Cards Life Dealt You Quotes

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.

In point of fact, life may be just a shaky expectation, inasmuch as everyone realizes that the cards have often been shuffled, well in advance.

It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.

You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.

You got dealt some crappy cards. But you're the one who has to decide how to play them.

It doesn't matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.

The way he saw it, poker and life had a lot in common. You played the cards you were dealt, figured the odds, took the gamble or not. And when your cards were shit, you bluffed if the pot was worth it, and if you had balls.

Life may deal you a bad hand or take away a good hand you were already dealt. The way you play the hand is how your life is defined. Just like in poker you can end up winning no matter how bad the cards are you have.

Life's tough," Mia said with a shrug. "You play the cards you're dealt or you fold.

If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability.

It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s all about how you play them. I just need to savour life more, try to fix less, laugh more and always remember to just be in the moment.

You can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can always choose how you play your hand.

Sometimes it didn't matter how much gumption you had. What mattered were the cards you'd been dealt.

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.

In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them. I chose to investigate blackjack. As a result, chance offered me a new set of unexpected opportunities.

In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life.

Life may not have dealt you a great set of cards... but who says the one with better cards will win?

Destiny plays its cards in a way that no one can comprehend.

I gave you too much power because I always yearned for your love, but I guess the love card wasn’t meant for me to have in my life. I always thought I was dealt a bad hand because that card never appeared in the deck.

The truth that people are only as good as the world lets them be. You’re not inherently good and I’m not inherently bad. We’re just working through the cards life dealt us. So putting you in this position, dealing you these cards—what does a good guy do now? It’s not about the crash, Bill. It’s about the choice. It’s about good people seeing they’re no different from bad people.” He looked from Bill to Carrie. “You’ve just always had the luxury of choosing to be good.

There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.

You dont have the right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding...

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand.

Life is just a big game of Texas hold'em, unexpected things may arise that may suite you or destroy you. You gotta make the best of the cards your dealt, adjust accordingly, and always understand that you control your decisions.

There is no why. You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding. And, dear one, you and I both were granted a mighty generous hand.

The Neimoidian gave a long, gurgling sigh. “You’re right, Des. The decision is made. Grim fate and ill fortune have conspired against you. It’s not like sabacc; you can’t fold a bad hand. In life you just play the cards you’re dealt.

I wondered how my research into the mathematical theory of a game might change my life. In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them.

Essentially, he taught that it doesn’t make sense to upset ourselves about what is beyond our control. We don’t get a choice about what hand we are dealt in this life. The only choice we have is our attitude about the cards we hold and the finesse with which we play our hand.

Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn't have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It's just the other side of winning. I guess I'm a farmer now, because I'm used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It's just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields.

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. "Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is gay; the Russian dancers...." These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe. And yet, and yet... when we go to dinner, when pressing finger-tips we hope to meet somewhere soon, a doubt insinuates itself; is this the way to spend our days? the rare, limited, so soon dealt out to us - drinking tea? dining out? And the notes accumulate. And the telephones ring. And everywhere we go wires and tubes surround us to carry the voices that try to penetrate before the last card is dealt. "Try to penetrate" for as we lift the cup, shake the hand, express the hope, something whispers, Is this all? Can I never know, share, be certain? Am I doomed all my days to write letters, send voices, which fall upon the tea-table, fade upon the passage, making appointments, while life dwindles, to come and dine? Yet letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps- who know? - we might talk by the way.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; The way you play it is free will.

Like Dinah says, “We can only play the cards we’ve been dealt. It doesn’t do any good to wish about things you can’t change.

Because in the game of life, children have no control over the hand they are dealt. You, as a teacher, are the wild card that can make a difference in your students’ lives.

Not all of us are dealt the easy cards in life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reshuffle the deck once you’ve seen the light and the possibilities of a better outcome.

If I've taken anything from my life, it's this - you choose your family. It's not just blood, it's not just the cards you're dealt, life is about what you make for yourself, who you choose to spend your days with.

