My mother-in-law loves playing the lottery.
Like…obsession level.
Like how Harry Potter obsessed over Quidditch. Or how Voldemort was obsessed with finding the Elder Wand.
It’s like that….
Well, last week my mother-in-law got the Mega Ball for the Mega Millions lottery but no other numbers. Instead of being grateful for winning a few bucks, she whined and complained.
I half jokingly told her she got the most important number. Now all she had to do was work on getting the other numbers.
This comment was about as welcoming to her as the COVID 19 virus.
Today she told me in her angst she mixed up her tickets and accidentally threw it away. So that few dollars she won was gone.
Poof!
This reminded me of a universal truth.
By not being grateful or by not using what you are given, you may end up with zero.
Hell, less than zero.
It reminded me of a story Jim Rohn used to talk about. It was about the Law of Use and the parable of the talents from the Bible.
If you’ve never heard of the parable of the talents it goes like this.
A master had three servants and he gave them all talents. A talent was a measure of gold by the way…
He gave one servant 5.
One servant 2.
And one servant 1.
The master wanted to see what they would do with the talents so the master left town for a bit. When he returned he found out:
The one who had 5 grew them to 10.
The one who had 2 grew them to 4
The one who was given 1 hid it and did nothing with it.
The master was happy with the first two but lost his shit on the third guy.
The master took his talent and gave it to the servant who had 10.
So what is the moral of this story?
Whatever you don’t use, you lose. But again, it can get even worse that that.
What if you lose 20 pounds and then you stop working out and eating right. You may not only gain the weight back but you may even gain more than the original 20 back.
And that happens to dieters every day…
What if you marry the perfect person and stop nurturing your relationship?
At best maybe you’ll have a mediocre relationship or you may be even worse off before you met.
My point is this. Use your gifts.
Do your art.
Obsess over it!
Make your light shine so bright everyone can see it. And as Natalie Franke said in her book Gutsy, “no one ever changed the world by dimming their light.”
And when you use the gifts that you are given and stay to true to who you are, IT happens.
And when you’re grateful for it, synchronicity knocks on your door like solar panel door-to-door salesmen!
And so do miracles.
Adam