Thanks for your answer
I hope to see you one day, when I visit Moscow

“I actually like this one. First off, I don’t believe in luck, and I feel that “lucky” people make their own luck by want, determination, and seizing opportunities that present themselves. Mind you, these opportunities often come as failures. Some anecdotes:
I have a friend who worked through college selling knives for company X. This kid partied his ass off, but when it was time to work, he wouldn’t let anyone outwork him. After a few summers, the company trusted him enough to start small start ups in Puetro Rico (we’re from the southeastern US) by himself over the summers. He told me how down in the dumps he got while being alone and being the manager of a business at 20 years old in a foreign country and was still expected to succeed. He did. He woke up every morning, went to work, interviewed and trained people, etc. He is currently in NYC at a very selective internship.

My roommate my sophomore year in college worked with the Help Haiti group and worked full time as a cath-lab tech at the local hospital all while going to school full time (and partying until 4 am when he started work two hours later). He volunteered for an opportunity to go to Haiti, by himself, to help with various medical things down there. Like the guy in Anecdote 1, he got very down at times, but managed to get through. Unlike number 1, he did not speak the language down there. In his spare time, he learned some Creole. Oh, and he helped bury dead bodies. He just graduated with me, and I have no doubt that he will be successful.

When I was a senior in high school, I was among the top of my graduating class and a state championship quality wrestler. I could not win the big matches because I was a head-case though. After I finished that season and graduated, I vowed to never let my mind keep me from succeeding as best as I could. In four years, I graduated as the top student in the Mechanical Engineering curriculum with a minor in mathematics at a top-75 school (while paying for it myself) while coaching high school wrestling and programming on the side for a national laboratory. I now make what than the average US family makes at 22 years old.

My point is that being successful is about wanting to be successful and keeping your priorities in line. People fail, that is fact. It is what you do after the failure that determines how far you will go.”

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who lies more. I initially included the sentence to emphasize the importance of honesty and respect for men *in particular*. Now, I’ve removed it because it was distracting everyone from the rest of the post. I have, however, kept the comments and will come back to the subject in a separate post (or post series) soon.

Still all good advice in your article though.

Thanks for following. Your quote reminds me of something Antoine St. Exupery said:
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to subtract.

To hear you say that about my writing is high praise to me; thank you .

(I’ve been living in Moscow, Russia for the past 4 years!)