Dean Graziosi argues that success isn't about luck but about hard work, persistence, and avoiding negative people. He says the "lucky" people you see have overcome struggles you don't see, and that having a clear reason why matters more than chance.
Hey, everybody. Dean Graziosi. Welcome to the weekly Wisdom and happy New Year. You could be seeing this the day before New Year's, but most of you are going to see it on New Year's or after. So here's to an amazing 2013 to my extended family and man, let's make this a great year. Okay, two weeks ago, we talked about setting goals in advance. Why wait till New Year's when you can get those going? So if you didn't see that, you can click, I think it is. And watch the weekly wisdom of two weeks ago and get those goals set for 2013. Last week, I had a great conversation with Joe Polish about bronze, silver and gold coins. Thought that was fabulous wisdom, and I was really excited to share it today. The message I want to deliver to you to kick off your 2013 is, I think you have bad luck. Let's just say it like it is. I got bad luck. You got bad luck. Did you ever go to Vegas and try to win? In gambling, you typically lose, right? Bet on a game, bet on a football, baseball game. If you play enough, you lose. If you try to win the lotto, it's really difficult, bad luck, right? You get a cold at the worst time. You know, when you're traveling someplace, there's traffic when you need to get there in a hurry, always bad luck, right? Wow. That's what most of us have. Luck is just what it is. It's luck. It's chance. But luck is not what makes you or me successful. Somebody might look at my life now and my happy kids and my big house and my car, and I get to vacation in wonderful places and live a really financially secure life. And to some people, they'd say, man, that guy's lucky. But luck didn't get me here. Hard work, determination, overcoming my fears, all the things that I teach you every week in this weekly wisdom of overcoming obstacles and getting rid of negative people and going on a news diet and knowing my reason why. That's what makes my luck. Do you think if you walked up to Jen Gray or Matt Larson or Reno or Chip and Andrea or so many of the people, John and Julie Wakefield and J. St. Hilaire and all the amazing family members on DG.com and you see their success and you go, you're so lucky. Do you think they'd be happy with that if you called it luck when they were probably stressed as heck? Giving me money for their education to start off, having people tell them they were craz. Real estate agents tell them assignments are Illegal or they don't work, or you're listening to some guy on late night tv. Are you nuts? You got ripped off. They went through all that, but they stayed persistent. And you know what they did? They made their own luck with hard work, determination, and actually using all these principles that we talk about. You know, I have to tell you, one of the biggest insults I get is when somebody says, you're so lucky, or I won't even say, you lucky sob. I've had people say that word, you know, you lucky. You know, and deep down I'll laugh, but I get upset because no one knows the sleepless nights, no one knows when I was broke and didn't have a dollar to my name, or being, you know, in so much debt, or worrying about what I was going to do with my future, or feeling insecure, feeling destitute, feeling nobody understood me, feeling alone, feeling sad, feeling depressed, having people tell me I was crazy, I was nuts. And all the emotions that you go through to try to break through to your own luck. When someone tells me I was lucky, it kind of hurts. So let's just think about this. We're all unlucky. If luck was if we could all be lucky, we'd all just be playing lotto. The heck with watching me just go play, you know, Powerball or whatever it's called and win there. So let's just accept that life could deliver us a lot of bad luck. But guess what's amazing is that we're individuals with our own mind, our own brain, living in the best country in the world, and we have the opportunity to make our own luck. And how do you do that? By having the right wisdom, the right capabilities, and actually applying them and not giving up when the first time you fall on their face or the 10th time you fall on your face or when someone says you can't. So that's my message for 2013. Yeah, we're unlucky. Who cares? Let's make our own luck. Let's make our own future, and let's make this the best year of our entire lives. Talk to you next week.
