"You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it." This is an old French proverb that really can't be attributed to any one person. I like it because no one really knows how there life is going to turn out, and the more little decisions you make, the greater the chance that one of them will be life changing. I have told the story of how my wife and I started dating on numerous occasions, so I won't bore you with a deep rendering of it here. In a nutshell, I invited her to a party at a beach house on the Jersey shore and told her to bring whoever she liked. At the time, I thought she was married, so when I said she could bring whoever she liked, I assumed she would bring her husband. When I invited her, I had no intentions of trying to date her since I knew she was married. It was just that a lot of the younger people on the floor were going to the party and I didn't want her to feel unwelcome or left out. I didn't expect her to come really and I was surprised when she called me for directions. It ends up her husband had died recently and she did not mention it to many people at work. When she came to the party she had a guy and another one of the administrative assistants with her. When I said, it was nice to meet your husband she said he wasn't her husband and that he had died recently. Well, I guess you can say that fate met me on the road unexpectedly that night! I was at the party looking for a girlfriend... I just didn't have any intention that it would be Sharon since I had thought she was married. To tell you the truth, The whole situation above reminds me of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems: The Road Not Taken. Frost writes about taking the path less traveled and how it changed his life. His final lines to the poem are: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. By not wanting someone to feel left out, and inviting them to a party with no expectations, I ended up finding a girl friend and eventually my wife. Meanwhile, on other nights, when I was actively trying to find a girl, I would oftentimes end up not meeting any with a real interest in me. Sometimes the path made to attain a goal is also a path where we meet the most resistance.
I find that fate works in fickle ways across all aspects of life. I know people who started a job for summer employment or just as a temporary gig to make some money, who then went on to make that industry their life-long career. I have also seen people change their entire lives after seeing something on TV or reading something in a book. The changes were not overnight, but they were evident over a longer period of time. All said, it seem fate likes to meet up with us on the least likely paths. Keep your eyes open people and enjoy your journey!
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"Sometimes it's the smallest decisions that can change your life forever." That's a quote by Keri Russell. Keri is an actress that got her start on the Mickey Mouse Club. It seems a lot of actors and actresses got their start on that show. That is about all I can tell you about her though. I haven't watched TV in about a decade now.
I like this quote, though it seems very obvious to me. We can all think of times in our lives where a small decision may have changed our destiny. For me, grabbing my wife's hand that night on the beach was a small decision that changed everything in my life. From that one little decision, sprang a number of large changes. To start, I stopped drinking soon after. Two weeks into our relationship my wife told me she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her stop drinking. I gave up the booze that day, and spent the next eleven years trying to help her to stop drinking as well. To be honest, I don't think I would have stopped drinking on my own, if she hadn't asked me for help. You see, I was an alcoholic as well. I was functional, but still drinking way too much to be considered healthy. A second change that came from that initial small decision to grab her hand was that Sharon and I ended up getting married and having two children. Regardless of anything else, that decision was crucial. Imagine that instead of grabbing Sharon's hand that night, I instead opted for the easy path. I already had a feeling that the other girl walking on the beach with us liked me. In fact, Sharon later mentioned to me that she knew that to be the case. Think about it. If I did not grab Sharon's hand, I may have ended up dating that other girl... or no one! If I didn't grab Sharon's hand, I may have lost any opportunity to be with her. If I then went on to meet someone else eventually, I may still have had daughters, but they would not have been Maddie and Ashleigh. Oddly enough, I guess you can say that Maddie and Ashleigh's lives hung in the balance on whether or not I grabbed Sharon's hand. Now, to make this post even weirder, let's think about the path not taken. How is my life different than it may have been due to the decisions I didn't make... or the times when I made the wrong decisions? Would I be in New Hampshire? Would I have two daughters? Would I even be alive? Only God can answer that question. So yes, the quote was obvious, but so true. Not every small decision is going to be life changing. YOU WILL GET AWAY WITH SOME OF THEM! But any of them can. One last example. Did you know that one of the last CEO's of Mc Donald's had actually gotten his first job at Mc Donald's back in high school? He worked there while he was in high school and part way though college. When he got out of college. He was then hired on to manage a restaurant... and the rest is history! One small decision (to take an after school job), ended up leading to his entire career. I bet he didn't see that coming when he decided to take an after school job! "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." That's a quote by Thomas Edison. All of the successful people I have ever known, got that way by stepping away from what was comfortable for them.
