I recently saw a clip on CNN showing a room full of people discussing their life situations. I am not sure why I stayed with the story but was horrified at the end. It was about life and work in Silicon Valley. Once teeming with opportunity, men and women who thought they had it made were now being forced to accept free food, visit soup kitchens and rummage through trash to obtain containers that they could sell to recycling companies. One woman was followed with her recycling treasure and was so thrilled that her estimated twenty-six dollars was below the market price and she in fact received a whopping thirty-three dollars. The interviewer asked her:” “Did you ever think that you would be so thrilled with thirty-three dollars?” She replied “I never even thought I could get excited over five dollars, but now I do!”
I considered this situation versus looking at shows on HGTV where you have people getting the front of their houses re-done, their yards spruced up, buying their first homes (love the title ‘Property Virgins’), making use of dead space to become first time landlords and of course upgrading their present digs to divine spaces.
Both these situations are taking place in America. Bringing me back to a question that I always ask: Why do some people seem to succeed regardless of the economy and some suffer regardless? The folks in Silicon Valley did everything right. They saved, they insured, they were frugal – yet many of them are too young to retire and too experienced to get hired. A former engineer was thrilled to bits that he finally, after about four years, got a $9.50 an hour job at Target!
One thing’s for certain that each of us has control over regardless of the economy are our thoughts. What we think determines who we are and what happens to us. Our thoughts have the power to determine how we see ourselves, other people, and the world. Our thoughts have the power to determine our actions, behaviour, and how others respond to us. Our thoughts are directly linked to the type of person we become.
In her book Do Less, Achieve More, bestselling author Chin-Ning Chu suggests that destiny reveals itself in three phases. When you started out in your business you no doubt felt dissatisfied with something – your job, your boss, the way things were being handled at the office, or you simply felt that you could be doing so much more. In other words you were hungry and therefore motivated to take action. You had laundry lists of wants and come hell or high water you were going to get them. You started to get stuff and felt pretty much as if you were winning at this game called life. Still you felt as if something was missing, you were not totally happy. This is phase one.
You’ll know when you are in Phase Two – often caused by some kind of dramatic turning point in one’s life such as personal tragedy, loss of a loved one, professional setbacks or financial failure. You can no longer use logic to figure out what has happened or why. This is a very hard phase and the phase most of us get stuck in.
This is the phase that the folks in Silicon Valley are experiencing right now. Don’t let phase two defeat you. Don’t fight 
hardship. Let it be your guide. If you remember that there really is no failure only divine redirection – you will be off to a good start. You may be out of tune with the grand blueprint of your intended destiny, desiring to go places where you don’t belong. Keep fighting and the Universe will keep pushing you back to zero to start over again, hopefully in the direction you were supposed to be travelling in the first place. This is what others see as your failure and as humans we hate to fail. It mashes us up too much but could there be some wisdom in us breaking down, to be built back up into more resilient, self confident, destiny-directed human beings?
No person who has enjoyed true and lasting success, who has left a legacy of progress and goodness for the world, has ever been spared from walking through the dark valley of phase two. In phase three you surrender. You realize in this phase that what is supposed to be yours no one can take away, delay or stop from coming to you. You know that your success does not depend on certain individuals or circumstances. You know that everything you have done will eventually and inevitably lead toward the ultimate completeness of your material and spiritual rewards.
If you find yourself in Phase two – stop fighting. Surrender instead and win! I hope that if you are in fact here, that you are encouraged! You’ve got a special message to bring to the world. Don’t give up now!
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