Why Life Is Like a Deck of Cards
By Anubhav Srivastava ( Register for his Workshop – Build Super Confidence For Super Success!)
I’ll share with you a brilliant analogy that has been shared before but I heard about it from a man named Patrick Bet David. It is so true in life and business that I must share it with you.
It basically compares one year of our life to a deck of cards. There are 52 cards in a deck and 52 weeks in one year. Each card represents one week. Now, there are different colors and numbers on each card. There is 2,3,4,5,6,7,8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King and Ace for each color.
The smaller numbers signify failures while the others represent big successes. The Ace represents a massive success. There are also Two Jokers and they signify luck. Although Patrick only considered lucky events, I believe it can also represent unlucky events. Considering the fact that most people encounter major lucky/unlucky events in their life about twice an year, the analogy fits well.
Now in life, many times when we are working hard, we often don’t get what we want, but sometimes we do. Sometimes we get massive successes, sometimes we get big failures. Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes the opposite happens. This is analogous to what happens when you pull a card from the deck randomly. You never know what the next card is. It can give you mediocre results or it can bring massive success. But you will only know if you keep pulling.
So you keep pulling the cards one by one
You might get a 9 the first week, which is okay.
The next week, you might get a 7 which may represent an unhappy client.
The next week you get a Jack which means you did a good number of sales that week.
The week after that you may get a 6, 5, then a 4, then, a 3, one week after another. Just terrible things happening. But you still keep going again and keep pulling cards until finally you pull an Ace out of nowhere. That massive sale or success saved you but it only happened because you kept going. MOST PEOPLE GIVE UP before they even pull out the ace because they think just because they are failing now, they will fail forever.
But you kept going on and pulled out the Ace. Then you pull a Queen and King and start doing well again, that is until you pull out the Joker. This joker happens to bring an unlucky event that sets you back and crushes you. This is what happens to most people, especially those in Business or working very hard on their own projects.
Most people have two choices here. Most of them give up on pulling the next card because they are too scared of what will happen next or are left hopeless after that unlucky event. For those people, the story ends right there, they go back to doing average jobs with average returns. Depending upon your energy, priorities in life, your savings, and will power, that may not always be the wrong option, but for them the game ends right there and then. They are going to drift through life while wondering why the big success never came.
But then, there is the other bunch who keep pulling the cards, they keep getting moderate successes for a while and a lot of bad failures again and again but they keep learning and they keep pulling the cards, they keep putting in the effort week after week, until finally they start getting the Jacks and the Queens and Kings and the Aces until finally they get the Joker that represents good luck and “BECOME AN OVERNIGHT SUCCESS!”
Even if life doesn’t give you the cards in that order, one thing is for sure. As long as you keep pulling the cards, you have many failures, many moderate successes and many massive successes. If you are lucky the efforts of those pulls will be multiplied many fold and you will reach the top of your industry. But you got to keep pulling the cards. Even Luck will not come your way if you stop pulling!
You gotta keep doing your best work every single week.
You have to audit yourself and ask yourself, am I working as smart and hard as I can in the right direction this week?
Am I providing the maximum value to my market?
Am I constantly learning and sharpening my axe?
Am I constantly connecting and interacting with other relevant people to expand my network?
Am I making the best possible use of my time?
If you can answer yes to every question, only then you are sincerely pulling the cards every week. If you are not, then nothing will happen. You will get no result whatsoever.
But if you are and giving it your best every single week for an year then at the end of the year you are pretty much guaranteed to have major victories and also have might have a lot of luck come your way. If you are a man or a woman with dreams, no matter what happens, don’t stop pulling the cards, unless you want to lead an average life and die with dreams unfulfilled!
About the Author
The author of this article, Anubhav Srivastava is an author, motivational speaker and the director of Carve Your Destiny, a first of its kind inspirational documentary featuring some of the most famous personalities from diverse fields, who teach the viewers how they too can make all of their dreams come true. The movie itself has been seen on Youtube by almost 1.5 Million people. Anubhav has also been featured in numerous International and India Media outlets such as BBC , The Times of India, Hindustan Times, Rediff.com, Leicester Mercury and many others.
Email Anubhav Srivastava for coaching, consulting or motivational speaking queries at anubhav101@gmail.com. Facebook Profile: http://facebook.com/anubhav981
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