Luck?

Last week 20/20 did a show on Luck. They had many interesting insights. I especially liked the study that showed that optimistic people were more likely to find the $20 bill on the street than pessimistic people. I related the story to my son in NYC this morning.

He has been having a difficult time with money lately. Anything that could go wrong has, it seems. He had a windfall... an unexpected check arrived when he could really use it! Great, right? Well it would have been, but then it got lost in the mail between Michigan and NYC. The windfall turned into a huge source of aggravation for him.

I told him he should try to visualize things going right. Or seeing himself happy, at least. With all his negativity he was headed for a heart attack before he was thirty!

His check finally turned up, but the post office in Harlem was less than helpful. The local customer service rep in Michigan helped us verify that the letter was in the NY PO. So David stood his ground and insisted that the reluctant clerk, check for it. They found it and he was thrilled.

Then he went to his bank and they told him it would take 4 days to clear. He looked up the bank the check originated from and walked three miles to go there and get it cashed.

As he was walking back he called me and said he was feeling better... that he thought about it and realized that he is living his dream... he is in NYC... doing what he's always wanted to do... and what could be better than that?! As he was walking and talking to me he looked down for some reason and saw something on the ground... it was green... you guessed it... $20 lying on the sidewalk, no one else around... he picked it up. He said he considered it a sign. I do too!

There is nothing wrong with being optimistic! If I have to see a glass half empty or half full, I'll pick half full every time! While the volume of liquid remains the same, the volume of my happiness and the quality of my life is greater as an optimist... and that (as they say in the Mastercard commercials)... is PRICELESS!

A Time of Growth

I have been having what I'll call "growing pains" for a lack of a better description. There have been, and continue to be challenges cropping up for me, but I am choosing to face them head on.

These challenges make me only more aware that my perception is my reality. Likewise, other people have their own perceptions of reality.

I am finding and learning my truth. Sometimes it is like we all have different sunglasses on so we see things a bit differently. I remember this in an advanced writing class. Four of us, all good friends swapped term papers on the same article in Atlantic Monthly. We each had written the paper according to our own truth, from our own angle. It was amazing to see how we could be good friends, with somewhat similar lives and yet have such different views!

I am reminded of this experience now as I write some copy for a friend's business web site, brochures and the such. My friend is a excellent writer... sometimes it hurts to change her words, because they are put together so beautifully. However, the slant is academic. Beautiful but still academic. She needs something that will sell and that is where I come into the picture.

Sometimes we all need an editor like this in life to help us see the events of our lives in a different light. The events are there, but if we can look at them from another angle, we can get a different picture of reality and a better understanding of our life.

We Create Our Own Reality

Reality


Reality is what we take to be true.

What we take to be true is what we believe.

What we believe is based upon our perceptions.

What we perceive depends upon what we look for.

What we look for depends upon what we think.

What we think depends upon what we perceive.

What we perceive determines what we believe.

What we believe determines what we take to be true.

What we take to be true is our reality.

- Gary Zukov from his book, Dancing Wu Li Masters