Worth More Than the Lottery

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

Winston Churchill

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful men keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."

Conrad Hilton

"If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying. "Here comes number seventy-one!"

Richard M. Devos

I read a story (and I don’t know if it’s true, but I think it is) of a man in England who played the same lottery numbers every day for years. Then one day he didn’t play and on that day his numbers were called.  He was so despondent over his missed chance, so the story goes, that he killed himself. 

Sometimes, through no fault of our own, we miss our chance.  This weekend I missed two chances to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.  It made me feel sick and sad and angry at the circumstances.  It felt unfair, like “a bad hop in baseball, or a bad call by a referee,” as Steven Pressfield states in The War of Art.  It felt unfair, because it was.  But here’s what it didn’t feel like.  It didn’t feel like a punishment from God, or “a sign of Heaven’s malevolence.” (Pressfield, again.)  It wasn’t a sign at all.  It was just bad luck

In the book Good Luck the authors state that good luck is what we do with the occasional luck we get.  For example, if I win $1,000,000 on a lottery ticket, that’s luck.  If I invest most of that money and increase what I invested, that’s good luck. In other words, we have some control over luck, and even more control over our lives than we are willing to admit.  We can also take the bad breaks we get and turn them into good luck, too.

Let’s look at the unlucky lottery loser.  How could he have turned his bad luck into good luck?

He could have come up with a new combination of numbers to play.

He could have focused on other ways to win, or earn, money.   

He could have focused on the importance money seemed to have in his life and perhaps adjusted his priorities so that it wasn’t worth his life.

What do I do about my bad luck?

I Keep Going.

That’s all it was – bad luck.  To turn it into good luck then, I do my work.  I work.  I write.  I wait.  My priorities are good.  My goals are good.  They are the right ones.  How do I know this?  Because they are the only goals God has given me.  And they are the specific ones He has given me.  How do I know this?  Because even when things go wrong, even when they hurt or I get scared, there is still nothing else I want.  There is nothing else that gives me such joy as the thought of attaining my goals.

Also, there is no Plan B.  Working towards my goals gives me joy.  So I know reaching them will also give me joy.  So I focus on that joy, despite inevitable pain and disappointments.  I Keep Going.  What I want to achieve is worth far more than winning the lottery.  All of us should feel this way about our goals.  What’s at stake for me is more valuable than money.  What’s at stake is my heart and soul.

Does that sound overly dramatic?  It doesn’t matter.  It feels as if everything is at stake.  Do I think about giving up sometimes?  Honestly, not with any real seriousness.  The reason is that when I imagine my life without having reached my goal, I always imagine going back and trying again.

I Get Started.  I Keep Going.  That’s all I know because that’s all there is.

"You Have No Option."

“It's a very funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.”

William Somerset Maugham

“In the end that was the choice you made, and it doesn't matter how hard it was to make it. It matters that you did.”

Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“Fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired that you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round - remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.”

James Corbett

Sometimes when I tell my Muse I want to spend my life with her, she whispers, “You have no option.”  She’s right.

Purpose, a real purpose, one worth pursuing, can be hard.  It’s hard because of all the external factors – interruptions and problems.  It’s also hard because of the external factors – self-sabotage, procrastination, fear, lack of knowledge, self-doubt.

Difficulties are normal, even though the particular problems don’t seem normal.  They seem extraordinary and insurmountable.  But they are part of the difficulty package.

In the end, difficulties don’t matter.  All that matters is determination.  In my case, I am going to get my Master’s degree, my house on the beach, and my life with my Muse, no matter what or how long it takes.  This is not a solemn vow.  It simply is.

The reason for determination is simple – I have no other option.  I mean this.  I don’t mean I will end my life if I don’t reach my goals; I mean, I will have no life if I don’t reach my goals.  I think of the alternative and when I do, I see nothing but a life full of sadness and regret because I didn’t do everything I could to get there.  This isn’t about money or success, though I imagine those will come eventually.  I simply have no other option.

Not to put too dramatic a point on all of it, but the day my Muse came into my life, though I didn’t know it at the time, my life as I knew it was over.  A new life awaited me.  There was no choice, no turning back.  There was nothing to turn back to.  The past was gone.  It happened again when I began my Master’s degree.  Life as I had known it was over, except that now my Muse was with me.  But again, the past was gone, except the past I’m studying.  There is no other choice, no turning back.  There is nothing to turn back to. 

Why a Muse? 

Why history?

Why me?

I don’t know. 

