A few years ago V. Bhaskaran, coach of the Indian hockey team lamented the fact that his team was losing because of bad luck and bad umpiring! “I am proud of my brave boys!” he said, “and they deserved to win but were robbed off victory by bad luck….”

                          And he gave a number of reasons why luck had passed them by.

                          I looked at the coach’s statement and remembered an old friend of mine. This friend had decided to sit for the radio officer’s course many, many years ago. The exam was conducted by the government of India, and after one exam I walked with him to his home where he lived with his mother: “What happened son?” asked the old mother as she greeted her son on his return.

 “The stupid fellow behind me sneezed!” said my friend, “So I made a mistake!”

 “Bad luck!” whispered his mother to me, shaking her head at the ceiling.

                          How easily we blame luck and circumstances for our failures!

                          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. 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! Pound 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.

That Hemingway incident reminds me how a few years ago, my computer’s hard drive crashed and I lost a whole manuscript of a book I’d nearly completed. But now chapter by chapter I am painstakingly working on it, and slowly beginning to smile as a book better than the one before is coming out.

                        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.

                        When life gives you a kick, let it kick you forward!

                         And here’s something to make you smile: A woman was being rushed to hospital but couldn’t make it to the delivery room and started giving birth to a baby in the elevator of the 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 with a grin, "that was me too, looks like my luck is improving, as I’m getting closer to the hospital with each delivery..!”

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