#59: Good Luck, Bad Luck - Who Knows?
Kelly talks about acceptance and not fighting against reality when things appear to not go our way. She shares what’s happening now in her son’s life and his run of “bad luck".
She also speaks of her deepening meditation practice after meeting Burgs in a teepee in Ibiza.
This episode ends with an opportunity to reflect on how her story relates to your own life. Have you experienced “good luck”, “bad luck”? Is it all a matter of perspective? Does "luck" even exist?
Links mentioned in this episode:
Burgs and the Art of Meditation
Visit Kelly’s new website, explore the soulful offerings and join the mailing list https://www.kellypietrangeli.com/
Email: hello@myprojectme.com
Read the Transcript for this Episode below:
Episode 59 of the Project Me podcast. Hello from Ibiza, where I still am. I've still not left my little island paradise once in three whole months, and it's been sheer bliss. Surrounded by nature, swimming in the sea, working from home in a very downstream way. I just ran another retreat for some amazing women.
They'd all been through my High Vibe Journey program, and we got to see each other in person and go deeper together. It was really incredible. And if my voice sounds a little bit. Raspy, which I hadn't even realized until I start, until I started recording that It does. Um, I had some really dear old friends staying here last weekend and honestly, I laughed so much that I, I practically went by the time they left, my voice was gone.
Um, and I guess I just haven't been speaking this week 'cause I hadn't even realized that my voice was gone until I started recording this. Um, well, I am loving life here. I honestly, I could just stay on and on and on, but my lovely husband is asking, um, when are you coming back to Madrid because he's based there for work and he's coming here on weekends and it's finally time I need to pack up my cats and my bags and head back to Madrid next week.
But I am very much living in the present moment. I am not allowing myself to think ahead to life back in my apartment in the city center. And when I get there, it is my intention to practice acceptance. Acceptance means not fighting against reality. We cause ourselves so much suffering by wanting things to be different than they are.
And the more we learn to surrender and accept, The less we suffer with our emotions, there is always, always something to feel grateful for. And that is my easiest way of shifting my mindset. If I noticed that my current choice of thoughts are not helpful. And that's what I want to talk about today. I want to share a story that the theme today is acceptance, acceptance for how life is no matter what's going on.
Last month, I had a really profound experience in a TP here in Ibiza. I loosely mentioned that in my last episode as it had just happened then, but now that it's been a few weeks, I'm able to understand just how impactful it was for me and all that it's opened up. I was at a women's meditation circle in a big TP and we had a guest meditation teacher who was a man, a man called Burgs, that's B U R G S, Burgs.
And I thought, Could this be the same Bergs who has the track I love on Spotify? I play it at all my retreats. I just love his English accent and his wise words on how overcomplicated we make life. Listening to that track always reminds me to keep it simple and stop overcomplicating things. And I really want you to hear his voice.
So I'm going to press play on a really short snippet of Bergs. The track is called Mount Wolf. In the last episode, I I accidentally gave the wrong title. So if you did go and listen to it, you're like, this doesn't have anything to do with overcomplicating life, but hopefully you liked whatever it was anyway, but this one's called Berg's Mount Wolf.
So I'm going to play it now and I hope you can hear this.
It's just, we get so messy. It's not that we're doing lots of wrong things, but our mind is so messy. We don't keep it simple. And, and, we end up making the life that we're living so inordinately complicated.
Yeah, that's just a little sample of it. I wanted you to hear his voice. So Yeah. Yeah. On that Wednesday in the teepee, I was delighted to find that it was the same Bergs with the same voice, and I kind of thought he was a voice actor on that track, and I hadn't realized at all that Bergs is in fact an incredible meditation teacher.
He led our group meditation, and I felt like I went deeper into stillness than ever before. It was quite profound. I have been meditating pretty much daily for around seven years, and I had been wondering if I was cheating or kind of missing the point by always using the Insight Timer meditation app and pressing play on a wide variety of guided meditations.
I did try last year, To sit in silence with no guidance and I didn't get very far at all. But there was a quality to Berg's guidance that got me to go very deep very quickly. So after experiencing Berg's in the TP, and he's a really lovely guy by the way, without ego, I think I, listening to that track, I just kind of thought, because of the way it's produced, I sort of thought that he might be this kind of maybe egoic guy, but he's just not at all.