December 7th THE CARDS WE’RE DEALT “Think of the life you have lived until now as over and, as a dead man, see what’s left as a bonus and live it according to Nature. Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own, for what could be more fitting?” —MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.56–57

Bruce has wrestled with his moods, and a psyche genetically prone to extremes, for most of his adult life. Decades of psychotherapy helped reveal and cast light on some of his most primal traumas and conflicts, but his raw moods, and occasional descents into full-blown depression, never quite went away. "You go through periods of being good, then something stimulates it," he says. "The clock, some memory. You never know. The mind wants to link all your feelings to a cause. I'm feeling that because I'm doing this, or because that happened." Eventually Bruce realized that his worst moods had nothing to do with what was actually taking place in his life. Awful, stressful things could happen - conflicts, stress, disappointments, death - and he'd be unflappable. Then things would be peaceful and easy and he'd find himself on his knees. "You're going along fine, and then boom, it hits you. Things that just come from way down in the well. Completely noncasual, but it's part of your DNA, part of the way your body cycles." Bruce knows his particular brain chemistry will never leave him completely in the clear. "You manage it, you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt," he says. "These things are never going to be out of your life. You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things.

Fate deals the cards that set the game and every player takes their place. No soul can know what each hand holds, only time reveals such mysteries. Each player lays their cards in turn, believing that they control their destiny, blind to the web that connects us all. Every deed is not a single song, but alas, a single note in life’s symphony.

What I'm saying is that you don't have to be like anyone else, whether they are similar or different. You are your own person. The greatest enemy is often your perception of how you should be. But the greatest form of enlightenment is your rock-solid understanding of what you are, not what others have made of the cards they were dealt in life.

It is my hope that after digesting my words you will have developed a greater appreciation for the world around you, for your life, for your family, and for everything that is significant to you. During stressful times know that you are the captain of the course of your life, maybe not in what cards you are dealt, but in how you choose to arrange them.

We were trying to write this song about how to help somebody – almost like a manual, or like a formula of what you do when somebody you love is in trouble – and we just couldn’t do it. So what was left was sorta this shell or outline around the missing answer. As I sang a couple takes of it, everything just hit me of how helpless we are to handle the pressures of life – to handle the cards that are dealt to us and the people close to us. And I remember, like, breaking down.

Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you’ve got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age tunes, nothing too druid-chanty, seep out of the hi-fi to gently massage your cerebral cortex. Feel good? Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That’s the gift of being alone. Then a bozo in a CAT Diesel Power cap barges in. What’s the chance that you are the best, most special person in the room now? Fifty-fifty. If you both were dealt two cards, those would be your odds of holding the winning hand. Now imagine ten people are in the room. It’s cramped. You’re elbow to elbow, aerosolized dandruff floats in the air, and the candle’s lavender scent is complicated by BO tones, with a tuna sandwich finish. What are the chances you’re the best, most special person in the room? If you were handed cards, you might expect to be crowned one time out of ten. People, as ever, are the problem. The more people there are, the tougher you have it. Just by sitting next to you, they fuck you up, as if life were nothing more than a bus ride to hell (which it is). But what if you moved to another seat? Changed position? Your seat is everything. It can give you room to relax, to contemplate your next move. Or it might instigate your unraveling.

