Do You Believe In Curses?

The Chicago Cubs ended an unprecedented 108-year  World Series baseball drought in dramatic fashion last Wednesday night.  Both the players and their resilient fan base erupted with unbridled joy after years of heartache and futility.  While it was a remarkable victory in its own right,  to many it also spelled an end to the Curse of the Billy Goat.  In 1945, during game 4 of the World Series, uber-Cubs fan Billy Sianis was asked to leave Wrigley Field because the smell of his pet goat was bothering adjacent fans.  (Don’t judge!  Who hasn’t brought their pet goat to the ballpark?!)  Anyway, he became so irate at this “injustice”, he dispatched a nasty letter to the team owner proclaiming the Cubs would never win another World Series.  The Cubs ended up losing  in 1945 and did not even make another appearance for 71 years.  Now that is a powerful goat!  But how much of the Cubs ineptitude was actually attributable to the Billy Goat curse?  And how many of us feel a similar curse in our work and personal lives?

At work, there are times when nothing seems to go our way.  We lose a sale.  We clash with our co-workers.  We no longer feel connected to our clients.  We fail to inspire passion in our students or players.  Everything we touch falls apart.  Self-doubt creeps in and soon we become tentative and expect to fail.  Perhaps we are cursed?  Perhaps this is how our life is supposed to play out?  Perhaps things will never turn around?

Nonsense!  Everyone goes through a rough patch.  Everyone has to deal with some level of disappointment and frustration.  Our careers ebb and flow like the tide.  Do not despair during low tide.  This is not our natural state.   We are not destined to fail.  There is no Billy Goat clomping around in our lives.  The only curse is the one we place on ourselves through negative thinking and resignation.  In the down times, we need to take action!  We need to stay positive!  We need to firmly believe that things will get better.  Resiliency is the refusal to settle for anything below our God-given potential.  Resilient workers do not believe in curses.

But the same stretch of low moments can impact our personal lives as well.  Perhaps we have had a series of damaging relationships.  Perhaps we have had a history of financial hardship.  Perhaps we have made some destructive decisions.  Perhaps we have not played up to par or underperformed in the classroom.  Once a pattern settles in, it becomes difficult to break.  We start to believe that things will never get better.  Worse, we feel as though we deserve to fail.  Never!

Achieving satisfaction in our personal life is not an easy road.  But our past does not dictate our future.  Just as patterns can be established, patterns can be broken.  And if we keep working hard toward our personal goals, we can establish a new pattern of success.  We all deserve to find  a loving relationship.  We all deserve financial freedom.  We all deserve forgiveness.  We all deserve to achieve excellence on the field and in the classroom.  And when we finally reach our goals, it will feel so much sweeter if we had to break a pattern to get there.  Resiliency in our personal lives is born during these low moments.  And resiliency will put an end to any theoretical curse.

It’s not in the stars to hold our destiny, but in ourselves.  –William Shakespeare

Nothing is pre-destined in our lives. We will have good luck.  We will have bad luck.  We will have incredible triumphs.  We will have stinging defeats.  We will not always be able to control the outcome.  But we can control our effort.  We can control our attitude.  We can control our passion to improve. And if we keep moving forward, and keep striving for excellence, we will always win out in the end.

No one is immune from misfortune.  No one lives in a plastic bubble.  But tough times never last.  Tough people do.   So we need to dust ourselves off and attack our next goal. We need to keep fighting to establish a new pattern of excellence.  Once we accept the challenge to move forward, there will be no stopping us.  We will write our own future.  And that future will be glorious.

Just ask any Cubs fan.  There is no such thing as a curse.

Until next week, keep smiling!