Um, he didn't want his photo taken. He, he was. Here in Ibiza, because he was about to lead a silent retreat and someone had invited him to our tipi gathering and he just popped in and then he left without a fuss. But I went on his website, it's called the art of meditation. And I found out that he spent many years studying and practicing meditation in Asia under the guidance of some of the world's greatest living masters.
He has a very special way of teaching the practices he's learned in a really easy way with light humor and with good nature. And I started doing his guided meditations in my favorite Insight Timer meditation app. And he's got some talks there too. I was listening to those and I discovered the Berg's podcast.
Each episode is a simple recording of him speaking at one of his retreats. It's like being back in the teepee with him again. I just love them. And I feel that soft, calm, gentle nature of his washing over me. And I feel more calm and gentle within myself. And this carries on throughout my whole day. So this week, https: www.
insighttimer.
com I chose level one, there's also a level zero if you've never meditated before. And I'm now starting my days with his meditations and this course to get me to not use my mind at all for 20 minutes. We're starting with 20 minutes and apparently we're going to be building up I think to 40. Um, but he's got this, this approach and you know, it's, it's, it's about being, not being in your mind, but you know, not falling asleep, not going into a kind of trance.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To be aware, um, and not lightly tossing thoughts around in the mind. That's an expression he uses, which I can relate to where you're just not really latching on to any thoughts, but you're just kind of lightly tossing thoughts around and you don't get kind of prone to that. Um, but he says that, um, that guided.
visual meditations, activate your mind, because you have to visualize what's being said. And he is all about being in a state of simply being without thinking or visualizing. It's a very different state of peace, and I can see how getting really skilled at this will benefit the whole of my life. I do feel utterly calm and relaxed, but that could be because I've been in Ibiza for three months and especially this last month or so, I've been taking it really easy and my retreat was so amazing and all that.
So it's going to be interesting to see if I'm just feeling this way because of my circumstances. Um, the course is drip fed every week for the next couple of months and I think I finish early January. So I will report back on how it's all going even after I'm back to my normal life in Madrid. But back to this theme of acceptance, I'd like to share a story with you that I heard Berg share on his podcast.
It's called Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows? And you can hear him tell the story on his podcast, but I don't want you to have to stop this one, find that one, and then come back here again. So I am going to tell the story myself, and I hope that I do it justice. It's an old fable, and maybe you've heard it before in your lifetime.
I listened to Berg's tell it, and the very same day that I listened to it, something happened with my younger son that I want to share with you afterwards. to really prove the moral of this story. So the story goes like this. There was an old man, he was a woodcutter, and every day he and his old horse would head off into the woods to go and collect wood, bring it back to the village, and sell the wood to the villagers.
Well, one day he and his horse set off into the woods as usual, But something startled the horse and it bolted off, disappeared. The old man spent all afternoon calling, looking for the horse. And finally, you know, he had to just head back into town without any wood, without any horse. And when he arrived, all the villagers ran out and said, Oh man, oh man, what, what's happened?
Where, where's the wood and, and, and where's your horse? And he told them about what happened and they said, Oh, oh man, what bad luck. Your only horse and, and, and he's run off. What bad, bad luck. And the old man said, Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows? And he headed off to his house and he went to bed. When he woke up the next morning, looked out the window, he couldn't believe his eyes.
Not only had his old horse found his way back, he'd returned. But he brought with him three young stallions, these wild stallions that had kind of followed this horse back. Suddenly he went from having one old horse to four horses. He woke his son up and said, son, son, look, look, now you can come with me into the woods.
We can bring back lots of wood. And as he and his son walked through the village to head out with these four horses into the woods, the villagers all ran out, said, oh man, oh man, what good luck. Now you've got four horses and your son can help you. What good luck! And the old man said, Good luck? Bad luck?
Who knows? And he and his son and the horses headed off into the woods. Well, that was going really well for quite some time. They were collecting more wood than ever. Coming back into the village, selling all this wood. Things were going really, really well. Until one day, when his son tripped over a log, and broke his leg badly, and the old man had to carry him back into town.