The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire. Next door, her neighbors were being killed. She hummed quietly to herself. There was a jack of spades. She placed it under the queen of hearts in the middle column. Next a six of diamonds. It went under the seven of spades. Something crashed into her front door. She kept turning the cards over. Putting them in their right places. Two more blows. The door burst open. She looked up. The monster crawled inside, and when it saw her sitting in the chair, it growled. “I knew you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t think it’d take you quite so long.” Ten of clubs. Hmm. No home for this one yet. Back to the pile. The monster moved toward her. She stared into its small, black eyes. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to just walk into someone’s house without an invitation?” she asked. Her voice stopped it in its tracks. It tilted its head. Blood—from one of her neighbor’s no doubt—dripped off its chest onto the floor. Belinda put down the next card. “I’m afraid this is a one-player game,” she said, “and I don’t have any tea to offer you.” The monster opened its mouth and screeched a noise out of its throat like the squawk of a terrible bird. “That is not your inside voice,” Belinda snapped. The abby shrunk back a few steps. Belinda laid down the last card. “Ha!” She clapped. “I just won the game.” She gathered up the cards into a single deck, split it, then shuffled. “I could play Solitaire all day every day,” she said. “I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.” A growl idled again in the monster’s throat. “You cut that right out!” she yelled. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.” The growl changed into something almost like a purr. “That’s better,” Belinda said as she dealt a new game. “I apologize for yelling. My temper sometimes gets the best of me.

You always have the power of choice. Externally, things may be out of your control. But one thing you can always control and master is your inner control: how you perceive the situation, how you filter it. There’s a tremendous freedom in taking leadership of how you perceive things. An obstacle is only an obstacle if that’s how you look at it. We make choices every day, and when you choose not to choose you are also making a choice. As soon as you make the conscious decision to be happy or successful, the universe moves to get you there. You can choose what impacts you. You can choose what scares you. You can choose to be confident, loved, or damaged. You can choose to let something define you or nothing define you. You can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can always choose how you play your hand.

I am Ra. Let us give the example of the man who sees all the poker hands. He then knows the game. It is but child’s play to gamble, for it is no risk. The other hands are known. The possibilities are known and the hand will be played correctly but with no interest. In time/space and in the true-color green density, the hands of all are open to the eye. The thoughts, the feelings, the troubles: all these may be seen. There is no deception and no desire for deception. Thus much may be accomplished in harmony, but the mind/body/spirit gains little polarity from this interaction. Let us re-examine this metaphor and multiply it into the longest poker game you can imagine: a lifetime. The cards are love, dislike, limitation, unhappiness, pleasure, etc. They are dealt, and re-dealt, and re-dealt continuously. You may, during this incarnation begin—and we stress begin—to know your own cards. You may begin to find the love within you. You may begin to balance your pleasure, your limitations, etc. However, your only indication of other-selves’ cards is to look into the eyes. You cannot remember your hand, their hands, perhaps even the rules of this game. This game can only be won by those who lose their cards in the melting influence of love; can only be won by those who lay their pleasures, their limitations, their all upon the table face up and say inwardly: “All, all of you players, each other-self, whatever your hand, I love you.” This is the game: to know, to accept, to forgive, to balance, and to open the self in love. This cannot be done without the forgetting, for it would carry no weight in the life of the mind/body/spirit beingness totality.

I have stopped loving you. I have stopped caring about you. I have stopped worrying about you. I have simply . . . stopped. This might come as news to you but despite everything, despite the cruelty, the selfishness and the pain you have caused, I still found a way to care. But not any more. Now, I am putting you on notice. I no longer need you. I don’t think fondly of our early days, so I am erasing these memories and all that followed. For much of our time together I wished for a better relationship than the one we have, but I’ve come to understand this is the hand I have been dealt. And now I am showing you all my cards. Our game is complete. You are the person I share this house with, nothing more, nothing less. You mean no more to me than the shutters that hide what goes on in here, the floorboards I walk over or the doors we use to separate us. I have spent too much of my life trying to figure out your intricacies, of suffering your deeds like knives cutting through scar tissue. I am through with sacrificing who I should have been to keep you happy as it has only locked us in this status quo. I have wasted too much time wanting you to want me. I ache when I recall the opportunities I’ve been too scared to accept because of you. Such frittered-away chances make me want to crawl on my hands and knees to the end of the garden, curl up into a ball on a mound of earth and wait until the nettles and the ivy choke and cover me from view. It’s only now that I recognise the wretched life you cloaked me in and how your misery needed my company to prevent you from feeling so isolated. There is just one lesson I have learned from the life we share. And it is this: everything that is wrong with me is wrong with you too. We are one and the same. When I die, your flame will also extinguish. The next time we are together, I want one of us to be lying stiff in a coffin wearing rags that no longer fit our dead, shrunken frame. Only then can we separate. Only then can we be ourselves. Only then do I stand a chance of finding peace. Only then will I be free of you. And should my soul soar, I promise that yours will sink like the heaviest of rocks, never to be seen again.

