Papa was a brilliant storyteller.

Most of his stories had a simple plot, but they never ended when the story did. Once he had finished, he would invariably ask me a few questions:

• What did you like about the story?
• What did you learn from it?
• And, most importantly, how would you apply what you had learnt?

While I could probably write an entire book about the lessons I learnt through Papa's stories, there is one I heard when I was about ten years old that has stayed with me for decades. And its message is as relevant today as it was then.

Here it goes…

Once upon a time, there was a man who seemed to have bad luck chasing him all the time. Everything he touched seemed to go awry.

One day, feeling particularly despondent, he decided that he had had enough and would end his life by jumping into a river. He waited until late at night, when his family was asleep, and made his way to the river.

But when he reached the bank, his mind wavered. Instead of jumping in, he sat down and began looking back at his life. As he thought about each of the big debacles he had faced, he picked up a pebble and threw it into the river. One after another, the pebbles disappeared into the dark water.

Soon, the sky began to lighten. As the first rays of sunlight appeared, he noticed a velvet pouch lying beside him.

He picked it up and suddenly realised that the “pebbles” he had been throwing into the river were not pebbles at all - they were diamonds!

He looked inside the pouch - two diamonds were still there…In that moment, he realised that perhaps his life was not as hopeless as he had believed. He still had something of immense value in his hands.

He decided that this was his turning point. Instead of continuing to focus on everything that had gone wrong, he would use what he had now and change the way he lived his life.

As a ten-year-old, I thought the story was about luck but as I grew older, I realised it was really about how we see life—and what we do with the opportunities that come our way. If I were to summarise the lessons today, this is what they would be:

Lesson 1: Look for the Diamonds

Opportunities don't always arrive looking like opportunities.

Sometimes they are hidden inside ordinary situations. Sometimes they come disguised as setbacks. And sometimes, like the diamonds in the story, we may not even recognise their value until much later.

If we are constantly looking for what is going wrong, we can easily miss what is going right.

Lesson 2: Don't Let Your Mind Decide the Outcome

When we convince ourselves that something will fail, we stop looking for possibilities.

A negative mindset can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We stop trying, stop experimenting and stop noticing alternatives—and then conclude that we were simply unlucky.

Changing our perspective doesn't magically change the situation. But it can change what we notice, what we attempt and do next.

Lesson 3: Don't Blame Luck for What You Haven't Tried to Change

It is tempting to blame circumstances when things don't work out.

But sometimes the problem is not bad luck. It is that we often continue doing the same things but expect different results.

We may need to change our approach, learn something new, ask for help or simply make the effort to notice the opportunities that are already around us.

Lesson 4: When the Chips Are Down, Keep Looking

Perhaps the most powerful part of the story is that the man still had two diamonds left.

He had already thrown many away without knowing their worth. But he had not lost everything. That gave him another chance.

I think what Papa was really teaching me through this simple story were crucial life lessons:

1.     Life can sometimes feel as though all the doors have closed. But as long as we remain open to possibilities, there may still be a door we haven't noticed—or a diamond we haven't yet recognised. The goal, therefore, is not to wait for luck. It is to stay alert enough to recognise it when it appears.

2.     Life will not always go the way we want it to. There will be setbacks, disappointments and periods when we may genuinely feel unlucky. But we still have a choice. We can keep counting the pebbles we have thrown away—or look for the diamonds that remain.