Have you learned to face the music? Karma has no room for emotions. Karma just wants to teach you lessons. All kinds of lessons. But you have to be willing to listen and to put the lessons into practice.

My analogy for this is going to be season 15, the final season of AMERICAN IDOL. I love that show. More specifically, I admire the harmony among and uplifting impact left on the audience by the three judges: Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr.

But it is the contestants of the last American Idol on whom I wish to point the spotlight. Some people appear before the judges before investing the time, effort, talent, pain, and commitment it normally takes to be a star. They must feel entitled, though noticeably under-qualified. Those people were deceiving themselves. Perhaps, as bad, their family members were deceiving them by encouraging them forward without admitting to the absurdity of their lack of qualifications.

Those who go forward are the ones who have already faced the music, so to say. They have already been brutally self-critical or had the courage to stand before talented others who were honest in their assessments. They subjected themselves to the law of Cause and Effect, so, where they lacked practice or skill they spent the tens-of-thousands of hours to acquire it.  These go-forwards, understood Karma. They found the right path and they learned from it before Karma had to pounce on them in embarrassingly ways.  They didn’t need Karma’s helping hand. They did it themselves.

These people knew they had to work very, very hard and they did. As the saying goes, they got what they deserved. They reaped what they sowed. They were truthful to themselves and unemotional about their needs in training and skill preparation.

Rule:  learn to face the music. Be honest and truthful to yourself and to others.