The average household income in America is right around $50,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. Joe and Suzy Average would invest $7,500 (15 percent) per year or $625 per month. If you make $50,000 per year and have no payments except the house mortgage and live on a budget, can you invest $625 per month? Follow me here. If Joe and Suzy invest $625 per month with no match into Roth IRAs from age thirty to age seventy, they will have $7,588,545 tax-FREE! That is almost $8 million. What if I’m half-wrong? What if you end up with only $4 million? What if I’m six times wrong? Sure beats the 97 out of 100 sixty-five-year-olds who can’t write a check for $600! I would submit to you that Joe and Suzy are well below average. Why? In our example they started at the average household income in America, and in forty years of work never got a raise. They saved 15 percent of income and never increased it by one dollar. There is no excuse to retire without financial dignity in the United States today. Most of you will have well over $2 million pass through your hands in your working lifetime, so do something about catching some of that money. Gayle asked me one day if it was too late for her to start saving. Gayle wasn’t twenty-seven like Joe and Suzy. She was fifty-seven years old, but with her attitude you would have thought this lady was 107. Harold Fisher had a much better outlook at age one hundred than Gayle did at age fifty-seven. Life had dealt her some blows and had knocked most of the hope out of her. A Total Money Makeover is not a magic show. You start where you are, and you do the steps. These steps work if you are twenty-seven or fifty-seven, and they don’t change. Gayle might be starting the retirement investing step at sixty that Joe and Suzy start at thirty years old. Gayle was unwise to enter her sixties without an emergency fund and with credit-card debt and a car payment. She, like all of us, couldn’t save when she has debt and no umbrella for when it rains. Would it have been better for Gayle to start when she was twenty-seven or even forty-seven? Obviously. But once she was done with the pity party, she still needed to start with Baby Step One and follow The Total Money Makeover step-by-step to put herself in the best position possible.

Your grandmother thought--no, she believed, it was like a faith for her. She believed it the way some people believe in God or science. She believed that it was the rules that made her life so easy. She thought life was about the rules people make for it, as if life was some kind of a board game and if you had a little luck, and you kept to the rules, you'd end up winning. Or maybe she thought it was like a game of solitaire and once the cards had been shuffled and laid out, if you had a good draw you were safe, as if it was arranged for you to win. Or to lose, although Grandmother considered herself someone who had won, since all she had to do once she was born was follow the rules. But really, life's like a game of bridge: You're dealt a hand and it can be a winning hand or a losing one, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you'll win or lose because there are other people at the table, your partner for one, and the other ream for another, that's three people...playing too, and people make mistakes, multiply that times three too, or you can just be smarter than they are. And luckier too, because anybody who sits down to play bridge or life without figuring out how much luck is involved is making a Big Mistake. I don't want you girls doing that.

Dear Circle of Life, The impression of you is so unique in the most exquisite ways. With you, there is a beginning and an end. You are the representation of birth and life. The in-between is survival, and the ending is death. The idea of life is just what it is when we arrive on the earth—our life is a circle, if you will, a 360. Once our wheels stop spinning, it rolls slowly until it completely stops. I believe there is a limitation to the circle of life—if there wasn’t, life would continue without end. Things are never certain, for there are always uncertain changes in the circle of life. In this universal symbol, there is repurpose in another life. You are everywhere and nowhere at the same time. How can that be? I guess because you are energetic. We are wholeness in another world, but here on earth, we are here to play the game from the cards that we are dealt until our time runs out. A world without end—that is interesting. I guess it is true because when we go to a new dimension, there is no such thing as an ending. Once we pass over, we originate into our infinite perfection. The self sees and feels no more back- biting, hurt, pain, depression, despair, and all the bullshit that follows. The circle of life has no blame, solitude, or default. Everything is what it is ... because it is perfect! I am aligned with the frequency and vibration of the moon and the stars.