It wasn't easy. Oh, he got to town. And the villagers all ran out and said, What happened? What happened? He said, Yeah, my son, it looks like he's broken his leg really badly. I'm gonna have to take him to the doctor. And they all said, Oh, what bad, bad luck. You know, your son's finally able to help you and you got the horrors of, Oh, now this happens.
What bad luck. And the old man said, Bad luck? Good luck. Who knows? He took his son to the doctor and sure enough, the leg was badly broken. Had to put it into a plaster cast and he was told, You're going to have to, Look after your son, you know. You're not going to be able to go off into the woods every day.
Your son's going to need your help every day until this heals, and it could be quite some time. Well, a few days later, a war broke out in the neighboring counties, and they came through to recruit all the young men. They all had to go off to war. When they got to the old man's house, Well, they took one look at his son.
He wasn't going anywhere. He clearly wasn't going to be going to war and they had to move on. And the villagers all came around and said, oh man, oh man, oh, what good luck. Your son didn't get drafted. He doesn't have to go off to war. Such good luck. And the old man said, good luck, bad luck. Who knows?
And this timeless story teaches us that luck can be subjective. Bad luck can be good luck, and vice versa. Another lesson is that all circumstances are a matter of perspective. Acceptance is one of life's greatest lessons. Rather than creating drama around a situation that is either good luck or bad luck, we learn to practice detachment and acceptance.
Just accepting life as it is. Why waste energy on what could have been or should have been? Simply ask, what is the next best step? So I had just heard Berg share this story when I got a call from my 21 year old son Marco, who has just started his final year at Manchester University. He had got back home to his apartment after classes that Friday, only to find that his entire building had been condemned as a fire hazard.
There were police and fire trucks there, notices slapped on the building declaring it uninhabitable. The cladding on this very modern looking building could go up in flames, like Grenfell Tower. He and his flatmate and all the hundreds of residents of this building were told they could only enter to go in, pack a bag, and leave.
He said there was a single mother there with her kids crying, another couple with a newborn baby. He said he'd update me and he left to go and pack a bag and figure out where they'd be going. My husband had also heard the news and he texted me from Madrid. His actual text said, Such bad luck for Marco.
He actually used those words. And I sent him a simple text message back. Just said, Good luck. Bad luck. Who knows? He didn't respond. But a couple hours later, Marco sent us a video in our group chat. He'd somehow negotiated his way into being put up at the Hilton Hotel. He and his roommate each with their own plush room.
I don't know. flat screen tv, a desk with views over Manchester city centre, a big comfy bed with daily cleaning, breakfast buffet included, and meal vouchers for dinners. They'd be put up there for about 10 nights I think it was, I can't remember now, until new accommodation would be found for them. Wow, what good luck I hear you say!
Good luck, bad luck, who knows? The following evening, he sent us another video. This time it was he and other hotel guests. They all appeared to be scrambling down the back staircase of this hotel with fire alarms sounding in the background. There was an actual fire at their hotel, and they had to evacuate quickly.
Good luck, bad luck, who knows? The following day, back up in their rooms, he and his roommate were They were really processing a lot. Where would they be rehoused? They just invested all their savings on buying desks and chairs, everything for their kitchen. They bought decorations to make this feel like their home for their final year of university.
Now they didn't know what was going on. They weren't allowed back in the building. All that stuff was just left in there. They weren't telling anybody what was going on. So much uncertainty. And then he went into anger. How had they just been allowed to sign a one year rental contract on an apartment, in a building, never being warned there was an ongoing court case over the danger of it all catching fire?
Marco was furious. So much so that he was even in the news the following Monday. He stood up at a big meeting at the fire station with all the fire chiefs and he shouted at the bigwigs at the Wallace estates and told them they should be ashamed of themselves. It's actually in the papers and everything, you'll see a student telling them they should be ashamed of themselves.
