Oda Nobunaga was a legenday warlord, who among other epics is credited with the bloody unification of medieval Japan.
It is said that Oda Nobunaga goes with his small army to face another feudal lord who had a much larger army.
His vassals were demoralized.
Near the place where the battle was to be settled, a Shinto temple was erected. It was a temple very similar to that of Delphi in Ancient Greece, which had the ability to predict divine favors: people came there to pray to the gods and ask for their grace. When people left the sanctuary, it was customary to toss a coin into the air; if head came out, the favors that had been requested were fulfilled.
Oda Nobunaga went to the temple and begged help from the gods to be favorable to his army, despite being less numerous than his rival. When he left the temple, he threw the coin and left head.
Their emboldened warriors rushed to the battle and won. When the fight was over, a lieutenant went to Oda Nabunaga and said: "We are in the hands of fate, we can do nothing against what the gods decide", to which Nobunaga replied: "How right you are, my friend", and showed him the coin: he had two heads.
Source: Ancient Japanese Legend.
If Oda Nobunaga were left his luck at the hands of chance, and would have used a common currency when leave the temple, his army was going to be predisposition of fate, and not him, being able in this case, by the simple position of a coin, to lose the battle and all his army.
However, Nobunaga teaches us a magnificent lesson that can be applied at every moment of our lives, man makes his luck, his fate and his destiny, and is he the only responsible for the results obtained. The will of a person is the only thing that can write his future, because we are architects of our results.
Think that whatever the conditions you are in today, you are the only one responsible for that, without blaming anyone, in the good and the bad, because you have allowed yourself to be in that position. In the same way, you are the only person who can get you out of there, because you are only a slave to your will, and you have the ability to forge your own destiny.
In the most difficult times there are only two things a person can do; mourn for our fate and let misfortunes fill our lives, or accept adversity and try to change our destiny with our will, as Nobunaga with a lower army did. We will not fight a battle against a larger army, but we will try to change our conditions to make them favorable, modifying our environment, and in short, writing our destiny.
The way in which a person takes the reins of his destiny is more determinant than the same destiny