WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU A KICK

I'm told the story is true: A woman was giving birth
to a baby in an
elevator at a hospital. When she complained about the
location, a
nurse said, "Why, this isn't so bad; last year a woman
delivered her
baby out on the front lawn."

"Yes," said the woman on the floor, "that was me,
too."

Who said, "If I didn't have bad luck I wouldn't have
any luck at
all?"

But on the other hand, not all "bad luck" should be
considered a bad
thing! Like someone said, "When life gives you a kick,
let it kick
you forward."

In the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway learned something about
"bad luck" and
getting kicked by life. He was struggling to make his
mark as an
author when disaster struck. He lost a suitcase
containing all his
manuscripts -- many stories he'd polished to
jewel-like perfection --
which he'd been planning to publish in a book.

According to Denis Waitley in his book Empires of the
Mind (William
Morrow and Company, Inc., 1995), the devastated
Hemingway couldn't
conceive of redoing his work. All those months of
arduous writing
were simply wasted.

He lamented his predicament to friend and poet Ezra
Pound who called
it a stroke of good fortune! Pound assured Hemingway
that when he
rewrote the stories, he would forget the weak parts;
only the best
material would reappear. He encouraged the aspiring
author to start
over with a sense of optimism and confidence.
Hemingway did rewrite
the stories and eventually became a major figure in
American
literature.

Don't pray for fewer problems; pray for more skills.
Don't ask for
smaller challenges; ask for greater wisdom. Don't look
for an easy
way out; look for the best possible outcome.