyday. The “victims” on the other hand, spend time waiting on luck take the unpleasant stuff away so they can start living their rich, full and beautiful life everyday.
Take courageous care,
Julie
