Attitude. Point of View. Attitude!

I was talking to a friend the other day and he said something that I find repeatable. We have a friend in common. One of those confirmed bachelors who is all of a sudden in a serious relationship and his new girlfriend made a comment that My friend overheard. She said that everything always turns out well for him. He has all of these stories and they all end well.

Well part of it is picking the window for the story. He doesn’t end his stories on a down note, always continuing them to a positive note. On the other hand, I know him fairly well, and his has not been an easy life. Sure, he is a millionaire, but money isn’t everything.

During his childhood, they were on welfare and things were tight. He didn’t make it through college, almost ending his college career in jail, but instead managing to just end his college career.

The truth is though, that his glass is always half full. I don’t know if he was born that way, or if he learned it, but half full it is. And that is the way I live my life. Our childhoods were full of those simple little platitudes, but they were true. Given lemons, make lemonade.

I spent a good part of a year unemployed once, during which the economy seemed fairly unemployed as well. I finally realized that no one was looking for an unemployed CTO. I gave my resume a crew cut. And I got a job doing development. Six weeks later, I made a move to a trouble shooter in a consultancy, and learned what it was like to fly 3-4 days a week.

The truth was though, that as soon as I stopped talking about how hard things were, they weren’t. It wasn’t all rosy. I lost my wife and ended up divorced. But I also learned a lesson. Don’t wait too long for someone to give you a kick in the pants, sometimes you just have to do it yourself.

Never forget that Freedom = Success, not the other way around! Don’t wait for life to hand you Freedom. Instead, grab that attitude by the horns and give yourself Freedom. Success will be there.