Enlightening Lightning

Ever bemoan something miserable that keeps happening to you and chalk it up to being cursed or unlucky? Well, this guy was struck by lightning seven different times. Roy Sullivan, by all accounts, was a dedicated U.S. park ranger and I suppose his proximity to all those open spaces didn’t help him much, but seven times? I’m thinking that, say around the second or third time that I got mowed down by 100 million volts, I’d be heading off to the nearest big city to live amongst some very tall buildings. But that’s just me.

How ’bout you? Are you a lightning rod for some, suspiciously consistent, negative outcome? This can take on many forms, from never following through on anything you start, to always hooking up with the absolute wrong partner. It doesn’t really matter. It’s predictable, it hurts and makes us feel as if we’re always traveling in circles. You reckon Roy might’ve benefitted from doing something different? Hard to say for sure, but it begs the question, “are you taking the same old approaches to your new opportunities?”

There’s a now clichéd saying that’s been widely attributed to Tony Robbins, but I’d first heard it from an old horse wrangler out in Montana. It goes something like, “If you’re gonna do what you always done, you’re gonna get what you always got.” There was just something remarkably powerful about hearing it from this ol’ cowboy, with his sage-like voice and weathered face that warned, “son, you oughta listen to this.” So then, take a long look at Roy. The story in his face. The charred hole burned through his hat. Now…are you ready to listen?