The Trick To Success

The way in which we garner results or consequences from the things we do is hardly mystical, you do something, you get a result. Wherever we are in life, whatever our circumstances, they are partially the result of the things we have done.

Note: I am not saying that if a piano lands on your head or you get cancer or something then you “thought this into existence”, that’s just madness. We are tiny things in a massive universe and it’s just ego to think that we create everything that happens to us. It also shows insensitivity toward the plight of people in the world currently experiencing extreme hardship.

But there is a locus of control in our life.

We might get cancer because we just had bad luck and got cancer or we may get cancer because we smoked a pack a day for 40 years.

So to me, Karma, the message of the Justice card, is very practical. It speaks of the simplicity of life’s rules. If you start a business and conduct your business in the best way you know how, you will get a certain result. It might be a favourable result or it might not. If you conduct your business in a different way, you might get a different result.

One thing’s for sure – whatever results you get in life, while not wholly the result of your past actions, they are often very much influenced by them and indeed, it is not hard in hindsight to look back and see that the reason you are where you are in your life (whatever your opinion about that) is at least partially and often very largely the result of your previous decisions and consequent actions.

Decisions >> Actions >> Results

I can look back over my life and see how some decisions and consequent actions had massive effects on the path my life took. And very often these decisions were not well thought out nor was it apparent to me at the time how “important” the decisions/actions were.

I was in a band that was doing really well, but along the way I decided (in my youthful ignorance) that I was clearly “the special man” and could just party my youth away and my career trajectory would continue. Of course it did not, the early momentum I had gained through determined hard work simply petered out altogether. It was only later in my 30s that I realised how flippantly I had pissed away a great opportunity.

A little later I wrote a personal-development article that got published in a magazine. I was approached by a major book publisher on the back of this article to submit a book concept. I in fact submitted an entire finished book – a horror/thriller fiction novel. Unsurprisingly the editor who had been impressed with my personal development article, and who was in charge of a new-agey, self-helpy kind of imprint passed on my Stephen King impersonation!

It works both ways. For example, in the same band mentioned above, we experienced all manner of great success on the back of the decision to put our heads together and give the band a red hot go and the consequent actions this inspired. And as for my writing, I submitted a short story to a magazine once on a whim and they not only published it but wound up commissioning many more articles from me and giving me a much needed job in the publisher’s office. This job got me out of the dead-end hospitality-industry rut I was in and indirectly lead to my current career in marketing, which, frankly, I much prefer over pouring beers.

Probability vs. Magic

Yes it is all kind of obvious, and not really anything to do with “magic”, but, at the same time, I am often amazed at how the Universe conspires to place good things in our paths when we set our minds to something. I know that scientifically-minded people can (quite rightly) point out that coincidences are simply a matter of probability and chance, but to me I have never seen the conflict between magic and science. Why can it not be that science is the rules with which the Gods created the universe? How boring to deal only in absolutes, to eliminate the possibilities! I am very careful to “tether my camel”, but having said that, who says there aren’t any fairies in the garden at night?

The Trick is…

When I set my mind to something, I am often amazed at the opportunities that “magically” plonk into my lap. But be it magic, fluke, whatever – it all means nothing compared to what you do with it. The trick, as usual, is execution. The trick is executing the task of actually setting your mind to something. The trick is then to make a plan and begin executing it. The trick is, when a relevant opportunity (be it via blind chance or magic) drops in your lap – how you choose to respond to that opportunity.

That’s the theory anyway, and that was the message my Higher Power had for me last night in my meditations. The message was clear: if you want to do something awesome, decide what it is and get into action, because it’s what you set your mind on and what you do accordingly that most enables you to influence your results.

Of course I know this, you probably do too – the trick is to remember it and live it every day.