I’m a failure. I’ve failed so many times that it would be easier to count the hairs on my head than to count the number of times I’ve failed. Failure is part of life. If we are not failing, we are not living – we are not loving.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Failing hurts. It causes pain in all the right (wrong?) places- especially if the failure involves other people. However, it is this pain that pushes us towards success.
I’d like to share my experience with the following equation: Luck = Preparation + Opportunity.
This equation popped up in a course I was taking a few weeks ago. It didn’t occur to me that luck, or any other such concept, could be expressed as such a simple equation. It was then that I had an ‘Ahah’ moment.
There have been many times in the past few years that I have received the following compliment:
“You seem to have it all together. How do you do it?”
This compliment, as I take it, always baffled me. I really never have it “all together” and even if I did, I’m not really sure how I would have done it. Upon some reflection, I determined that the intent behind the compliment was the following:
“Everything in your life is going well and you are quite different from other people I talk to. When there are difficulties, you handle them and move on without a bother. How is it that someone can do this so effortlessly?”
Perhaps my interpretation is quite pompous – and it may be. However, it’s the interpretation that I can answer. In short, the answer is quite simple.
I’m grateful for my life and everything and everyone that comes into it. I’ve struggled for many years and have done the work to come out of it, understand it, and want to help others who have gone through something similar.
Previously, I’ve always contributed most of my successes to luck – something seemingly out of my control. Hard work pays off, but I didn’t expect my hard work to get me anywhere close to where I am today.
What I have come to understand can be summed up in a quote by financial guru Dave Ramsay:
“Live like no one else so that you can live like no one else.”
Even though Dave was talking about financial independence, I’d like to steal his quote for my purpose here. If you live your life differently from others, you will have a different life from others.
As I’ve stated on the Home page of this website, I’ve never been one to fit into a box. My tendencies push me away from the normalcies of life and towards something different. I have come to find out that the gifts of perseverance and curiosity is a dangerous combination!
When my life almost fell apart in 2015 (that’s another post for another day), I gathered what was left and strived on. I knew that it would be years before I could stand on my own two feet again.
The time I was gifted due to being unemployed was the exact thing I needed to move forward – to become the person I needed to be. I used this time to change careers from music production to software development. After one year of self-study, I decided to go back to college and get certified as a software developer.
I then spent two more years self-studying different programming languages, frameworks, and methodologies and developed and released multiple applications. In hindsight, this preparation meant more than I realized.
The first year of college was easy. So easy in fact that I rarely studied and achieved top marks. My second year was very difficult as I suffered a concussion which left me with short-term and long-term memory loss as well as some anger issues. However, by the grace of God and my years of preparation, I was able to scathe out with top marks.
So what does all of this have to do with luck? Well, let me explain.
At the end of my first year of college, I was contacted by my academic chair. I thought I was in trouble for something I either did or did not do. But as I quickly found out, this was not the case. Instead, we talked about a job opportunity as one of the local tech companies was looking for a student – and my name popped up in the conversation they had.
I met with the hiring manager and after a short discussion over coffee, I was given the job. I asked myself “was this just luck or by hard work?” The answer is one and the same.
Simply put, I lived like no one else so that I could live like no one else:
If I did not prepare, I would not have had the money to go to college. I would have not had the knowledge to thrive as much as I did in college. I would have not had the skills to excel through the year of my concussion. I would have not had my name pop up in conversations with an employer. I would have not been selected for the job.
Luck = Preparation + Opportunity.
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I’ve wanted to share this experience with you for some time but wasn’t quite sure how to at first. My resolve did not come until I understood this equation. Of course, there will always be circumstances out of our control. But, it is always better to be prepared than to be caught out.
Be grateful for what you have and where you are – it’s more important than you realize.
Peace, love, and happiness stuff.