(50.7) Questioner Thank you. Can you expand on the concept which is this: that it is necessary for an entity to, during incarnation in the physical, as we call it, become polarized or interact properly with other entities, and why this isn’t possible in between incarnations when he is aware of what he wants to do, but why must he come into an incarnation and lose memory, conscious memory, of what he wants to do and then act in a way that he hopes to act? Could you expand on that please? Ra I am Ra. Let us give the example of the man who sees all the poker hands. He then knows the game. It is but child’s play to gamble, for it is no risk. The other hands are known. The possibilities are known and the hand will be played correctly but with no interest. In time/ space and in the true-color green density, the hands of all are open to the eye. The thoughts, the feelings, the troubles: all these may be seen. There is no deception and no desire for deception. Thus much may be accomplished in harmony, but the mind/ body/ spirit gains little polarity from this interaction. Let us re-examine this metaphor and multiply it into the longest poker game you can imagine: a lifetime. The cards are love, dislike, limitation, unhappiness, pleasure, etc. They are dealt, and re-dealt, and re-dealt continuously. You may, during this incarnation begin—and we stress begin—to know your own cards. You may begin to find the love within you. You may begin to balance your pleasure, your limitations, etc. However, your only indication of other-selves’ cards is to look into the eyes. You cannot remember your hand, their hands, perhaps even the rules of this game. This game can only be won by those who lose their cards in the melting influence of love; can only be won by those who lay their pleasures, their limitations, their all upon the table face up and say inwardly: “All, all of you players, each other-self, whatever your hand, I love you.” This is the game: to know, to accept, to forgive, to balance, and to open the self in love. This cannot be done without the forgetting, for it would carry no weight in the life of the mind/ body/ spirit beingness totality.

The truth is that life, if viewed as a card game, deals good hands, bad hands, and average hands. And whichever hand you receive, you must play! You can win with any hand, and you can lose with any hand. It’s totally up to you how you play the game! Life is filled with champions who drew extremely poor hands and losers who drew terrific hands. In life, you will never be dealt a hand that, with God’s help, cannot be turned into a winning one. Success is for you and for anyone willing to take the initiative and pay the price.

It’s not so much about the cards you’re dealt; it’s a whole lot more about whether you play them well, or play them at all.

Kim was twenty-three, single, on her own, and at a job making $27,000 per year. She had recently started her Total Money Makeover. She was behind on credit cards, not on a budget, and barely making her rent because her spending was out of control. She let her car insurance drop because she “couldn’t afford it.” She did her first budget and two days later was in a car wreck. Since it wasn’t bad, the damage to the other guy’s car was only about $550. As Kim looked at me through panicked tears, that $550 might as well have been $55,000. She hadn’t even started Baby Step One. She was trying to get current, and now she had one more hurdle to clear before she even started. This was a huge emergency. Seven years ago George and Sally were in the same place. They were broke with new babies, and George’s career was sputtering. George and Sally fought and scraped through a Total Money Makeover. Today they are debt-free, even their $85,000 home. They have a $12,000 emergency fund, retirement in Roth IRAs, and even the kids’ college is funded. George has grown personally, his career has blossomed, and he now makes $75,000 per year while Sally stays home with the kids. One day a piece of trash flew out of the back of George’s pickup and hit a car behind him on the interstate. The damage was about $550. I think you can see that George and Sally probably adjusted one month’s budget and paid the repairs, while Kim dealt with her wreck for months. The point is that as you get in better shape, it takes a lot more to rock your world. When the accidents occurred, George’s heart rate didn’t even change, but Kim needed a Valium sandwich to calm down. Those true stories illustrate the fact that as you progress through your Total Money Makeover, the definition of an emergency that is worthy to be covered by the emergency fund changes. As you have better health insurance, disability insurance, more room in your budget, and better cars, you will have fewer things that qualify as emergency-fund emergencies. What used to be a huge, life-altering event will become a mere inconvenience.

