This is a strange topic for a marketing blog, but lately people have status updates that make me wonder about prayer.

I’m Catholic by virtue of Confirmation and four years of Jesuits beating me with the Scriptures. I’m not quite certain people understand the idea of prayer. It isn’t so much pray and receive. It’s kind of like the lottery ticket you buy: you have to keep working towards retirement with some kind of planning until you do win. (Hope isn’t a strategy and lottery isn’t an IRA).

Saint Francis of Assisi had it right when he said, “When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing – nothing.”

Satchel Paige said, “Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.”

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer. ~Author Unknown

Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish. ~Author Unknown

Finally, Frederick Douglass stated, “I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

It’s all about action.

I am a firm believer that prayer can you strength (and when do you need that strength more than when you are in trouble, right?). But nothing is delivered into your lap. It’s all about working for it.

And nothing is easy. There is no overnight success. You just happen to see the result of consistent labor.

I read that even if He wanted you to have it after you prayed, He wouldn’t place it in front of you. He make you go find it.

Life is a journey, right? You only enjoy Happiness because you know Sadness. You only like water because you know thirst. We like winning after tasting loss.

Here’s an article with a similar theme.

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, ‘I don’t get it!’

‘You can’t be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?’

He replied, ‘Each morning I wake up and say to myself, ‘You have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or…you can choose to be in a bad mood.’

‘I choose to be in a good mood.’

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or…I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or…I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life…

‘Yeah, right, it’s not that easy,’ I protested.

‘Yes, it is,’ he said. ‘Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people affect your mood.

You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It’s your choice how you live your life.’

I reflected on what he said.. Soon hereafter, I left the Tower Industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that he was involved in a serious accident, falling some 60 feet from a communications tower.

After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, he was released from the hospital with rods placed in his back.

I saw him about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, ‘If I were any better, I’d be twins…Wanna see my scars?’

I declined to see his wounds, but I did ask him what had gone through his mind as the accident took place.

‘The first thing that went through my mind was the well-being of my soon-to-be born daughter,’ he replied. ‘Then, as I lay on the ground, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or….I could choose to die. I chose to live.’

‘Weren’t you scared? Did you lose consciousness?,’ I asked.

He continued, ‘…the paramedics were great.’

‘They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the ER and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘he’s a dead man’. I knew I needed to take action.’

‘What did you do?’ I asked.

‘Well, there was a big burly nurse shouting questions at me,’ said John. ‘She asked if I was allergic to anything ‘Yes, I replied.’ The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Gravity!’

Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I am choosing to live.. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.’

He lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude….I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully.

‘Attitude, after all, is everything.

“It works because it isn’t the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard “inch by inch anything’s a cinch.” Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day.”

Daily action builds habits.

[lifehacker, I think is the source]