Fortune AND Misfortune Favor The Brave

The Fortune of Misfortune.

Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow's good luck. ~ Og Mandino

Continuing on from last week's Monday Motivational I'm exploring the idea of luck a little further - getting new perspective on making gutsy decisions and learning from them no matter the consequences.

People often quote the adage "Fortune favors the brave" but I think it should be "Fortune and misfortune favor the brave." Seeing "misfortune" as a fortune is key to success. Misfortune is things not going to plan on one occasion. But this is an absolute requirement if you are going to learn how to make it go to plan next time, or the time after that...or the time after that...

Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. ~ Thomas Edison

I doubt I need to tell you the story of how many prototype light bulbs Edison made before he finally got to one that worked as he'd hoped.

I could go through piles of quotes along the lines of "If at first don't succeed try try again" but I doubt I need to whip that horse again for you to understand my point. It's easy to let ideas like this pass in one ear and out the other though, simply for that reason. How many times have you spoken to someone who's just come from a motivational talk and said "It was all stuff I've heard before"? That's because the hard part is not finding the information that can help you, it's applying it. Committing to the perspective adjustment, giving the idea all the power for change that it can impart.

Learning how to learn from your mistakes and always be growing is a key part of being a "lucky" individual. Part of the reason behind this is that the confidence you get from knowing from experience you can learn from your mistakes makes you more decisive and less fearful to make brave decisions, plus make them faster.

And this leads me to one final quote.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength, mastering yourself is true power.
~ Lao-Tzu

The fact that we're no longer living in caves, hunting wild, or any other Neanderthalic pastime, is proof that intelligence and wisdom are more powerful than any raw, individual, physical power. And I believe there is no power like truly knowing yourself - all the strengths and weaknesses, all the idiosyncrasies and idiotic tendencies. It could be said that having the wisdom to know how intelligent you aren't and then making bold but well thought out decisions in relation to this is the seed that will see an individual harvesting crops of "luck".