I would say about 20% of my friends have stepped out and started their own businesses. Does this make them happier? It is hard to say. Some businesses have really taken off, while others have failed. A few have languished somewhere in the middle. Sometimes the difference is in how well thought out the business was in the first place. Other times, it really depended on how much work the person who started it was willing to put into it. Sometimes, neither of those things mattered. After saying all of that, I can tell you that opportunities (at least for starting businesses) rarely just fall into your lap. There is either hard work to do or a lot of networking involved to be in the right position at the right time. Sometimes, very specific knowledge is needed. One thing that is always needed, I find, is a general unhappiness with the status quo. In general, it is when you are unhappy with something in your life that you will find the extra oomf necessary to take the initial step out of your comfort zone. I know that is the way it was for me. Not only with starting my own business, but with losing weight, getting in shape...nearly everything. No matter what you want to do in life, there is work involved. Nothing comes free. There is going to be some cost. For instance, whether an opportunity works out or not, there is always going to be the time you used to take the opportunity. That will always be a sunk cost. Think of it like: "If I do this, then I can't do that." Simple. There could also be a monetary cost. Again, this could also come back to time. If I spend my time working on "A", then I can't make money doing "B". In the end, many people are just too lazy to take the first step. Others, look to skip steps to get to where they want to be sooner. I find that this doesn't work either. Make a plan on how to logically get to where you want to go, and then follow the plan through. If at some point, you see a way to improve the plan, then by all means, do so. Just don't start without a plan and then decide to wing it as you go along. From my experience, this just doesn't work out too well. There are just too many ways for things to go wrong then. When you make a plan, you have at least thought it out to that point. In all aspects of your life, smart working will get you where you want to go. While there will be some hard work involved. I always found that most of that came in the planning stages. Doing the actual work is oftentimes enjoyable. After all, whatever it is you are pursuing... whether it is a new business, an new love interest, or a new personal goal, you chose it didn't you? That means that you likely must enjoy something about it, otherwise, you would have chosen something else. It's better to look back and say "I can't believe I did that" than to look back and say "I wish I did that".
This quote comes from an unknown source. However, I think it couldn't be more true. Today; I asked my dad for an idea on what to write about- and he responded with 'opportunity'. When he said that, that was the quote that automatically came to mind (even though I doubt this was what my dad had in mind when he said opportunity). I whole-heartedly agree with this quote though; mainly because even as a 14 year old; I have already had missed chances in life. My issue is that if I don't take an opportunity; I spend a lot of time trying to wrap my mind around how it may have turned out if I had taken the chance or gone with the alternate option. This gets increasingly annoying; especially since I think at a very fast rate. I can never make a proper decision on what the outcome would likely have been, and it drives me insane as a result. I guess what they say is true- in the end, you only regret the chances you didn't take. I don't often find myself regretting... I find myself wondering. And I believe that living in wonder is much better than living in regret. Do you agree with me? Do you disagree? Why or why not? Leave me a comment, let me know. - Maddie "If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade." That's a quote by Tom Peters, an author of books on business management practices. I think this advice holds true outside of the business world as well.
All throughout life we are presented with opportunities. What we do with those opportunities will ultimately define our lives. Think back on your own life. Where you are today can be traced back to what opportunities you accepted, and more importantly, which ones you have let slip past you. This holds true for who you date, what job you do, and even where you live! We all have decisions we have to make. A split second is all you have for some of them. What way would your life have turned out if you chose differently? Decisions you make... or don't make can have an impact on your entire life. For instance. when I was younger, I sold real estate during my last two years in college. The experience gave me a sales background, which would have made it easy for me to become a stock broker. In fact, oftentimes when I handed in a resume to a financial firm to become an analyst, they asked me if I would be interested in becoming a broker trainee. I always said no, I wanted to be an analyst, and the interview or conversation would usually stop there. Had I said yes, where would I be in life? I can guarantee you that my life would be radically different. I am not saying better or worse, just different. You see, I met my wife while working for Merrill Lynch as an analyst. If I did not become an analyst, I would likely have never married my wife, or had my two wonderful daughters. Sometimes our decisions in one tiny part of our lives can have a major impact on our destiny. My first financial job I took out of college did not pay much. In fact, it paid $16,500 and I had to travel over 55 miles in one direction to get there. I remember I answered a newspaper ad for data entry for Value Line. I knew the Value Line Investment Survey, and I figured that if I worked hard at the data entry, that I could eventually move up to become an analyst there. I was very naive back then, but that is exactly how it worked out for me. Within six months I worked in quality control, and then six months later I was a junior analyst... and my financial career was started! The secret in life is to know what is an opportunity for you instead of just an option. Becoming a broker was an option for me, because of the sales background I had. It was not an opportunity for me, because I did not want to be a broker. Meanwhile, the ad for a data entry clerk was an opportunity for me, because it allowed me to get a foot in the door at a company I wanted to work for, and the work, I suspected, would allow me to meet people who could help me to become what I wanted. The low salary never even came into consideration. How my wife and I started dating was also an opportunity I failed to let slip by. I have told this story a number of times already in this blog, so I won't repeat it again here. But sometimes, your heart knows something is right and will urge you to follow it. It also helped that I felt that I was in a no lose situation, since I thought the other girl with us liked me and I wasn't interested in her. If my wife had said no to my advance, at least the other girl would have known that I was not interested in her, thus stopping an awkward situation later. That said, there are all types of opportunities in life. Being offered to do something you do not want to do is not one of them. It is an option. Right now, I have the option of droning on for another thirty paragraphs about this very same topic... and likely bore you to death. Instead, I will take the opportunity to end this missive here. When the window of opportunity opens, I prefer to rip it open with a crow bar! Not pretend I didn't see it! |
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