Portuguese Bean Soup - actually a stew - is a New Years Eve staple here in Hawaii, served to represent good luck for the coming year.

This is a recipe of sorts but not for a dish. It is actually about my brother Jason who, as a kid growing up, had the most incredible luck of any human being that I have ever met. It’s about the life ingredients that created the stew that is him. (There is a recipe at the end for Portuguese Bean Soup in case this picture gets your mouth watering).

Before I jump in, I would like to say that luck, as I have come to understand it, is really just about being a law of attraction, manifesting ninja. Attracting positive experiences like an super magnet. Having mastered the art of thinking and emotion, you can bring about whatever it is in your life that you want. How amazing is it that I know of a kid who figured this out? And how amazing is it that that kid was my own brother? Very.

For the majority of my childhood and most of my early twenties, I thought my brother must have been dipped in some divine, ectoplasmic, lucky sauce at birth or something. Some of the things I witnessed can only be described as astounding. I wasn’t the only one that thought like this. There were countless times that my mom and I stood, mouths agape, after witnessing yet another instance of Jay (his nickname) fell into a waist-high pile of proverbial manure and came out smelling something like the rose garden in Golden Gate Park (an analogy that became a staple phrase at home).

San Francisco's Golden Gate Park Rose Garden

He would constantly find money, sometimes one hundred dollar bills, gold watches, or run into just the right adult to help him.  More times than not, he would come up with some hair-brained scheme that would place him in imminent danger and not only survive, but do so unscathed and looking like a perfect little angel on the other end.

How could it be that one person, particularly a kid, had such an incredible luck? (I rhetorically asked this question in my mind so many times).

All the elements that created him were the equivalent of the perfect pot of stew accidentally coming out of the kitchen of a wing-it minded chef. To actually understand this perfect luck stew, you need to know a little bit more about his (and my) childhood.

His (our) Family

One of the ingredients in this luck stew of his, came from his birth order. Two years younger than me and my only other sibling, he developed the people-pleasing habit that I see in so many youngest-of children. Birth order researchers have reported that:

First borns score higher on conservatism, conscientiousness and achievement orientation. Later borns score higher on rebelliousness, openness, and agreeableness.

While this might not always be the case for everyone, it is certainly was for us.

Being a people-pleaser, he had the understanding of what it takes to really touch others hearts. It’s not just the act of people-pleasing, but how you present yourself when you do it. With a smile and an attitude that says “I am happy to please you and don’t expect anything in return! In fact – that thought is nowhere in my mind.”  And the only way I know to do that is to really mean it.

If you don’t already know, having this purely intentioned mind set while bringing happiness to others is the embodiment of the mental attitude required for creating miracles in your life via the law of attraction. The universe works like a mirror. Whatever it is that you are doing and feeling is what the universe will mirror back to you. So if you are happily, selflessly giving, the universe will bring like minded people to you or,  mirror them back to you. You probably already know this even if don’t understand much about the law of attraction. If you are genuinely kind to people, they will be genuinely kind back. But the miracles start happening when people you have never even met, come into your life and bless you with their amazing selflessness. It’s truly awe inspiring. And selfless giving is the highest and most noble thing we can do as human beings.

Back to the family. Another ingredient is the bit of datum that we were born into a family that, because of old traditions, unconsciously revered boys over girls (lucky me…). I managed to arrange my mind in such a way that I wouldn’t be jealous by figuring out how to ride on his coat tails. Either way, this very fact was an important ingredient in the making of this lucky stew of a human being. Being born into this particular family tradition, he couldn’t help but install some degree of luckiness into his self image.

When you are brought into this family mind set, life seems to say to you, “No matter how bad you are, we like you anyway because you are a boy.” or, maybe more succinctly, “Any transgression that you commit will be chalked up to the fact that you possess certain body parts that make you act that way and that’s okay with us, we understand”.  Dependent on the personality involved, this can either become the recipe for a narcissist or the luckiest person you have ever met.  Thank goodness he turned out to be the latter.

The narcissist will think, “I am capable of doing no wrong, therefore the world must revolve around me”.

But, because of his personality, he took it as “I can get anything I want, therefore I must be lucky.” Which brings me to the base ingredient of the stew…

Personality (or, the inborn ingredient)

My brother is one of the few people in the world that whose thinking I do not analyze, so I am unable to give you examples of his thoughts to illustrate his personality type. What I can offer up is some examples of things he has done that will clarify this particular luck stew framework ingredient.

No matter his faults, I know that I can trust him completely and I’m not sure that everyone has someone that they can say that about so, I feel pretty lucky in that regard. That trust is a direct result of his loyalty as a friend. And not just to me. Being that I was very shy growing up and subject to bulllying, he took it upon himself to be my bodyguard. It didn’t matter how mad we were at each other, it all fell to the way side and was completely forgotten the minute someone accosted me.

Loyalty is really faith. Faith is basically a way of saying “I don’t care who you are or what you do, I believe in you”. The law of the universe say, if you believe it, then it is true for you. And, the more strongly you believe in something, the more quickly it attracts. So being loyal not only attracts loyal people, it is also a way of living a faithful life style.

