This year, I’ve had so many near misses—opportunities that came close but slipped away at the last minute—that could throw even the bravest of hearts off course.

Last night, while recounting those almost-signed deals and promising chances that suddenly disappeared, I decided to journal my thoughts in an attempt to make sense of my emotions.

Here's what I wrote down: 👇

1) Perhaps the most awakening moment for me this year is the realization that most of my decisions in life, with or without my approval, will elicit a response—positive or negative—from others.

2) To increase the chances of being happy—or what I refer to as the journey of happiness—be ready, as often as you can, not to predict how someone will react to your personal decisions. Don’t expect them to understand your choices, approve of them, or respect them, because your decision, as personal as it may be to you, could be a threat to their world order or stability.

3) In business, what I’m learning to increase the chances of getting positive reactions from people is not only fine-tuning my proposals, but also applying the law of averages.

I’ve figured out that if I shoot my shots—even sometimes aimlessly and scatteredly—I increase my chances of getting positive responses from people, as long as I intentionally downplay the idea that negative responses are always a direct product of my own wrongdoings. I now bear in mind, when I receive a rejection email or get suddenly ghosted by a potential client, that in most cases there’s nothing I could have done better to prevent the negative response.