Thank Goodness It's Monday #340

ENTER THE DRAGON!

(YEAR OF THE …)

So, are you feeling lucky?

Chinese Zodiac lucky – not Clint Eastwood or Google-search lucky.

Perhaps you should be. Today, according to the Chinese lunar calendar based on a cycle of 12 years each of which relates to an animal sign, marks the beginning of –

The Year of the Dragon. 恭喜发财– transliterated in some places as Gung hay fa choy in Cantonese – is one simplified greeting roughly equivalent to “Happy New Year.”

Broadly speaking the 15-day Lunar New Year celebration just begun is chock-a-block with wishes for luck and good fortune, growth and prosperity, good health and longevity, harmony and togetherness.

And as I understand it, The Year of the Dragon focuses particularly on luck.

As luck would have it … Luck is a subject I’ve thought about. As, at one time or another, has probably everyone who ever existed.

In my completely unscientific survey of the info readily available (not all the 750 million options immediately accessible by Googling the word, of course, but …), I conclude that there are a lot of folks out there who –

Rely on luck. For example, it seems as if more than half the famous or even semi-famous person quotes about “luck” acknowledge its role in the success of the person quoted.

Good luck and Bad luck. Events that have worked for them or against them. They talk about happenstance … chance … the right moment … the factor beyond control … good fortune … about being in the right place at the right time.

However …

Those who ascribe some magical, beyond-my-control, Lunar-New-Year begins, or stars-align-to-make-it-happen quality to luck don’t get my endorsement.

The ‘fortuitous” part of the definition of “luck” just doesn’t work in my calculation.

Luck: The fortuitous happening of fortunate or adverse events.

Fortuitous: Happening by accident or chance; unplanned.

So, with due respect and apologies to the cultures who eagerly anticipate and celebrate the especially lucky aspects of The Year of the Dragon –

I’m not counting on an auspicious lucky new beginning today.  For me, almost any astrological stuff is –

Beyond understanding.  I confess I do look at my horoscope in the ink-on-paper newspaper. And I’ve got the daily Libra popping up on my computer home page. I figure, at the least, they are well-intended advice.

I’m certainly open to that.

So I read the transmitted wisdom with the fascinated knowledge that there is guidance to be gleaned in the cryptic messages (although that it is celestial and unwavering universal is highly suspect to me).

And that leads me, at this auspicious new beginning of The Year of the Dragon, to this –

TGIM ACTION IDEA: Good fortune, growth and prosperity, good health and longevity, harmony and togetherness are the result of the individual effort each of us makes to bring them into our world.

The balance of all those famous and semi-famous folks sharing their experience via the quoted word insist on this view.

• They conclude that luck is not chance. It is cause and effect.
• They conclude that luck comes only after preparation.
• They conclude that luck is having the proper frame of mind.
• They conclude that luck is being alert when the opening comes along.
• They conclude that luck is realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.
• They conclude that luck is the residue of design.
• They know that luck is hard work.

We make things happen. To us and for us. To paraphrase Cassius, the nobleman, speaking with his friend, Brutus, in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar:

"The luck, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves ….”

TGIM Takeaway: The golden opportunity you and I seek is in us. It is not in luck or chance. It is not in our environment or even in the help of others. It is in ourselves alone.

To be fair I’ll allow that there remains an element of chance that is ever present in our lives. But as we’ve said, luck is not chance. And even if it were, as Louis Pasteur famously observed, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

(What Pasteur actually said was “Dans les champs de l'observation le hasard ne favorise que les esprits préparés” which translates as “In the fields of observation chance favors only the prepared mind.” But the simplified version seems sexier.)

As the “elder” co-creator with my buddy Eric Taylor of the Empowerment Group’s Best Year Ever Program! I feel obliged to commemorate any “New Year” observance and tie it to our message that –

Anytime is the right time to begin Your Best Year Ever!

Enter The Year of the Dragon with a mind prepared to make what you wish for so.

Our fate is not in the stars. The future is in our own hands. Self-improvement is the precursor to all improvement. Start today. We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work. There’s never been a more auspicious time.

Gung hay fa choy! Get started on Your Best Year Ever! NOW.

Geoff Steck
Chief Catalyst
Alexander Publishing & Marketing

8 Depot Square
Englewood, NJ 07631
201-569-5373
tgimguy@gmail.com   

P.S.  “Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 -1832) said that.