And remember, life’s not about what you’re dealt, but rather what you do with what you’re dealt. Like a deck of cards.

You got dealt some crappy cards. But you're the one who has to decide how to play them.

NEW YEAR All endings have beginnings. All beginnings have their end. Sometimes our cards bring us winnings, Sometimes the dealer’s not our friend. Time can bring us sadness. Time can bring us joy. But let it not bring madness. Never be Time’s toy. Now the year has gone. It cannot be redone. At least we carried on. Regrets? Let us have none. A glorious New Year beckons, Seducing with its hope. Its day, its hours, its seconds, All have happiness within their scope. Be glad for what Life dealt, Cards of joy, or cards of pain. You were alive and felt. You may not pass this way again

We’re taught to believe that some people are simply born lucky, when in reality, that’s just a convenient excuse to lean back and take it easy, rather than try to apply some control over our destiny. After all, if you aren’t one of the “chosen” ones, what can you possibly do about it? Quite a lot, actually. The fact is, more and more psychologists are finding out that it isn’t the hand you’re dealt that’s important in life but how you play your cards. Let me put it in another way: We’re all capable of making our own luck. What appears to be luck is really the result of perceptions, personality traits, choices and actions. All of that is within your control. People who consider themselves lucky actually tend to be - it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s because positive thinkers are always keeping their eyes peeled for fortunate situations and they’re more likely to grab on them when they arise. So instead of telling yourself: “There’s not a chance in hell that’s going to happen”. Tell yourself: “That looks kind of cool, maybe I should check it out.” Amanda Oosthuizen

The beauty of poker is that while luck is always involved, luck doesn’t dictate the long-term results of the game. A person can get dealt terrible cards and beat someone who was dealt great cards. Sure, the person who gets dealt great cards has a higher likelihood of winning the hand, but ultimately the winner is determined by—yup, you guessed it—the choices each player makes throughout play. I see life in the same terms. We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.

Life only feels difficult or unfair when you believe you should have been dealt a different set of cards. Change that belief… and you change your reality.

Sharing trauma (or even good things) with the Internet world, while we’re in the middle of it, short-circuits the process. It crosses the wires and creates sparks. Loud sparks—noise. Adoration. Comments like We love you! We are cheering for you! Oh, I’m so sorry! But sparks usually mean a bad connection. What if God wants to speak to us alone? Do we trust he has what it takes? I’m not saying to walk through hardship and trauma alone. You need your support system and community. In fact, I remember how much our close friends and family rallied with us during the miscarriage. Meals. Flowers. The sweetest cards. Prayers written out over text. Help with the kids. I’m more concerned about the healing part. Sometimes we share too quickly with the world—the Internet, the fringe friends, the public record—before we have truly processed, dealt with it, healed. The minute we do that, the decibel level becomes too loud, and we can no longer hear Jesus. He gets drowned out. And he’s the place of true wholeness and restoration. In a painful but true way. In obscurity. We need to simply sit with Jesus without pithy prayers. We need to ask for his help and know that he sees us. While healing won’t come overnight, we know we aren’t going through this alone.

Play the cards you are dealt and don't cry when life gives you a re-shuffle.

Fate deals the cards that set the game and every player takes their place. No soul can know what each hand holds, only time reveals such mysteries. Each player lays their cards in turn, believing that they control their destiny, blind to the web that connects us all. Every deed is not a single song, but alas, a single note in life’s symphony.

People came into your life without warning, stayed awhile, and went away, always leaving something of themselves behind, a look, a word or a phrase, a gesture. They left their mark and remembering them was a way of remembering yourself at a certain age, nineteen, say, or forty-one, and how you played the hand you were dealt, how attentive you were to the fall of the cards, the bets, and the stakes.

