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May Certainty Be Ever in Your Favor

I recently watched the movie “Hunger Games” with my family. One of the catch phrase that is likely to become a classic in the movie is the saying: “May the odds be ever in your favor”.

For those who have not seen the movie without being a spoiler, this is a science fiction that takes place under a ruthless dictatorial regime that as part of maintaining control over the population organize a game with 2 participants from each of the 12 districts in the country where there is onl one survivor who is declared the winner. The chances of survival are minimal and through the course of the movie, it’s obvious that the the odds of winning is not really in the hands of the winner (or rather survivor). This helps explain the catch phrase used by the game organizers “May the odds be always in your favor”.

One of the messages of the movie is that even under the most desperate situations where destiny is controlled by a big brother, there is some hope that we have some control over our destiny (although not in totality).  See the clip below:

http://youtu.be/_e3wADQ7IXw

It saddens me that so many people go through life thinking that it is some kind of a hunger game where someone else: government, big brother, 1%, The Man, The Boss, mom, dad, boogeyman or whatever or whoever else controls their destiny. But the reality is that what appears to be based on probability can be turned into certainty when it comes to success.

While it is true that one may fail in a particular endeavor or venture (business or school), there is no doubt that a set of action that might include even repeated failures can lead to ultimate success. So what if you fail at a particular try at starting a business? Is it possible that repeating the experiment once, twice or three times could eventually lead to success?

If we’re flipping a fair coin, won’t we eventually get to a head? The reality is that many of our ventures in life are not hunger games and so they are not life and dead situations. No one dies by failing in business, school, trying a new skill or failing to get into graduate school. We do get more than one opportunity to try again (or to chart a path for success that is not dependent on achieving the goal that we may feel is essential to our success).

Because, we do have control over our destiny if we were to use the catch phrase in the movie as a well wish on anyone or greeting, I hope that it would be “May certainty be ever in your favor”.

How do we achieve that certainty?

We create goals and strategies that account for the possible failures along the way, so that the sum of our actions despite these failures do lead to success.

May 8, 2012 at 9:38 pm jorelien Leave a comment