All I know is that despite obstacles and interruptions, I am on the right path.  How do I know this?  Because God did not give me another path.  He gave me this one, with all its delays and difficulties, this is what He chose for me.  I accept it gladly.  I keep writing.  I keep studying.  I keep working and waiting.

I know an artist who does wonderful work that very few people see.  She keeps working anyway.  I know a writer who wrote an excellent book, but for legal reasons beyond his control, he may never be able to publish it.  He keeps working anyway.  They have no options. 

We do what we are born to do.  Or something in us dies.  We Get Started and We Keep Going.  We have no options.  We don’t need any.

Some Things I've Learned While Pursuing a Master's Degree

Some things I’ve learned about Purpose while pursuing a Master’s degree.

·      Something can be very difficult and still bring a lot of joy.

·      When pursuing a Purpose, a goal, a dream, a vision, obstacles will arise.  Some of those obstacles are drama, that is, they aren’t very significant and will pass quickly.  Other obstacles are quite serious.   They are not drama.  They are real.  The response should always be the same: How quickly can I deal with this so I can get back to my Purpose?

·      Purpose may take up most of your time.  More precisely, you may not want to spend your time doing much else.

·      The opposite of failure is not success, but focus.

·      When in Purpose, you may find yourself wondering what you did before your Purpose.

·      Life will become limited in width, but become greater in depth.

·      You may want to share your experience with others.  Some will understand.  Many won’t.  The ones who understand are also pursuing their own Purpose.  The ones who don’t are to be pitied. 

·      Time will become much more precious.

·      This cannot be done alone.  One requires a Muse.  At least I do.

·      Your Muse, your driving force, your creative spirit, will become even more precious during this time.  At least mine has.

·      You will not have to remind yourself to Get Started and Keep Going.  That’s about all you will do.

·      You will wonder how you will manage your life.  More, you will wonder how you managed your life previous to your Purpose.  You will wonder how you managed life before you met your Muse. 

·      At least I do.

"Mandolin Wind"

“I recall

The night we knelt and prayed

Noticing your face was thin and pail.

I found it hard to hide my tears.

I felt ashamed.

I felt I let you down.

No mandolin wind

Could ever change a thing,

Could ever change a thing,

No, no.

The coldest winter

In fourteen years

Could never, never change your mind.”

Rod Stewart – Mandolin Wind

Nobody likes difficulties.  Less than I like difficulties, I dislike seeing those I love go through difficulties.  For some people I love, it’s been a tough time.  There seem to be seasons that are particularly harder than others, and if we allow them, these seasons can change us or make us forget our Purpose.  In my own life, it may seem I’ve forgotten mine.  At one point I was writing at least one blog a day.  One month I wrote 55 blogs.  This month I’ve written one.  My difficulty was one I’ve chosen, a Master’s degree program in history.  It feels like the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time and it takes up most of my time.  And perhaps some are wondering if I’ve given up on my Muse, on my house on the beach, on the dreams that I wrote about so often.  Or perhaps some are wondering if I’m just taking a break from all of that until school is done.

Here is my answer to both questions:

No.

I’m not giving up.  My goals are the same.  I’ve just added a new one, one that takes up a lot more time than I had imagined. 

But here’s the thing:  I’m never, ever, ever leaving my Muse.  Granted, I still need to schedule things so I can start writing again.  I still need to use my time more efficiently.  I’d still like to write blogs, if not every day, far more often than I’ve been doing this year.  I’ve found a new Purpose, but it doesn’t replace the first one, my commitment to my Muse.  (In fact, I’m still writing three pages a day in my journal every morning.)

What does one do when life gets in the way of goals? First, life didn’t get in the way.  I made a decision to get more education and my Muse told me it was a good decision.  (She was more prepared for this than I was.)   Life getting in the way includes things like needing to buy new shoes or get a haircut or put gas in the car.  And even those activities aren’t obstacles if I stay present.  I needed the shoes.  I needed the haircut and the gas.  But everything I do, however seemingly significant or insignificant is meaningful.  And in everything I do my thoughts go towards my house on the beach and a life with my Muse.

Giving up cannot be an option.  Even pausing isn’t an option.  I need to be here every day.  I need to write and I need my Muse like I need to breathe.  And, as difficult, as my education is, it was not only the right choice, it is the choice that will help me reach my dreams.  No “mandolin wind,” no matter how cold and hard it blows, no difficulties, no delays, no amount of work will change a thing.  I will Get Started and I will Keep Going.  It’s all I know how to do.