IT'S NOT THE CARDS YOU ARE DEALT IN LIFE, BUT HOW YOU PLAY THE GAME!

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance A planet of play things We dance on the strings Of powers we cannot perceive 'The stars aren't aligned Or the gods are malign...' Blame is better to give than receive You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill I will choose a path that's clear I will choose freewill There are those who think That they were dealt a losing hand The cards were stacked against them They weren't born in Lotus Land All preordained A prisoner in chains A victim of venomous fate Kicked in the face You can't pray for a place In heaven's unearthly estate Each of us A cell of awareness Imperfect and incomplete Genetic blends With uncertain ends On a fortune hunt that's far too fleet

This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. ater on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely. It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.

I realized the importance of trusting myself to find a way to rise in any situation- to react with dignity, strength, and truth. It’s our responses, not our circumstances, that define us in the end. Our lives reflect the choices we make with the hand we are dealt, not the cards themselves. It’s up to each of us to decide whether to keep fighting and rise above all that seeks to keep us down or give up and accept the weights and challenges that constrain us. Whatever burdens you are carrying in your life, know that you inherently possess the power to rise above them. In the water, your body instinctively wants to find air. Lose the things that are keeping you below water and allow yourself to surface. Allow yourself the freedom of breathing again- that’s what keeps you alive. The weight of anger, resentment, and regret only weigh down the person still carrying them; in other words, holding on to resentment doesn’t hurt anyone but you. Let those burdens go and let your soul rise above.

The only thing he won’t excuse is whining about the cards life has dealt you. He would say get off your ass and find a different game or learn how to win at the one you are playing.

You manage it (mental health), you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt...These things are never going to be out of your life. You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things.

Life may deal you some cards, but don't forget that you shuffled the deck.

By this time, Washington’s airports were buried in two feet of snow, so I boarded a train for Boston. During the long ride back I wondered how my research into the mathematical theory of a game might change my life. In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them. I chose to investigate blackjack. As a result, chance offered me a new set of unexpected opportunities.

Well, sometimes you need to reshuffle the deck. Sometimes we get dealt a hand that’s a hard one. We keep playing at this game of life until the game gets better.” “But what if the game gets too hard to shuffle the cards?”  “Then I’ll shuffle them for you.

It is not the cards you are dealt in life that matters–it is how you play your hand.

Life isn't about getting the perfect hand of cards - it's about taking the cards you're dealt and making the most of them!

Change can be scary, but it's utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they've been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability. p193

Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

It took me two relapses,” I shared one evening at an AA meeting, “but I had my last drink in 2002 after I stared down my fears. Some of you may have been dealt a bad hand in life in one way or another, but that doesn’t mean you can’t reshuffle the cards.

As we’ve seen earlier, the hallmark of an admirable poker player is that he plays the best regardless of his hands. In the end, not the one with the objectively best cards, but the one who plays his cards the best, wins. You don’t get to choose the hands you’re dealt, only how you want to play them. Your hands in poker as in life are indifferent, learn to accept them equally, without judging. If you can do that, if you can accept rather than resist what happens, then you will no longer be dependent upon things being in a certain way.

People like to tell you that life has dealt them a bad hand even when they’ve chosen most of the cards themselves.

