Life, is it being charmed, being cursed, or is it force of will, that shapes destiny?

I don’t believe in charms or curses, but I do believe in conjuncture and my own limited will, so I’ll take that.

I really believe that everything is pre-determined in life. People may say that we can change things and make our lives the way we want it, but even if you effect change and make things better (or worse), that itself is already in the design of things, that is, already determined.

I believe how our lives progress is determined partly through the direction we choose to follow, by having the self-belief that we can achieve our goals, the tenacity to stick with things and not give up despite opposition or failures, a degree of hard work and a measure of good fortune by being in the right place at the right time.

How your life plays out is a combination of things. One’s parents and circumstances at birth, one’s educational opportunities, the sum of one’s experiences, everything that life can throw at you helps to determine who you are. That helps to determine your temperament and your temperament helps to determine how your subsequent experiences will effect you. If you can figure out how it all fits together, how it all works together to make and form a single individual then you are more than one up on all the experts who study such things.

I feel its a special person who paves his/her own path. I fully believe in a self-fulfilling prophecy and that one can over come any obstacle with resiliency. It’s a bit of greed, a bit of over confidence that fuels this kind of passion, but I think level headedness also arises when ones true intention is honest and pure. Most “geniuses” were wild minded people. Obviously though, if you’re wild minded and can’t get over the fact that you might not be accepted into a general society you’re going to feel out of place, its those that dont mind the out of place and make the most of it that go on to do enormous things in life. And I’m not talking about wild minds like sociopaths or anything like that.

Lousy, selfish, parenting, no role models, bad choices, trusting the wrong people, letting the wrong people get too close to me, some stupidity on my part, bad people, and bad circumstances that surrounded me that I had no control over on my part. I never had a chance really… But I’ll make one. The one thing it all did provide me is no matter what people try to do to destroy me (And some actually have, and continue to) I will always stand and I will always fight.

Crazy is good for something sometimes I suppose?

For the most part it is the person making his own way. Luck happens to those who are prepared. The guy who lands a great job, only was able to get the job because he had the skills to do the job. He probably worked really hard to have the skills, and then somehow got himself into the right place and time to get the offer. Of course circumstance, especially in childhood can set some people up better than others for their future, but in America it is rather level actually, even with some of the crappy school systems, if the kid just applies himself. But, I realize there can be many things out of the childs control that interfere with a child being able to take advantage of learning and moving down his own path. But, as they move into adulthood they can catch up with some of it, it is never too late.

Some of us have talents we are born with from IQ, to artistic ability, physical strength, and on and on, but those still need to be exercised and practiced.

There are many, many things that can stack up against a person from the get go of life. In the case of the people who catapult from the ghetto to glory, they are the group that have a vision or passion and are very determined.

Charmed for $200, Alex.

We sometimes look at people like Steve Jobs and think that they, ” ...in spite of the odds just seem to be charmed, whatever they set out to do worked,” without looking at how much and how hard they had to work to get where they were. Yes, these people are special, but it’s not as though someone simply waved a magic wand over them at birth and everything just happened for them. And not everything worked for Steve Jobs; he got royally and very publicly fired from Apple, the company he started and built from scratch. That wasn’t really everything working out for him all the time, was it?

I think it is impossible to see both in isolation regarding circumstances and will. In one hand your circumstances do play a significant role in who you become… I don’t think this can be helped. You are born to a certain someone or group of people that you have no control of and they shape you. Where you live, who you meet, the opportunities you have all control who you become as you grow.

On the other hand that is only half of the equation. We are all given free will and the ability to either choose life-affirming behavior or deathly behavior or anywhere in between or in combination. I think that the cliche saying “Play the hand you’re dealt” here applies. If I could elaborate more I would say that your conscious thoughts and actions have a great impact on shaping your own destiny, and the initial effect of circumstance becomes less and less a factor of your being as you grow older, since we can become who we want to be with proper application in right thought.

That being said someone who is born in a harsh environment (think starving children in Africa) and who does not have their physical needs met is at a grave disadvantage. However through survival and some of the remarkable and often quite miraculous adaptations the body goes through, it is also possible however unlikely that one of these disadvantaged youths could become President of a great country through extreme effort and motivation. This is why I think both matter.

What @lilcoyote is so true. We think “how blessed they are” or “see how luck shines on them at every turn,” when in fact we have no idea what they went through and the work they did. Steve Jobs actually made more money from Pixar than he did from Apple (twice as much actually) and how can you call that lucky? Even his other company NeXT made him money. I have to believe that is the result of a great work ethic and someone who knew applied himself. Keep in mind Jobs used to sleep on people’s floors and scrounge around for free food when he dropped out of college. He was also depressed when he got ousted from Apple, only to rise from his ashes.
So no, I definitely don’t believe in charms or that our destinies are pre-determined and pre-written. For such a smart guy, @MRSHINEYSHOES doesn’t seem to have so much Wisdom.