The Ririan Project is a personal development blog that had a post a couple weeks ago titled 10 Timeless Lessons from the Dalai Lama. I skimmed through it quickly but one thing that has really stuck in my mind lately was the following:
8. Dalai Lama said: “Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”
As I near the end of my college career I look back on the choices I have made and it’s easy to dwell on what could have been done differently. Senior year brings with it the excitement of finally being done but also many disappointments that make you wonder what you could have done to yield a more desirable outcome. I’ve come to realize though that disappointments are often blessings in disguise because they open doors to opportunities that would have never been possible had everything gone the way you originally planned.
Never lose faith in the opportunities and possibilities that are yet to come. Our failures to make things go the way we want them to can surely lead us to incomparably greater successes, so long as we keep our sights on the now rather than the past.
Andy, I’m here again and I’m posting this after replying to your comments in my “Luck in Life” post. You could never have been more correct about blessings in disguise. Remember my reply to your comment on how I became an investment banker? Well, let me add a bit more to my story. The offer I got from my SEVP for me to join my bank’s Investment Banking Group as head of its newly-minted project finance deal team actually came at the cost of a long friendship with my SVP whom I have worked with from a long way back. Funny, but I had wanted to turn down the offer because I thought my boss-friend needed my help more at that time. However, my boss-friend unreasonably suspected that I had applied for the job. To make a long story short (for it took some time before I decided, with many more encounters in between), the choice in the end turned out to be between a job offer and a friendship. My boss-friend actually decided it for me by burning her bridge to mine. The only respectable option left for somebody being ignored, bypassed, and given a cold-shoulder treatment was to leave. That proved to be a blessing in disguise….