So, you’re perfectly fine—” “Other than the stab wound.” “Ah yes, ha ha. Sorry.” He actually said ‘ha ha’ in a way that Paul found irritating. “Still though, you and I have dealt with some difficult information and now look – we are making jokes! This has gone very well.” He resumed beaming at Paul. “Which brings me to the next issue we must address. There appears to have been an issue with the emergency contact details the nurse took from you when you were admitted.” “Oh?” “It happens all the time. People are rushing about—” “I’d been stabbed.” “You’d been stabbed. We rang the number you gave us and, apparently, it is a Chinese takeaway called the Oriental Palace.” “It’s not just a takeaway. They’ve recently expanded to include an in-dining area with ambiance.” Mrs Wu would’ve been proud. She had been answering the phone ‘Hello Oriental Palace, now including an in-dining area with ambiance’ for nearly three months. She clearly didn’t know what ambiance meant, but somebody must’ve told her the place had it, and she was damn sure going to sell it. “I see,” said Dr Sinha. “And do you have a relative working at the Oriental Palace?” “No, not as such.” Or at all. “Ask for Mickey.” “OK. Mickey who?” Paul had been dreading that question. Who really knew the second name of their regular delivery guy? Sure, Mickey had come in and nabbed the occasional smoke or life-threateningly cheap Eastern European beer on a slow Tuesday. He’d even stayed to watch half of Roxanne on DVD once, but a second name seemed like a very personal question. Mickey had told him he was not from China, and how annoyed he got when people assumed he was. Unfortunately, Paul had forgotten where Mickey was from, so that was another no-go area. “Just Mickey.” “So, no relatives you’d like us to call?” “Nope. None.” Dr Sinha was clearly uncomfortable at this. “Well, as someone from a very large family, may I say, I envy you. I spend half of my salary on birthday cards alone.

Americans,” Kuzis spat. “You have it so easy, and then you come to us and preach that we should act as you act. But we’re not holding aces.” “Like I said, Kuzis, you haven’t seen my hand.” “I don’t need to.” “Let me tell you something,” Lance said, “not that it will do you much good now, but the difference between you and me isn’t that I was dealt four aces, and you weren’t.” “What is it then?” “It’s that I play like I was dealt four aces.” Kuzis let out a hollow laugh. “Oh, I see. You’re just bluffing your way to victory then.” “I’m saying, it isn’t the same as a card game, Kuzis. You’re only dealt one hand in life. One hand. And that’s the hand you play.

Chess, for all its strategic complexity, isn’t a great model for decision-making in life, where most of our decisions involve hidden information and a much greater influence of luck. This creates a challenge that doesn’t exist in chess: identifying the relative contributions of the decisions we make versus luck in how things turn out. Poker, in contrast, is a game of incomplete information. It is a game of decision-making under conditions of uncertainty over time. (Not coincidentally, that is close to the definition of game theory.) Valuable information remains hidden. There is also an element of luck in any outcome. You could make the best possible decision at every point and still lose the hand, because you don’t know what new cards will be dealt and revealed. Once the game is finished and you try to learn from the results, separating the quality of your decisions from the influence of luck is difficult.

Change can be scary, but it’s utterly unavoidable. In fact, impermanence is the only thing you can truly rely on. If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will.” Jawaharlal Nehru

It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s all about how you play them.” I just need to savour life more, try to fix less, laugh more and always remember to just be in the moment.

Would it be life-changing? You take the cards you’re dealt in life, I guess. Yeah,

The beauty of poker is that while luck is always involved, luck doesn’t dictate the long-term results of the game. A person can get dealt terrible cards and beat someone who was dealt great cards. Sure, the person who gets dealt great cards has a higher likelihood of winning the hand, but ultimately the winner is determined by—yup, you guessed it—the choices each player makes throughout play. I see life in the same terms. We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards. There are those who suffer psychologically and emotionally from neurological and/or genetic deficiencies. But this changes nothing. Sure, they inherited a bad hand and are not to blame. No more than the short guy wanting to get a date is to blame for being short. Or the person who got robbed is to blame for being robbed. But it’s still their responsibility. Whether they choose to seek psychiatric treatment, undergo therapy, or do nothing, the choice is ultimately theirs to make. There are those who suffer through bad childhoods. There are those who are abused and violated and screwed over, physically, emotionally, financially. They are not to blame for their problems and their hindrances, but they are still responsible—always responsible—to move on despite their problems and to make the best choices they can, given their circumstances.

I know there are other people out there, just like me. People who think they are alone in life and that their cards have been dealt and that there is nothing they can do to change anything. That’s how I felt too for a long, long time. I nearly killed myself because of it. But now I know there’s always time for change and there’s always a better path. You just have to look for it.