If you live in the UK, maybe you even heard it. Yeah, Marco got very caught up in his emotions, spiraling downward over the injustice and unfairness of it all. And every time that we spoke, I listened with my heart because life doesn't always feel fair. And I reflected on my life when I was a university student, and I was living with Amy, and on a shoestring budget we made a really cute apartment for ourselves that we loved.
And it was our sanctuary for when we returned home from uni every day. We had our friends around all the time and as, as much as being put up in the Hilton would have been fun for a few days, I, I knew we'd have wanted it to be in our own place with our own stuff and a kitchen to cook in. And, and that's what Mark would keep saying, you know, I just, you're saying I'm lucky cause I'm in the Hilton, but I just wanted to be in the Hilton.
In the apartment that we just made for ourselves and he just really, you know, it was fighting against reality. The reality was that that isn't going to happen. He's not going to be allowed to move back in there. The rest of this whole year, this whole school year, he's going to have to find somewhere else.
And, you know, I had empathy, but I didn't allow his emotions to cause me to get caught up in, in all the, just all the distress of it. I knew he'd handle it. I knew it was one of those life experiences. He didn't need me swooping in and trying to save the day. And he didn't need me feeling stressed about it as well.
He and everyone in their situation, the last thing they all need is just more stress added on. So I just poured love at the situation and. I used reflective listening with him, like I learned way back from my parenting skills classes with the parent practice when he was three years old. Man, those parenting skills lessons, they, they pay off years and years and years later.
As a matter of fact, I learned the not rescuing from the parent practice from that course I did. It was all about, you know, don't rescue your kids if they forget their lunchbox at home or they forget their homework at home. I remember this really impacting me and me thinking, you know what, we can always swoop in, bring the lunchbox up, bring the homework up, bring the project that they left home, you know, but how is that helping them in the long run, you know?
I remember my eldest son telling me that when he was 18 years old in his final year of school, he couldn't believe that there were still his classmates. who were forgetting like a computer drive like something that they needed something really important that they needed at home and the mother was coming up and bringing it for them and he just shook his head he was like wow because the thing is when you don't rescue your kids over stuff like that when they're little they learn that they need to figure things out that they need to remember and so yeah there you go and yeah when i spoke to marco yesterday things are still up in the air more obstacles have appeared but he's calmer And I'm very proud of how proactive he's been in taking charge of the situation and taking steps and doing all that he can do each day amongst his university studies.
I mean, it's a lot, but maybe they'll be rehoused into something even better than before. Or how about this? What if they hadn't been forced out? And that building had caught on fire. What if all of this was divine protection from catastrophe? What if this whole situation is actually good luck? You know, it's about perspective.
Maybe this is good luck. You know, if that would have happened, we would have said, oh my goodness, if only they had shut the building down and condemned it and moved everybody out before this happened, that would have been good luck, right? Good luck, bad luck, who knows? I'm sharing this story with you in case you need to hear it today, or in case you want to bank it for when you do.
Dear listener, relax your forehead. Take a long, slow, deep breath in and let it all out with a sigh. Think back to a time when something happened in your life that felt terrible at the time, but later it turned out to be for the best. Maybe a bad breakup that felt so awful, but if that hadn't happened, you'd still be with that person instead of living the life you have now.
Or missing out on a job, or a home you really wanted and you felt devastated not to get, but that wouldn't have allowed something better to present itself? Could be anything, really. Take a little pause to reflect.
Was it good luck, or bad luck, or neither? It just was. Luck. Is there any such thing as luck? Maybe luck is just something we make up after things have happened. What if life is always unfolding exactly as it's meant to be, and when we don't fight against reality, and we accept each moment as it comes, yeah, that's what I've come to believe.
for listening to the project me podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm super grateful for a review and please subscribe in your favorite podcast listening app. My new website is live. If you haven't seen it yet, it's kellypietrangeli. com I'll put a link to that in the show notes. Come and join my newsletter list, explore my latest offerings, soul plan readings, intuitive tarot sessions, my high vibe journey program, soul mentoring.
And, if you'd like to see a picture and hear a video I took of Berg's in the teepee here in Ibiza, my Instagram is kellyprojectme. Until next time, open your mind, open your heart, and stay curious. We all need some space in our lives for the magical and unknown.