Deeds v/s Luck

I have lived 22 years of my life now. Today, I went to cast my first vote ever. The man operating the ballot machine made a mistake in sequence number marking. He assured everyone that the sequence number was correct. We all had serious doubts about its proper functioning now. I cast my vote, but I am unsure if my vote and sequence number match.

Living in this world for so many years, I realized something that I wish to share, and I am sure that it will be an inspiration for you all as well. Look at the chart below:

I strongly believe that there is only 1% of your life that is under your control. You control it through your deeds - good or bad. Rest of the 99% of how your life would be is controlled by deeds of others. This is something that we call the luck factor. 

Let me give you an example. Suppose, you are about to appear for your college entrance exam. You have worked hard days and nights to complete the syllabus and you are all prepared for the exam. Let us look at a few possibilities:

• You excelled in the exam. You solved all the problems easily without any error. You were happy coming out of your exam hall. You were eager for the results.
• You skipped a few topics thinking they were not important and a majority of questions were related to those topics.
• You reached the examination hall late because you woke up late (the alarm clock cheated you). 
• You woke up on time. You still got late as you were stuck in traffic. You ran out of time in the examination hall.
• You fell sick a day before the exam and you were not able to appear for the exam.

Let us rule out all other possibilities except for the first one. You excelled. While evaluating your answers, the examiner was not convinced that your technique was correct. The examiner was more convinced that the technique followed by others was more accurate. You ended up scoring less than others.

These were just a few possibilities of where things may go wrong. My creative mind can come up with hundreds of more possibilities. Out of all these possibilities, if everything goes in your favour then you end up getting a good score. If any of the factors go against you, you are messed up.

This was just a small exam that I talking about. Think about the big decisions that you take in life and how thousands of factors affect the result. I have found a key to this. The solution is simple.

• Don't think about the factors that are not under your control. It is easy said but hard done. We often think a lot about factors that we don't have control upon. We always think, "Why me?". I will ask you to never think about them. They are not under your control. Your energy spent on thinking is worth nothing. They are luck factors. They are dependent on the deeds of others.
• No matter the result, do everything that you can to make that best out of 1% that you actually control. If I take the examination example again, study hard and be prepared well.

I am very convinced that, there is no such thing as winning or losing. The one who is lucky among all deserving candidates wins. I also don't believe in karma (because I don't believe in the fact that a deed can be classified as good or bad). I am just asking you to make the best of 1% of the life you control and let the other 99% favour or disfavour you according to your destiny. Just a last statement about the luck factor. It is rightly said that, Time has equally divided the dark lonely moments among all of us. When everything goes out of your favour, don't stop! Just keep swimming.

On a closing note, I have decided to vote no matter what. It is my fundamental right and duty after all.