Can you see a pattern of behavior that you have engaged in over the course of your life? And when this pattern crosses paths with an opportunity that fits your preparation, do you see how lucky you became?
How can you continue, find or have success?
Dad always told me that success is luck. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Are you taking one or two small next steps today to reap in the rewards tomorrow? Over-achievers, are you doing three?
Being prepared is your short cut to success.
I was lucky being born into a family that had a man such as my dad. I was lucky to meet my wife. I was lucky to meet my father-in-law.
What did you do to prepare for your birth? Break down what needed to happen to have you enter the world. When you do this, you can find the amount of preparation MIND BLOWING.
I was ready the day I met my wife. I can look back on a series of fortunate events. These events took twenty-three years to unfold. I needed each step of preparation that warm sunny day in June 1991.
How about Yogi, my father-in-law and I? When I met him I was ready. That was that same warm June night. The best way to describe Yogi would to compare Yogi and I.
I was born in New York to two highly educated Catholic parents. Yogi was born on a farm in Platteville, Wisconsin to two farm wise Catholic parents.
I believe in working hard, making your work good enough so that you leave time to play hard. Yogi believes in working hard, until it’s perfect, leaving enough time to get back to work the next day.
Right from the beginning, Yogi and I shared that common Catholic upbringing and belief in hard work. I believe that’s all we shared.
I flash a smile any time I am breathing. I remember smiling the day I broke my dad’s radio, while he was lecturing me, even after he took the right steps to wipe that smile off my face.
Yogi has a steely gaze that unnerves me, any four-year old and the president of any country.
I influence others by a friendly, open way with verbal aptness. Have you heard of Yogi Bear? This Yogi’s real name was Eugene “Yogi” Klar. No idea why he’s nicknamed Yogi. He’s no less scary than a grizzly with bear cubs. He’s a man I still find unnerving 20 years later.
When I started dating his daughter, I received a dinner invitation to the Klar home. It was common for Yogi, midway through dinner, to stand up and walk out the front door without a word and return three hours later.
Unnerving would be an understatement.
If I moved home today, my mother would cook for me, clean up after me and do my laundry. Yogi had such a bad back as a youth that he needed spinal fusion surgery. During his year of bed rest he still milked the cows.
After High School my dad sent me to college. I spent two years FOCUSED on improving my verbal skills, socializing, and connecting. After two years, Dad and I agreed we needed a new plan. Yogi left high school and enlisted in the army, but he was kicked out because of his medical history of a bad back. He went off and spent ten to twenty years working in a machine shop. He saved his money to open his own business. He continued to work both his job and his business until his business was successful. This is a business he runs today without any financial need to do so.
Yogi and I: We share a love for Robin Klar Suslick.
Can you imagine what Yogi thought of me when Robin brought me home for the first time? I never heard him say the words, yet I could picture him talking to my mother-in-law, Marie, “Marie, what are we going to do? Did you meet the boy Robin brought home? He’s going to take our daughter, then he will want our money next!”
Yogi would have been half right. He had a successful business. My dream was to own a business. The preparation took my entire life. I had taken one or two small steps at a time.
When Yogi told me, as I remember, “Dale, you can run the tanning, drop-off laundry and dry cleaning part of the business as your own. You can keep the money you make.” I knew I had met my opportunity. I will have to ask Yogi if that is exactly what he meant. That said, meeting Robin was the luckiest day of my life. She is my inspiration to become a better man, to use my time wisely and to come home.
The very least of all my wife’s qualities was the introduction to Yogi. That meeting allowed me to use all the preparation I had done. Meeting Yogi was the opportunity of a lifetime.
You never know when the next person you meet, the next thing you read or the next show you listen to might be the short cut to your success.
Are you ready? What one or two small steps could you take today?
