Are You Spending Enough Time Looking For Four Leaf Clovers?

Good Morning Everybody,

In my travels around the country I meet a lot of photographers who lament the fact that their business isn't what it should be. New customers aren’t calling, they need new gear to get the job done, their clients are always looking for the best price, etc., etc., etc. You know what I mean and I've been there myself now and then.

Looking For Luck In Life

But then I got thinking about an experience I had as a child. I can remember sitting with my mom on a blanket in our backyard. My mom told me about lucky four leaf clovers. I was a young kid, five or six years old, and didn't even know they came in a four leaf variety. Every clover I had ever seen in our backyard was the three leaf clover. 

She proceeded to tell me that luck would follow me if I could find a four leaf clover and save it. I remember saying to my mom, "Well, let’s look for some right now!"  We both rolled over in the blanket, put our noses close to the grass, and began looking for the elusive four leaf clovers. As I remember, I found the first one and I can't tell you how surprised I was. There was, a four leaf clover – held the secret to my lucky days ahead. We probably spent another hour or so looking for more four leaf clover's. Hey, you can never have too much luck I figured ;~)  I remember that my mother found a couple of them but, by the end of our time together, I had found five or six – I was set for life! And as it turned out, the more I looked for four leaf clovers the more I found.

I Learned A Life Lesson That Day

I think there's a life lesson here. If I had chose instead to look for crabgrass – I surely would've found a lot more crabgrass with a lot less effort. It seems crabgrass and weeds were everywhere but four leaf clovers are much more rare to find and require a lot more effort to find.

Let's apply that to real life. I feel that if a person is always looking for crabgrass and weeds in their life, let's call it complaining – the crabgrass becomes the complaints of life. And we all know it much easier to complain than to look for the positive.  Looking for crabgrass and four leaf clovers works the same way. It’s easy to find crabgrass nearly everywhere you look. But as we spend time looking for weeds (or complaining) you over look the occasional four leaf clover (lucky opportunity) that's out there just waiting to be found. Said differently, weed seekers have a lot more weeds to deal with in their lives. Heck, it’s what they keep their mental focus on, what they think about – and those results would be the expected.

I’m Looking Over A Four Leaf Clover….

Now let's say you were a four leaf clover finder – a person looking for new opportunities and working towards a goal. It seems to me that the more you look for four leaf clovers, the less likely you're see the crabgrass in your peripheral vision.  If you maintain your focus on the four leaf clover search,  and as I remember as I sat there on the blanket with my mom so many years ago, I don't remember complaining about all the grass in the way. I remember myself having a single-minded focus to find a four leaf clover. Once I found the first one I couldn’t wait to find the second one and soon found it too. My search continued, as I said above, until I found nearly a half dozen of the lucky four leaf clovers.

Success (Happiness) In Life Is A Lot Like Looking For Four Leaf Clovers

Life is exactly the same if we live our lives looking for four leaf clovers (opportunities).  Then the search for crabgrass (ongoing complaining) sort of dissipates in the background. But the opposite is true too. If we spend our lives looking only for only crabgrass, we will never find a four leaf clover. I also found that  in searching for those “four leaf clovers” in my life, metaphorically speaking of course, that I would indeed find them with regularity.

It's inherent that the search for four leaf clovers takes much more effort than the search for weeds. But you know what, spending time looking for four leaf clovers (opportunities) is a lot more productive than complaining about the weeds.

Four leaf clovers are also a metaphor for good luck. But as you can see from my story, it takes a lot more effort, focus, and work to find four leaf clovers. Said another way it takes a lot more work to find four leaf clovers, success, and happiness in our lives.

Start this weekend searching for those four leaf clovers and it’s a lot more fun. It's also a wonderful, productive, and prosperous way to make your journey through your profession and, maybe even life.

Food for thought: David

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Hey gang  that's it for me today. I hope everybody has a great weekend. LaDawn and I are heading to Louisville, Kentucky tomorrow to attend a friend's wedding and we are both really looking forward to it. Then is a 90 minute drive back home, finish packing our bags, and head to New York City Sunday morning. How about I see everybody bright and early on Monday hailing from the Empire State. Have a great weekend everybody!

See you soon, David