So, you’re going to win lotto one day?

I just watched the movie last night ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Have you seen it? It’s a good movie. I’m not sure if it’s based on  a true story or not – it is thought to be at least in part.

The movie basically is about a boy who grew up an orphan in the slums in India, and went on to win 20 million Rupees in the TV show who wants to be a millionaire. He was arrested and tortured to find out how he knew the answers to the questions as it was assumed that he should not have known, having had basically no education.

What really got me thinking, was that the ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ show was so popular in India, because the opportunity to get on the show and win money was the only way that people to could see to get out of their current situation – living in poverty in India.

Sadly, it’s pretty much the same here. Every week at work, I hear people expressing their wishes to win lotto ‘I’ll come in and say goodbye and then I’ll be off, if I win the lotto tonight!’. We hear it all the time from people craving a way out, but not being able to see opportunities appearing in front of them every day. They don’t see them because they’re not open and looking. People spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year to buy lotto tickets because they see it as the only way out of their current life and the only way into the life they want. The sad fact is that those few who do eventually win, almost always lose all the money within a couple of years and end up back in the lifestyle they were so desperate to get out of in the first place, because they haven’t made the changes to themselves, to become the person who can create and hold on to the money and the lifestyle. So they end up back in the only reality that their minds are capable of creating.

The sad thing is, that what is accepted by most as reality, really isn’t! We all have the opportunity to create whatever life we want to create. There are many people out there, only too happy to be our mentors. People who have done exactly what we all want to do – they have created the life they dreamed of. People who have come from backgrounds with little or no education, people who have lost everything and started again – often more than once. People who had the clarity, the openness and the focus to seek and to learn what they needed to to become successful.