One of my favourite quotes is "Take chances. If you win you will be hap­py. If you lose you will be wise". I don't know who said it but I bet he/she was/is in­cred­i­bly hap­py. If you think about the quote you'd re­alise that it em­bod­ies a path to hap­pi­ness. It is ba­si­cal­ly say­ing – step out of your com­fort zone and ex­pe­ri­ence life. Live. Do not let fear of fail­ure hold you back. Ei­ther you will be hap­pi­er or wis­er. In ei­ther case, it's to your ben­e­fit. You see in life there are no 'good' or 'bad' re­sults. On­ly re­sults. What might seem 'bad' to­day might be the seed of some great op­por­tu­ni­ty to­mor­row. Sim­i­lar­ly, a 'good' for­tune to­day may bring forth mis­ery to­mor­row. You can't use these la­bels un­less you know what to­mor­row brings.

All you can do is keep your mind and heart open to life and see every­one and every sit­u­a­tion as a teacher and a les­son. This is how you grow and be­come wis­er...through life's lessons. This is how you be­come a bet­ter YOU each day. And re­mem­ber, self-mas­tery is the DNA of life-mas­tery. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, was laughed at by his busi­ness pro­fes­sors at Yale for his idea of FedEx and even got a C on his pre­sen­ta­tion (his net worth is now $2.1 bil­lion). He didn't la­bel that in­ci­dent as a re­jec­tion; he saw it as a learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence and kept fo­cused on his goal. Oth­er peo­ple would have al­lowed the re­jec­tion to con­sume them and would have aban­doned their idea.

Re­jec­tion is just a con­struct cre­at­ed in your mind to fu­el your ego. Your ego is what con­nects you to the ma­te­r­i­al world – things like ap­proval from oth­ers, con­trol of oth­ers and world­ly pos­ses­sions. The ego needs to make the dis­tinc­tion be­tween hav­ing this pow­er and not hav­ing it (re­jec­tion, loss etc). But this kind of pow­er is not re­al and on­ly lasts as long as the ob­ject lasts. Pow­er and con­trol over Mind and Self is true pow­er and is ever­last­ing.

You and you alone can de­cide what mean­ing you give to sit­u­a­tions in your life. You can be a vic­tim or you can use the sit­u­a­tion to em­pow­er your­self. By telling your­self there are no 'good' or 'bad' re­sults you will be­gin to see the lessons in life be­cause your mind will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly look­ing for 're­sults' in­stead of just ap­ply­ing a la­bel (good or bad) and stop­ping there. And once you on­ly see re­sults and lessons, you will re­lease your­self of fears like re­jec­tion, feel free­dom to take chances, and you will end up hap­pi­er or wis­er or both.

"Every prob­lem has the seed of equal or greater op­por­tu­ni­ty." Napoleon Hill

He­mant Pooran