If I had played by the rules, listened to the oddsmakers and given up when everyone said I was going to lose, I would not be where I am right now.

If I had listened to all the people who said that there was no way I would make it because of my personality or my failures and faults and mistakes, I would be face down in a gutter, or face up in a casket.

But I am not.

Despite the fact that the odds have always been against me, I have always found a way.

Despite the frequent hardship that I made out of my life growing up and the disaster that occured as a consequence, I always found a way to be the person I wanted to be and to get the things out of life that I wanted to get.

No matter what the odds were.

The force and pain and loss and viciousness sticked with me for a long time and it changed the odds in everything I did. I carry the weight of a fucked up past everywhere I go.

A hard life brought me strength of character and recognition to have gotten as far as I did, despite the odds against me. It is a badge of honor.

There were a lot of people who were trying to get between me and my dreams. My friends. My teachers. My family. Random strangers.

A lot of people have been telling me that whatever I was going for in life at that moment is not within my reach. Whatever I wanted out of life is not for me because I got dealt a shit hand.

Well lucky no one got to decide where I placed my bets in life and I had the opportunity to bet on myself every time – no matter what my cards were or what the odds were.

Those people who are trying to convince you that you are going to fail have already folded their hands and are not in the game anymore, so stop listening to their advice and listen to some advice from a gambler who is still playing the shitty cards he was dealt and occasionally winning a hand or two.

People like me are not expected to succeed. People who come from troubled pasts, who have failed so often and fucked up their life so many times. I was not expected to succeed.

Because people see the messes I was given, or have made in my life, and they think that no one can come back from that because they can not imagine coming back from it.

Well, some people can come back from it. Those of us who have always been counted out.

Those of us who are used to having our backs against the wall and nowhere else to go but forward.

Those of us who do not care what the odds are, as long as we are in the game.

Those of us that wear our scars like badges and who have never turned away from the occasionally dirty, disgusting work of living.

People like us can take a mistake, can take a beating, can take anything that comes into our lives and turn it to our favor.

And because of that, I am going to buck the odds every time and go for whatever I want in life. I am going to ignore the doubters and the haters and the naysayers.

And I am going to prove to everyone that has ever waited for me to fail, including myself, that even with the odds against me, there is always a chance. And I will bet on myself and take that chance every time.

Win or lose, at least I played my hand.

Luck is manufactured. I generated it for myself. You are so quick to say you can not succeed because you have no luck. You say that so-and-so got to where they are because they got lucky.

They were born at the right time, in the right place, to the right people. They had all the chances and I had none. That is bullshit.

Yes, luck is mostly about being in the right place at the right time with the right people. But that means consistently being in the right place at the right time with the right people.

So look around your life right now. Are you in the right place? Is this the right time? Are you with the right people?