We’ve all heard some version of a “hand you are dealt” quote:

“You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”
“Everyone’s dealt a different hand.”
“Make the best of what you’re dealt.”

I’m not a poker player by any stretch, but I think we’re collectively taking the wrong message from this. Poker, or most card games for that matter, are games of ebb and flow. One hand doesn’t usually make or break the game, especially at the beginning.

We are, too often, bound up and concerned by the first things that happen to us, or where we are at the moment. We focus on the 2 of spades in our hand and how bad it is rather than what we can make of it or what’s coming next. Our success is in the combination of our skills, talents, abilities, and more than anything else our effort. Our failure is in focusing on what we are lacking, in not making an effort and thus losing slowly by default.

Our success is in the combination of our skills, talents, abilities, and more than anything else our effort.

Our failure is in focusing on what we are lacking, in not making an effort and thus losing slowly by default.

We have the amazing ability to influence the next ‘hand’ we are dealt in life. We can seek to learn and grow, reach out to meet new people and create new opportunities. We can move, decide to do without for a while to save up for later, or go out on a limb and take a risk to improve our next stage of life.

There’s a joke about a pair of twins – one was an eternal optimist, the other a hopeless pessimist. The parents tried to temper these extremes. For their birthday, the pessimist was given a pile of gifts, the best they could find. The optimist was given a giant pile of manure.

The pessimist sat there amidst toys and electronics saying “Ugh. I’ll pinch my fingers on this. This is going to need new batteries all the time. This is the wrong color…” She couldn’t find a single good thing to say.

The optimist stared at the pile of manure, stunned into silence, then turned to her parents with an enormous smile and started looking around, “You can’t fool me! Where there’s this much manure, there’s got to be a pony around somewhere!”

Whether you’ve been dealt a 2 or an ace, if your hand is a royal flush or nothing at all, you have the opportunity. As in poker, any given hand can win with the right mindset, but it takes confidence, determination, and the willingness to put yourself out on a limb.

Like poker, or most games for that matter, life is an ebb and flow. There will be times of great fortune and drive, where everything seems to go right, and there will be time times where it feels that fate and the universe are against you. The card you are holding, the hand you have right now is the start of your next story – what are you going to do with it?

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