It is what you don't see that counts
When I was poor and beginning my quest for wealth I knew or at least had the acquaintance of several wealthy men. To me watching them operate and go about their day to day business they seemed to have total control. Nothing seemed to faze them. Everything seemed to flow in their direction, fall into their plans, as they continued to accumulate their fortunes. I was in awe of their ability and to me it seemed to be that they had an unnatural amount of luck. It seemed to me that the wealthy did have an ability to gather good fortune. They did seem to be so lucky.
Then I began my own climb towards wealth and found roadblocks to my desires wherever I turned. I found I had to struggle and fight my way through each difficulty, problem, and obstacle in order to succeed. And it was only with perseverance and hard work I overcame the difficulties and overtime I began to succeed to accumulate some of the wealth I had been seeking. But I never lost the poverty habit of believing that wealthy people were lucky.
I maintained the belief for a long time and my younger brother would use the concept to get over on me for many years. I have a reprobate brother who believes one only works as long as it takes one to accumulate the maximum unemployment, needless to say he often finds himself in financial difficulty and has to request financial aid. And who better to hit up then his "LUCKY BROTHER"
A typical phone call from my brother would consist of the basic amenities for the first thirty seconds, then at an appropriate moment the magic phrase would be uttered, "You are so lucky." and due to my own belief that wealthy people were lucky and the guilt that I had more then my brother; I would relent and bail him out time and time again. I knew he was his own worst enemy, that it was his poverty habits. That his failure was due to the fact that he was lazy and found more reasons not to work then he ever found to work and his refusal to pay his debts. I always gave in to the guilt trip he laid on me. It was amazing what he could do with the magical words "You are so lucky."
Then on a hot summer day in late July I was working on my personal residence I had begun the work about 18 months before, a total gut job renovation of a large Victorian, a real work of love and, as all renovations go, full of agonizing delays and false starts. We had just turned the water system on permanently after closing the walls. I was working on a third floor bath room when my father in law ran up and said we had a water problem in the kitchen, water was falling from the ceiling in a torrent. I ran down and my father ran to the water main to shut down the house. He was right, water was pouring from the ceiling, in fact the center of the ceiling was bulging down under the weight of the water.
I proceeded to cut a hole in the ceiling (a drop ceiling designed to hide the AC returns and ducting) and my father turned the water back on. With a flashlight in hand I crawled in and found the leak, a 3/4 in. elbow had a flaw and was spraying water. The elbow in question was in a corner against the joist and the sill and went up into the concrete sub floor to one of the second floor bathrooms. After about two hours work I was able to remove the offending elbow and replace it with a new one. I was wet filthy and hot, in more ways then one, as I climbed out of the ceiling around noon. With one foot on the ladder there was a knock on the back door. It was the deliveryman with the boxes for my kitchen cabinets. I yelled come in and he entered the kitchen. No sooner did he get into the twenty two by twenty two foot room then he said, "The guy that owns this house has got it made!" I replied from the top of the ladder, "not from where I am standing!" He had taken me for one of the workers, and was shocked to find out that the grimy dirty soaked apparition before him actually owned the property. After all rich people don't really work; not real work anyway, not in his reality anyway. We moved in his delivery, tore down the rest of the ruined ceiling and began to replace it that afternoon. Scratch one day on the job. We would tape and mud the ceiling the next day. That night the driver's words kept coming back to me. While he did not say the word lucky it was close enough it was definitely implied and it got me thinking about my unlucky brother.
The more I thought about the driver's words and my brother's favorite guilt trip inducing line the angrier I got. I began looking back over my life, all the bad luck that had befallen me, all the struggles and misadventures that had side-tracked me in my climb up the ladder. I began to develop a strategy for the next time he called and assaulted me with the line "You are so lucky!".
As the weeks went by before my brother's next call, I improved on my rebuttal. I honed it. I sharpened it. I crafted it into a weapon. I was ready. I was crouching like a tiger in the brush waiting for my particular prey. All that need happen was the necessary call with the magical words. I was confident the call would come; I knew it would come; I waited and waited then about a month after moving into our new home the call came.
I was giddy with excitement; I could not wait until he sprang the trap. I could not wait until he used his previously magic words, and then he did, "You know. You are so lucky!"
"It's interesting you should say that," I returned with a smile.
"I have been doing some thinking about that, I would like to ask you…
Was I lucky when our father made me start working for him when I was 12 years old? Oh that's right you were too young to remember.
Or was it when he paid me 50cents an hour and charged me $20.00 a week for room and board?" Ah! You were too young again.
Or was I lucky when our father decided not to send me to college? Oh that's right you think only fools go to college.
Or was it when I spent 6 years in the Navy building a career only to have it ended in a flash as the USS California arrived too soon and blew my ear drum and caused an infection that ended both my military career and my athletic career simultaneously?" Oh that's right you weren't there!
Or was it when the Boston real estate market lost about 50% of its value and we lost hundreds of thousands of dollars?
Or was it when the high income tenant stopped paying rent for the penthouse we had built for ourselves but could not use and the tenant codes and courts took 6 months to force the tenant out after a cost of $10,000?"
I kept asking him if one experience after another was the lucky one he was talking about but apparently my younger brother realized his magic words had lost their magic and hung up.
You see my brother had never been there facing the difficulties that I was forced to either overcome or surrender to. He had had it a great deal easier because my father had enjoyed success in business by the time my youngest brother reached high school. He had never had to learn to overcome adversity. He had never learned to be a fighter. He had always had someone to fall back on. He had never learned to be a survivor and a winner.
It is the ability to meet and overcome adversity that develops persistence and perseverance. Perseverance and persistence are two of the most important attributes necessary to become wealthy. My brother is a failure because he never learned to overcome adversity.
Since the confrontation with my brother that night I have had a condo conversion of a small apartment blow up in front of me when two workmen sanding and finishing the floors had failed to open the windows and caused the fumes to explode. With only two weeks before the first unit was scheduled to close I faced a huge obstacle, I worked like I had never worked before. I dragged workmen out of bed, I cajoled, begged and harassed the contractors and the insurance companies to do in two weeks what they said would take six weeks. The first unit was delivered on time as was the rest of the project. I made more money then in any other four months in my life.
I have been able to acquire and take on projects far more complicated and more expensive then the condo conversion because of the difficulties I encountered on the conversion project. Projects that would have caused me to pause and back off no longer cause me fear. I know I can succeed. I know I can bring the project home.
It is the ability to meet and overcome adversity that makes one a winner. In a sense my brother was correct I was lucky. The bad luck I encountered became hurdles to jump not impassable roadblocks. Like the men I had watched when I was beginning my rise towards wealth I take on larger and larger projects today because I have learned how to overcome adversity. I know that the people around me think that I am lucky but it is just that I have met adversity before and have overcome the problem. It is not luck it is the experience of having met adversity and succeeding that allows me to have calm control in situations where those around me get flustered. The real luck was developing the belief in my own abilities; to know I would be able to overcoming the adversity that came my way. Adversity (Bad Luck) has always led to greater success and wealth.
