THE WINNERS CODE

GEORGE CHINGARANDE | Monday February 27, 2012 00:00

Tools for business forecasts and weather forecasts are now common place in society.  All these are designed to answer the question; what does the future hold for the society and more importantly for me as an individual.  In this issue we discuss exactly that.

The year 2011 was a watershed year in many respects and affected many centers of power in very significant ways. 

Personally, I found it very fascinating because some of the characters whose lives I had been studying and observing very diligently but from a distance were in the spotlight.  Two of these people are outstanding characters whose lives I have followed for many years.

The first is an Italian politician.  He came to my attention because he had assembled an all conquering football team from Milan.  In the late eighties and early nineties this team was almost invincible.  I later learnt that he founded the most powerful media group in Italy and many other businesses.  He has a unique sense of humor; his own brand of charisma; a good musical voice and a taste of the good things in life which in his vocabulary includes 'naughty young ladies'. Predictably he rose to the pinnacle of Italian society but also fell from grace ignominiously because financial and sexual scandals always followed him.

 The other character is a very intelligent, energetic and charismatic French politician.  He rose to become a finance minister, and then World Bank president and was tipped to become the next French president.  However, last year he was forced to resign his position at the World Bank after reports of inappropriate sexual conduct.

That single incident ruined his chances of contesting the French presidency. However, he is so talented that I was so sure then as now that we had not heard the last of him.  Well, this week the French police interrogated him for many hours.  What for?  The answer is; allegedly for involvement in misdemeanors with prostitutes.  It seems as though he is about to experience another fall.

 How can such intelligent, successful, wealthy and famous men continuously make such scandalous public errors both in judgment and behavior?  These men are not different from any of us.  Perhaps the real difference is that their foibles were reported worldwide while ours have not received any attention beyond our small worlds.  If you look carefully at your life; it will not amaze you to realise that there is an uncanny similarity between the problems and challenges you are facing now and those you faced five years ago.

Look at your financial, social, career, relationship and even spiritual challenges.  You will notice one of two things; either a day when it all changed or that the circumstances have changed but the results are not too different.  Your future is therefore just as predictable as theirs.  Why is that so?  The answer to that question comes from a Tibetan monk who was renowned for almost always getting correct predictions about outcomes.

The monk owned two fighter dogs; one black and one white.  Every Saturday the community would gather to watch his dogs fight each other and they would place bets on the dogs.  The fights were made as fair as possible.  The monk would also place a bet on one of the dogs.  This went on for close to ten years.  In all those years the monk never wagered for a losing dog.  If he put his money on the white dog, the white dog won.  If he betted for the black dog; it too would win. People were amazed by this.  His fame grew throughout the region.  The monk's village was located between a valley region and a mountain region.

One day two men relocating from the mountain region to the valley region came to him.  They were both anxious to hear from him what the future held for them. He asked the first man: 'What was it like in the mountain region where you are coming from?'  The man narrated his ordeal and explained how the people were unfriendly, the land had no opportunities, bad things always happened to him and how it was like hell on earth.  Then he said to the man, 'Where you are going you will also meet hell on earth.  The outcomes will be terrible for you.'  The second man narrated of his great times in the mountain region which he likened to heaven on earth.  The monk also forecast heaven on earth for him in the valley region.

Many years later the monk's neighbor followed up these two men to see how they were doing in the valley region.  To his amazement the monk's predictions were spot on. The neighbor quizzed the monk about the secret to his unerring predictions.  It is the monk's answer that I want you the reader to think deeply about because it is true also about you and correctly predicts what fate awaits you in the future. His answer was: 'There are two lessons that you must know about life. 

The first one is that the dog that you feed will always win.  I was the owner of those fighter dogs; and likewise you own the fighter dog in you.  Every week I would feed one very well, and starve the other.

The dog that I had fed is the dog that I wagered.  The second lesson is that - you always carry the weather in you.  And that weather that you carry in you is what will determine what will happen in your future.

Your habits, thoughts, strategies, attitudes, worldview, friends, ideas and the like...these are the dogs and the weather in your life. Every day you feed some of them and you starve some but you also carry them with you. In the absence of a major emotional episode that shocks you; the dog that you feed and the weather that you carry in you determine your outcome.'winningmantra@yahoo.com