Cry Me A River!

Have you ever experienced this? Maybe a dream or desire that you have had your heart set on suddenly drops square in lap of some bozo that couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Suddenly, your dream is now property of someone else and all nice things you used to think about that person now just took a hike.

Did you know one of best tests of our character is when we face fiery furnace of failure? Especially when that furnace burns up our dream just inches before we take it to bank.

Many pursuits, that we chase, seem to stop dead in their tracks almost at very beginning. That's probably a blessing in disguise. If every thing we pursued, or most every thing, all came unraveled at very end, we probably would go nuts.

Just getting that close to prize creates such anticipation, that if almost all of them flopped, we would probably stop trying just to avoid emotional trauma. But, life is kind to us to prevent us from putting forth that much effort, consistently, and then see our dream land in lap of someone else.

Don't Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth!

Now, you see, you thought life was mean to you. But, other way of looking at it is; it spared us from getting to one foot line and then blowing up in our face.

I am not a huge baseball fan but I heard story of Babe Ruth and great success he had in his career. It was a super accomplishment to have hit over seven hundred home runs in his life in major leagues. But, he also struck out over fourteen hundred times.

There was a particular game that Babe struck out every time he got up to plate, except last time. And, in this game every time he got up he swung at ball so hard that he fell in dirt. A newspaper reporter told Babe he should not swing so hard. Babe said, "Ah, don't pity me, pity those poor pitchers".

Some Good News And, Some Bad News!

As I thought about my life in business I think that's about ratio that holds true; Two failures for every success. Some successes were gigantic, some were mediocre, and some were heart breaking. Of course heart breaking ones are big failures.

Some failures are labeled failures too quickly. Many times I have seen something wonderful happen long after I had destined some dream to garbage dump. Then something happened that resurrected that puppy and seemed to breathe life back into it.

At that moment a breath of life and enthusiasm seemed to overtake me and, I found myself buzzing around like a swarm of hornets to put that dream back in winners circle.

Dead As A Dodo!

I know this has happened to many people. But, why? Here is my personal observation. Many times we get so caught up in a situation we no longer can see situation. Then something happens and dream meets deadline of death.

The quality of life we live, is based upon learning we derive from our experiences. I know that for myself, it is sometimes easy to feel that "Life has taught me some tough lessons, and scars do not heal easily." When I find myself thinking like this it means that I have fallen into trap of believing that "It is ‘only natural’ that an ‘X’ type event or relationship, will lead to a ‘Y’ type response." At other times it becomes apparent that if I had somehow learned something different from a particular challenging situation, quality of my life would be much more rewarding.

In working with a client struggling with alcoholism, we spent our first session with client telling me in detail how he had come to live such an unhealthy debilitating life. In short he said: "Both my parents were alcoholics, and both of them were physically abusive to me. I grew up never knowing what bad thing would happen next. I learned from my parents that best way to not have to feel pain and uncertainty of life was to escape into an altered state of alcohol induced euphoria." When listening to a client tell such a sad story, it is easy to believe that their situation was all but preordained.