Your road to happiness: Luck v/s Effort

Hey peeps! Back again. Before I start talking about the theme of this week’s article, I just want to say two things: Don’t give up in life when life gets hard. You may constantly find yourself not being able to achieve your goals at times. No matter how hard you try, sometimes, it doesn’t happen. In those moments, just keep going. REMEMBER THIS: Consistency is far more important than other things. In any initiative, first strive to keep your consistency, and then work on other things. Don’t lose hope. Bad phases don’t last. You should have continued the effort through your bad phases to be able to focus on improvement in the good phases. Take care :*

What am I talking about today? Luck versus effort. 

I think you already know where this article is headed. Well, no surprises today. It’s going exactly where you think it's going. The point of writing this one is to strengthen your belief in effort. And try and make you aware of the outcomes of believing in it (or not).

Borrowing this line from one of my reader’s comments on the last blog post..

“Happiness always comes to the people who work towards it.”

Well, there are two ways of being happy in life.

One - to not have any wishes, wants, desires, needs. So your happiness is not attached to anything that you don’t have. In that case, you become happy by default. If you think you want to work towards achieving this, please go ahead. It’s probably the best state to be in.

But if you’re not a life ninja, there are greater chances of you wanting to pursue the second direction of being happy.

Which is what my friend hinted at. Most of us have things we desire in life. And our happiness gets linked to being able to get those things. 

Whether it is a nice house or a car, wealth, love, fame, recognition, food, shelter, whatever.

I have started working towards an experimental node in life of being a life coach. Currently working with four amazing humans on that as an experiment. And this is one of the questions, I ask these people -- What makes you happy?

It is probably sad that people kinda fail miserably at answering this question. Anyway.

So if we the key to happiness is achieving our goals - what do we do about it?

We probably keep dreaming and thinking. And at some point, your life leaves you behind. You are not able to catch up. And then you tell yourself - well, I probably wasn’t lucky enough.

You probably weren’t. Or maybe you were. But you don't know that. The only way to have known that answer was to have worked towards it. 

If there is one thing you need to remind yourself every day when you get out of bed, it is this: 

If you want something in life, there is no other way to get it unless you put in the work. Everyday.

Once when I was speaking to one of my friends about it, he put an argument to this statement, which I absolutely loved.

Here is what he said: ‘But Suruchi, luck plays a big part. What would you say about all these people who are just born rich in life? Didn’t they get everything they wanted just by sheer luck?’

Well, they didn’t. Because this is not what they want. Why? Because they already have it.

Each of us is born in different circumstances. We all already have some things in life.

The rich don’t want the wealth they already have, because hey, they already have it. What do they want? 

They want the world to know them by themselves and not by their father’s name. They want life partners who love them for who they are and not for their money. They want to look better. They want to achieve something in life that gives them a sense of fulfillment apart from their family’s money. And they also want more and more wealth.

These are all things that they will only get if they work towards it. It doesn’t happen by chance.

Nothing happens by chance. What you want will always be different from what the person next to you wants. The point is - whatever you want, you will have to work towards it. 

There is no point cribbing or complaining about the things that somebody else has and you don’t. It serves no purpose. You become a victim and paralyse your thoughts. Focus on what you want and work towards it. 

If you are a beggar on the street, what is it that you want from your life? Maybe you want a meal on your plate three times a day. Or a place to stay in. Maybe you want to keep yourself warm in the winters and cool in the summers. Maybe you just want a sip of water on a hot sunny day. Maybe you want an extra piece of cloth to wipe your sweat. Maybe you want healthcare resources to keep yourself and your loved ones healthy. Maybe you just want to let your child play with the balloons that he’s selling from car to car.

Is any of this something that you want from your life? No. Because you already have it. And still, these beggars are working day and night (or not) to be able to have these things.

Please put life into perspective. If you have desires in life, the only way to achieve them is to put in effort. 

Sometimes, some people do get a few things by luck. But if you want to be happy, can you rely on luck to provide you your happiness? What if it doesn’t?

Jai Jinendra.