Do you have to be lucky to have wealth?
How many of you had rabbit’s foot charm as a kid? It was supposed to bring us luck. Well I just read an article that stated:
“One half of life is luck and the other is discipline and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with your luck.”
Do you believe that? You can depend on the rabbit’s foot if you will – but it didn’t work for the rabbit! This made me curious about ‘good luck’ and ‘good fortune’ charms.
Did you know that Raccoon penis bones, Vulture heads, lucky pennies and a vast and eclectic array of amulets, talismans, and charms meant to bring good fortune to their owners have been put to use as long as humans have walked the planet. To the ancient Egyptians, images of the scarab beetle helped ward off evil. The Romans favored winged phalluses. Go to Turkey and you’ll find the ‘evil eye’ goggling protectively at you from shop windows, front doors, dashboards, bracelets, you name it. Christians all over the world over wear crucifixes and gamblers and athletes are infamous for placing their faith in almost any object or act they feel is going to increase their mojo. The desire for divine or mystical protection against the host of harms out there spans all cultures and all times.
But why a rabbit’s foot? Why not the leg of a frog or the spleen of a porcupine? It goes back to 600 BC and it couldn’t be just any old rabbit’s foot. The article went on stating that in hoodoo (note: not voodoo), which was an American mash-up of African folk spirituality and certain European traditions it had to be; “…the left hind foot of a rabbit killed in a country churchyard at midnight, during the dark of the moon, on Friday the 13th of the month, by a cross-eyed, left handed, red-headed, bow-legged Negro riding a white horse.”
Come on now… but before we start smugly thinking the rabbit’s foot is just yet another example of superstitious mumbo-jumbo given credence to by our silly ancestors, remember that even today many buildings skip a 13th floor (or 4th in some East Asian cultures), many airlines don’t have a row 13 on their aircraft, and, if possible, a surprising amount of people avoid holding important meetings, events, or trips on Friday the 13th. We’re more superstitious than we’d like to admit even today, and that, ‘knock on wood’, is unlikely to change any time soon!
Here is what I really believe LUCK stands for…
L ~ learning to adapt to
U ~ unexpected
C ~ change (equals)
K ~ key to success
Since many of us feel quite comfortable in our preferred habits, thank you very much, we usually find it more pleasurable to resist change. Why? It’s simply because change can become quite uncomfortable and therefore forcing us to move from our favourite position, forcing us to think, forcing us to take risks, even forcing us to think of alternate possibilities.
When I go for a tune up lesson in golf – the first thing the instructor adjusts is my grip. Now when he does this it feels really awkward, in fact I told him that I could not hit the ball holding the club like this – “Try it!” he says…. Sure enough my ball goes straight down the fairway and farther than before.
Alright so this ‘change’ and all other changes that we make, despite the pain and discomfort it creates, affects our results; when we work with it, change causes us to stretch and grow far beyond the limits of our comfort zone.
Along with all of this stretching and growing, dramatic changes are taking place within us. They are usually cleverly disguised inner transformations of sorts – more evolutionary than revolutionary in nature. But it sure doesn’t feel like it at the beginning!
What life has taught me is that we all create our own luck through our personal beliefs and attitudes. Luck is really the residue of design. That’s why it is so important to set goals. Have you ever felt you are not getting what you really want out of life? Do you know what you really want out of life?
This is one of my favourite quotes about dreaming by Henry David Thoreau;
“Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
Dreams are the stuff of which life is made. We all have them. Yet many people wonder how they can ever realize their dreams, or they give them up when they experience roadblocks, detours and curves on the way. It is often difficult to achieve a financial dream when there are many financial issues that seem to take priority.
There are daily expenses, paying off a mortgage or debt, saving for your own or a child or grandchild’s education, saving for retirement, taking a family vacation, caring for aging parents – we all have multiple and competing demands on our finances which make achieving our dreams sometimes appear to be impossible.
How can you manage all these financial challenges and at the same time keep your dreams alive? How can dreams become reality?
The value of setting and writing down goals cannot be overemphasized. Your goals start as a dream, but with planning, determination and communication, you can make them a reality!
Wealth is the ability to fully experience your life. So get out that dream board, journal or napkin and start writing down your dreams and some action steps to get going. Don’t worry about ‘how’ everything has to go…that’s a dream killer… just let your pen write with abandon and recklessness!.
‘Ink what you think’ and it will blow you away how fast your ‘luck’ will change!
Life is short, don’t settle for mediocre.
“Proceed as if success is inevitable!”
Have a ‘wealthy’ week!
….Oh and ‘good luck’! 
