“A priest and a rabbi walk into a boxing match…”

One of my favorite jokes is about a rabbi who has never been to a boxing match before and his friend, a Catholic priest, offers to take him to one.

As they walk into the auditorium, the priest explains the boxing ring, the “corners” for each fighter, and the rules.

A fighter steps into the ring for the first bout and makes the sign of a cross.

The rabbi asks, “What does that mean?” and the priest says, “Doesn’t mean anything if he can’t fight.”

There are many takeaways in that one story, but for me what stands out is that things outside of us — such as faith, confidence, that others believe in us – matter quite a bit, but we need to take care of the things we can control, too.

I believe when we take action towards a goal, the universe starts responding in a positive way.

Alternatively, if we do nothing, there’s not necessarily a response from the universe.

I’ve noticed, for example, that when friends in business haven’t marketed a product or service in a little while start making some marketing efforts, they’ll get business from somebody they already know who they just haven’t spoken to in a while but who wasn’t one of the targets of that marketing campaign.

Among those friends, we even have a name for that phenomenon: “psychic marketing.”

It’s the idea that when you cast a beam out there to do something, the universe responds in some way.

I’m not sure what you believe about all of this but I hope you’ll entertain the idea anyway: That when you learn a skill, when you’re getting better at something, when you have a goal you want to achieve… that taking some steps towards achieving it, actually doing something, means a lot. Sometimes the universe is waiting to see you’ve made your first move before it responds to help you achieve your goals.