One of the rules for making your own luck: Get Over It.
I'm referring particularly to anger and frustration. As one of my good luck author-experts, Marc Myers, wrote:
"No one I know was ever given a great opportunity because of his or her temper."
Lots of us get angry when we experience dissatisfaction, disappointment, or disrespect. I'm pretty good at swallowing my anger, but I know it changes my mood, and darkens my outlook. It usually takes me a day, sometimes two, to work through the feeling.
My personal trick for getting over it is to expend mental energy dismissing and belittling the source of my dissatisfaction, disappointment, or disrespect. However, the consequence of telling myself that "it" or "they" are insignificant or irrelevant is that darkened outlook.
So, maybe that personal trick is one I should lose. I could do better. I know that I bounce back better by getting busy and accomplishing something -- accomplishing almost anything. Making some kind of progress, large or small, that give me some personal satisfaction helps dismiss my anger fairly quickly. And I get over it.
People we perceive as lucky usually get over their dissatisfaction, disappointment, or disrespect more quickly than others. Those who seem little effected by setbacks and misfortune are perceived as lucky, and usually find more opportunities than those who dwell on their mistakes and defeats.
I'm trying to use some favorite lines from Ralph Waldo Emerson more regularly, to end each day, as a sort of Western philosophy koan:
"Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can.
Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin is serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
Emerson's round-about way of telling me to Get Over It.
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