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Extreme Esteem: Down and out

“Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation, while bad luck
9246300_web1_Fuhrer-Murray

“Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation, while bad luck

is (often) when lack of preparation meets reality.”

– Eliyahu Goldratt, Israeli business guru and author

“Hey, thanks for the ride.”

“No problem, my man!” he called back.

I climbed out of the cab of the tow truck then stood and watched as the driver pulled my wrecked car around back. After speaking with the receptionist, I waited a few minutes – flipping through old Field & Stream magazines – until a man with a clipboard appeared and motioned for me to follow him outside.

“Hit a deer?” he asked, kneeling to peruse the shattered grill.

“Came out of nowhere,” I replied. “I didn’t have time to stop.”

“You’re lucky,” he said. “Had a fellow a few months back who’d hit a moose on his way to work. Damn thing came across the hood and right through his windshield.”

“Yep,” I replied. “That was me, too.”

Each of us has bouts of bad luck. Sometimes our bad luck is merely frustrating or at worst, inconvenient. Other times, it can prove devastating. Sometimes our bad luck is the result of poor choices or, as with my wildlife encounter, it’s beyond our control. There are junctures, however, when bad luck can return a positive result.

We’ve all heard of Ernest Hemingway, author of A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man by the Sea and countless other renowned works. Here’s something you may not know: Hemingway was still struggling to make his mark as an author when bad luck struck. The suitcase containing all his manuscripts – dozens of stories, hundreds of pages of polished works – disappeared and, despite tremendous effort, could not be retrieved.

A devastated Hemingway turned to friend and poet, Ezra Pound who told him his stroke of bad luck was a stroke of good fortune. Hemingway was flabbergasted. How could the loss of all his precious work be considered anything but bad luck?

Pound said it would confirm his commitment to becoming a successful author. It would give Hemingway the opportunity to rewrite the stories and make them better. He would forget the weak parts and only the best, strongest material would re-emerge.

Pound encouraged his friend to start over with a sense of optimism and hope. Hemingway did eventually rewrite the stories, and we are all the more fortunate for it.

If we accept Pound’s advice and– after a streak of apparent bad luck – begin again with a sense of optimism and hope, we can transform a negative into a potential positive. We can search for and find the lesson that accompanies even the most challenging situations. The human spirit is often renewed and revived in the face of adversity.

Admittedly, it’s not always possible to see the good in a “bad luck” situation. Lessons are not like jack-in-the-boxes that pop up when the crank is turned. It can take months and even years for events to produce a positive outcome. Sometimes adverse events – bad luck – create positive outcomes for others and not for us directly. Tragedies can lead to changes. Think of laws around work safety that only came into effect following the horrendous experience of bad luck, perhaps resulting from a tragic loss of life.

I believe the better your self-esteem, the more deeply you’ll consider choices and their consequences. The less likely you’ll be to “knee-jerk” into unfortunate situations or repeat them and the more resilient and resourceful you will be at overcoming or recovering from times of bad luck. Moreover, the life lesson will be more evident.

Sometime after my second wildlife collision, someone sent me a card. The words seemed apropos: “Don’t pray for fewer problems; pray for more skills. Don’t ask for smaller challenges; ask for greater wisdom. Don’t look for an easy way out; look for the best possible outcome.” I am not sure who wrote it, but it is good advice, then and now.