One of the most dangerous games to play in life is one in which you both set yourself up for failure or fail to compete. Either option draws this black cloud over you that you can’t seem to shake—but how much is really luck? Understanding these key points can help you make not just better decisions, but maybe even the right ones to get you where you want to be.
Life can snowball and do so quickly.
Our big mistakes are a result, typically, from the microcosm of issues we pay no attention to. It adds up. Have you had days where one slip up leads to the next and suddenly you’re left feeling like you’re underwater? How much are you going to honestly write off to chance?
It may be tempting, but remember: if you keep blaming that black cloud you will never develop ways to make it clear up on your own.
What you accept as luck, you leave up to luck.
Rest assured, you are a better bet than leaving it up to random chance. Your odds are better when you bet on yourself. You are not random, you make deliberate actions and can do so to make personal change happen.
Honesty prevents overload
Circumstance and personality can be a bit too friendly with one another—worse yet, they may not listen to experience and rationality. If too much is taken on at one time, responsibilities might slip through your fingers.
Champion honesty. Sometimes, you have to struggle through. Life sometimes requires just satisfactory performance. It may not be stellar, but it may be necessary for that moment.
However, honesty is both something to be with you and with others. To be honest, you must understand empathy and sympathy. They’re both tools to communicate. If you cannot expect honesty from someone, they should not expect a favor from you.
Also, people may not know that what they’re asking is unreasonable or placing a lot of pressure on you, you have to communicate that when it happens or suffer the consequences.
Understanding ‘the threshold’ of happiness
Life is more than surviving to us. We’re battling our own biology, set up for us to simply survive. We’re so used to the battle that we are desensitized to the smaller actions in life, as we margin out our responses.
Can we mentally afford to give something that small the attention to fix it? Most of the time, the answer is no. It is not threatening or uncomfortable enough, so it is lower on our priority list to answer.
There’s one of our worst mistakes—that threshold. When you finally resolve your immediate concerns, you’re likely not going to even remember seeing something that you thought might have been a little off.
Command your attention, don’t let it command you
It wasn’t screaming out to you, it was not commanding your attention and so your mind puts it off. However, just because something does not require your immediate attention does not suggest that it requires none at all.
We like to distance ourselves from misfortunate realities because it’s a defense mechanism to keep chugging through life. You saw the signs. You saw them a few times. You knew you had to replace something when it got damaged. You knew you could have done more research, but now suddenly you’re left feeling like it was the part salesman’s fault and that he’s conned you out of your family’s sanity.
Are you going to let yourself off the hook so easily?
You can set yourself up to be crushed, in part because being crushed is easier than carrying a heavy load. You have to unburden yourself. Start with a realistic self-concept and be comfortable enough that when there is an issue, you can identify known potential conflicts and handle them. Don’t test your odds. Test yourself instead.
Barton Kleen
Executive Editor