The Lottery of Life- Would You Re-Draw?

- Adam Khoo
Lots of people I meet complain that they don’t have the luck to achieve the success and wealth that they want. “If only I was luckier, life would be alot easier and I would be alot happier”, they would say. Many people pray of the day they could draw that lucky ticket and win that million dollar lottery that would change their life.
What many people do not realize is that the fact that they are comfortably reading this BLOG means that they have been lucky enough to be one of the few winners of the biggest lottery of all….the lottery of life! They were lucky enough to draw the ‘right ticket’ and be born where they are.
Imagine that 24 hours before you were born, God gave you a bowl of 100 tickets. You had to draw one ticket that would determine your sex, country of birth, wealth, intelligence etc.. What would have been your chance to end up where you are now?
Let;s look at the odds. If you were to take the entire earth’s population and shrink it to 100 people (represented by 100 tickets), with all existing human ratios the same, it would be made up of the following:
49 would be female, 51 would be male80 would live in substandard housing. 20 in acceptable housing.67 would be unable to read. Only 33 would be literate1 would have a university education. 99 would not be able to attend university50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation33 would be without access to a safe water supply16 would have access to the Internet17 would live in a developed country. 83 live in underdeveloped/developing countries
If you were given the chance to turn back time and go back to 24 hours before you were born, would you choose to return your current ticket and re-draw a new ticket from the 100 again? If not, then consider how lucky you are!

It’s Another Day

One of my favourite lines in the movie Gone With The Wind is when Scarlett says ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ This line has given me hope many times when the skies of my life were bleak and I couldn’t see around the corner of whatever challenge was facing me at the time I would remind myself, that after all, tomorrow was another day. No matter what it looked like at the moment, I knew that tomorrow would bring perhaps a solution, or maybe simply another perception of the situation I was in. I would remind myself that things always get better eventually.

   Anything can change tomorrow, or even today, or even this moment. We simply have to keep the door open to the possibility of change — keep our mind and heart open to looking for a next step, a resolution of our dilemma. When we give up, or when we think it’s all hopeless, we stop looking for solutions and we stop being open to the miracles that the Universe can send our way.

   There are many things that we see when we look around us — whether in our household, in our work situation, in the world — that are ‘far from perfect’. But, everything that exists today can be different tomorrow, or the day after that. The important thing for us to remember is that there is hope. I always like to say: As long as you’re still breathing, there’s still hope. (And if you are confident in life after death, as I am, then you know there’s still hope after your body is no longer breathing.)

   Nothing in our life, no matter how terrible it seems, is hopeless. Whether later today or tomorrow, we still will have opportunities to ‘make it better’. Whether we are dealing with relationships, work situations, or world crises — it can all change. Nothing is ever always the same — things are in a constant process of change, and when we are setting our intentions properly, the change is towards the betterment of our life situation.

   I must say, I am rather enjoying seeing all the ‘dirt’ coming out about the corporations and CEOs involved. Not that I’m glad it all happened, but rather I’m happy that it’s all coming out in the open. After all, in order to change or “heal” a situation, we must first realise and acknowledge that there is something that needs healing. Thus all the shenanigans coming out about Enron, WorldCom, AOL, Haliburton, and some of the major key players in the US administration will finally give us a chance to ‘fix’ the problems. First we must see the problem — then we go about resolving it. If we deny that there is injustice, dishonesty, and corruption, then we also are denying the possibility of ‘fixing’ what is wrong in our world.

   It is the same in our personal lives. If someone is in a battered relationship, first they must acknowledge that the situation exists before they can do something about it. We cannot decide to leave an abusive marriage before acknowledging that something is unhealthy about the relationship — the same applies to work situations, financial situations. First we acknowledge that there is a problem, then we start looking to see how to resolve it.

   The important thing to remember when we see a problem — or something that needs balancing or a ‘course correction’ — is that we must simply ‘see the problem’. Getting into a barrage of blame and anger and guilt will not get us any closer to a resolution. We must look at ourselves and at the people around us as small children who need a “course correction”. When you see a child about to do something that will harm themselves or others, you correct them — yet we all know that we can attract more bees with honey than vinegar. It is best to correct with love and compassion and understanding, than to do so with retribution, rage, and name-calling.

   If we want to make changes in our lives and in the world around us, blame, anger, and venom will not attain positive change. We need to focus on the solution we want, focus on the outcome we desire, and see what steps we need to take to attain that goal — one step at a time, one day at a time.

   After all, tomorrow is another day. We simply need to live our today’s with an eye on our tomorrows and make course corrections when needed.

-By Marie T Russell

Change Your Life

THERE is no need to be unhappy. There is no need to be sad. There is no need to be disappointed, or oppressed, or aggrieved. There is no need for illness or failure or discouragement. There is no necessity for anything but success, good health, prosperity, and an abounding interest and joy in life.

That the lives of many people are full of dreary things is unfortunately only too true; but there is no necessity for them to be there. They are there only because their victims suppose them to be inevitable, not because they are so. As long as you accept a negative condition at its own valuation, so long will you remain in bondage to it. Success and happiness are the natural condition of mankind. It is actually easier for us to demonstrate these things than the reverse. Bad habits of thinking and acting may obscure this fact for a time, just as a wrong way of walking or sitting, or holding a pen or a musical instrument may seem to be easier than the proper way, because we have accustomed ourselves to it; but the proper way is the easier nevertheless.

Unhappiness, frustration, loneliness are really bad habits that their victims have become accustomed to bear with more or less fortitude, believing that there is no way out, whereas there is a way; and that way is simply to acquire good habits of the mind instead of bad ones. You should never “put up” with anything. You should never be willing to accept less than Health, Harmony, and Happiness.

Animesh Bhatt

Freedom .... Happiness

Freedom .... Happiness

Sitting on my terrace..
on this beautiful evening..
i look up to see...

the birds fly...
in tandem they fly..
swinging in one direction..
then another..
so many of them..

oh so free they fly..
so wonderful they fly..

i envy their freedom
and i envy their happiness..

i wonder
if they are looking at me..
and envy my terrace..
envy my being on the ground..
unafraid..
without a time bound..
to reach home..
and then start another day..

i wonder...
if they are free..
as free as i am..

and i wonder...
if they are happy..
as happy as i am.

Animesh Bhatt