HAPPENSTANCE

Happenstance happens when your stance in life lacks a plan or a purpose, and life happens anyways, because it will.  As the years go by, your dreams and goals drift away.  Choose to change that!  
 
 

The ABCs of Personal Empowerment
Happenstance
 
If ever there was a difficult path in life, happenstance is it.  Happenstance is living by chance rather than by choice.  Although some of the outcomes may be good, your accomplishments could have been more extraordinary, more frequent, and perhaps even better if you took chance out of the equation.
 
Imagine taking to sea on a sailboat when you know little or nothing about sailing, the currents, tides, or tacking in the wind.  Would the odds be in your favor to end up where you wanted?   You would likely end up adrift at sea or smashed against the rocks.  Walking through life knowing little about how to steer yourself towards success often has similar results.  Life seems unfulfilling, even disastrous.
 
As you work through the material at www.timgrady.com, take a few moments now and then to assess where you are in your journey.  Are things going your way?  If you had thought through the steps, would you retake those same steps – knowing the outcome was far less than you hoped it would be?  Life can still be fun, exciting, and spontaneous, but your dreams and goals should not be left to happenstance because of their value to you, unless they are of little value to you.
 
Your dreams and goals are a reflection of your self-worth.  You may leave things to chance because you do not feel like you are worthy of more, you are not in control, that your options are few, or you are a victim of your circumstances.  If you find yourself in this corner, and many people do, then you can lift yourself out of this environment or way of thinking by changing three things: what you read, who you hang around with, and where you focus your energy and efforts.  You do not need to go another day hoping happenstance will ‘save’ you.  Most likely, it will not.
 
Which would you rather have: a life of abundance or a life of scarcity?   In the U.S., the most prosperous nation on Earth, more than 20% of the population lives a life of scarcity – even though they could change their situation simply by changing what they read, who they hang around with, and where they focus their energy and efforts.   
 
Most people live their lives by happenstance.  The proof is no further away than their list of dreams and goals.   After the former U.S.S.R. (United Soviet Socialist Republic) collapsed in the early 1990s, the people under Communist rule were free to pursue their dreams and goals.  Here is the shocker – many of them didn’t have any dreams and goals!   Under Socialist rule, they were told where they would work, how much they would make, what they would do, and how they could live.  When they were suddenly ‘free,’ they had no free-thinking skills.  For most of their lives, their thinking was done for them.   Even money or happenstance wouldn’t change their circumstances.  It is your thinking and action that changes your circumstances.
 
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few people engage in it.”
--  Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company
 
Happenstance is the absence of focusing your thoughts, energy, and efforts.  Thinking is the beginning of focusing your thoughts.  If your thoughts are all over the place, your efforts and results will follow.  If that is the case, then the only chance you have is happenstance.  If you can think, then you have the ability to change your methods from a life of scarcity to a life of abundance.  When you apply that ability, you transform it into capability.  You have empowered yourself to change your path forward.
 
Robert Frost’s poem, The Road Not Taken, ends with these lines:
 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
 
Happenstance is one of those roads.  Planning and pursuing is the other road.  Either will be challenging, and the latter may be far more difficult than happenstance, but the odds of you achieving greater things lies on the road less traveled by, and perhaps that is why so few people undertake it.   It is easier to hope, to wait, for chance, or luck, or happenstance to appear as a solution.
 
However, bear this in mind: you have the ability to change your circumstances.  You can become self-empowered simply by pursuing your future differently.
 
In conclusion, we want to share this poem with you in the hope you will consider changing your approach to how you are pursuing your dreams and goals:
 
Most are convinced, from some time ago,
That they know all that they need to know,
Now that would be easy, but living it so,
Will hold you back in your efforts to grow.
 
One day I decided to change my attack,
From pursuing my dreams and goals like a hack,
For my failure to learn has held me back,
So now I listen, and read, and focus, and act.
 
Poem by Tim Grady © 2021
 
 
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."  - Lao Tsu





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