Beside loyalty, one of the things he has always done is randomly give complements to complete strangers (which is now coined in the phrase “random acts of kindness”). In particular, little old ladies. I can remember him doing this as early as seven years old. I recall once when we were walking down the street and coming towards us was a little, old, gray haired grandma.  As she passed he said “Hello, beautiful” and kept walking.  And he said it like he meant it, sly grin and all. He would do this all the time and always turn to me afterwards and say “making little old ladies happy”, smile and just keep right on walking. I asked him once why he did that. He answered “Why not?” I think he actually doesn’t give it much thought – if any. He is more or less reacting with his people-pleasing instinct.

I believe that this is more of an inborn trait, which was cultivated by the birth order thingy and, by mom. She taught us to help each other out and give selflessly to each other. I am ashamed to admit that I deviated from this thinking as an adult for my own reasons, but am happy to report that I have now chosen to recall that mind set. But he never deviated from it much.

He always gave up his seat on the bus to the elderly. Has a huge heart for animals. Loves kids (mostly because he never really grew up and is still very much a kid at heart). Don’t get me wrong, the rebellious part from the quote above is always right there under the surface. Dudley Do-Right with an attitude.

The deeds do come from the straight-up kindness of his heart and that is all part of the personality package delivered to him at birth.

The last personality trait that always confounded me was the way he went about lying. Before you judge, we all do it. Especially kids to their parents. What was unique about the way he did it was, he would absolutely convinced himself that his lie was the truth so that when questioned by Mom, it would sound truthful. And it did. At a very young age (maybe six or seven) he figured out that in order to sound believable you had to believe it yourself. If you are wondering if anything manifested out of those greatest-whoppers-ever-told, I would have to tell you “nothing” and it is because he was focusing on an event as if it had already passed and he wasn’t feeling bad about lying because he had convinced himself that it was the truth.

This was where he developed the habit of creating his life exactly how he wanted it. By doing this, he had trained his mind to focus on what he wanted as if he already had it. This was the meat of his luck stew. The main ingredient, if you will. I used to think that he suffered from mild psychosis for doing this but boy, did I miss the boat on that one. As an adult, I think he grew out of this habit to some degree only because he doesn’t seem to enjoy the same magnitude of luck he once had as a kid.

While some of you might thing this is crazy, it is actually one of the keys to manifesting. Believing that you already possess whatever it is that you want is really the secret to making attraction work for you. My brother just happened to explore this concept for a less than honorable reason.

Circumstance

While this final ingredient called circumstances is certainly a part of the whole luck stew, its role is more of a spice. What I mean is that it didn’t really provide the meat, or sustenance of his luck, only served to enhance to it.

We spent our formative years without a father. There was also a great deal of moving and changing schools. Both of these things created a tight unit between the three of use, Mom, Jay and I. This in turn created part of the loyalty that we both know and understand.

The moving around was the catalyst for him to become more extroverted (it had the opposite effect on me). He could make friends with anyone as soon as we set up camp at our newest “home”. In order to be able to do this, he incorporated a degree of non-judgmentalism into his thought process. After all, you can’t go around making lots of friends if you are constantly judging them. Why this added to his luck is that judgment serves as a form of separation. If you can become savvy enough to think of a way around it, you remove a great deal of negativity from your mind. He has said to me many a time when I was making a comment about someone, “That’s just the way he/she is.” No judgment. What a gift.

Again, if you know anything about the law of attraction, you know that negative thoughts attract negative experiences and positive thoughts attract positive experiences. So the more you can figure out how to rid your mind of harsh judgment, the better off you are.

The Recipe for Luck

So, to sum up my brother. This ingredient list for his particular version of luck stew is:

Portuguese Bean Soup

2-3 medium sized smoked ham hocks or ham shanks
1 pound Portuguese sausage, diced
1 medium sized Maui onion*, coarsely chopped
2 medium sized potatoes, cubed
1 cup diced carrots
1 cup diced celery
4 cups coarsely chopped cabbage
2 15-ounce cans kidney beans with liquid**
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 bunch cilantro (Chinese parsley), coarsely chopped
a handful of black peppercorns
3-4 dried bay leaves

*May substitute any sweet onion (i.e. Vidalia) that’s available.

**May substitute 1 pound dry beans soaked overnight.

***All amounts are approximate. You may want to add more/less of any ingredient depending on your own personal likes/dislikes. The amounts listed above are those that I use.

In large stock pot, combine ham hocks, Maui onion, cilantro, garlic, black peppercorns and bay leaves.

Add just enough water to cover the ham hocks completely. Bring water to a boil, then lower to simmer. Simmer covered for about 2 hours. This slow cooking is what gives the soup it’s rich flavor.

Skim any fat. Remove the ham hocks and de-bone, dice and set aside.

To the pot, add tomato paste, diced tomatoes, kidney beans, carrots, celery, potatoes and cabbage. Simmer on low heat for about 20 minutes. Add in diced ham hocks and Portuguese sausage. Continue to simmer until cooked through (about 40 minutes).

Serve topped with fresh chopped cilantro and cracked black pepper.

Thanks to OneKineGrindz.com for the recipe.

If you’re interested in the theory of why this soup-stew is considered good luck, you can check out this article to find out more.