Miracle is defined in dictionaries as “…a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences.”

Imagine that you and 2.5 million of your friends get together to play a game of dice. The dice has one trillion sides. What is the probability that you and each of your 2.5 million friends roll the dice and come up with the exact same number at the exact same time?

The odds are astronomical, improbable, and extraordinary. A miracle, if you will.

Those odds are also the odds of you. Yes, you. Scientists have estimated that this is the approximate probability of you ever being conceived and born in the first place. I included the infographic below for your reference and amazement.

To simplify (and ignoring the extreme anthropological and sociological chances of your biological parents – and their parents, parents, parents, parents… meeting and reproducing on a planet) you had about a one in 400 quadrillion chance of just being biologically conceived.

Regardless of what situation you were born into, who you are, where you live, what you do, or how you are feeling about yourself today you literally are an extraordinary miracle.

This is not “cheesy” or “sentimentalist” – this is the truth.

It is astonishing how many human beings overlook this transforming fact. The external search for blog posts, degrees, jobs, quotes, TED Talks, and others for motivation sometimes leaves us blind to the most compelling motivation of all: You woke up today and breathed oxygen on a planet.

Think about how accomplished you feel when you achieve something in which the odds are stacked against you. Yet many of us wake up every Monday with a collective sigh, forgetting the most unbelievable odds you’ve overcome just by waking up in the first place.

What Happens When You Believe You’re a Miracle

Now, I am not saying it’s enough just to wake up and exist – far from it. But believing in our rare prospect of existence should motivate us to capitalize on what we’ve been given – to be good, do good, and find more contentedness. To wake up every day with the energy and drive to work to justify what we’ve been given.

Imagine if everyone believed this and thought about their rare existence daily. Your alarm clock would look a lot differently. Your friends and family would be more cherished. Your workplace or classroom would be special (because the probability of a group of people being together at a specific place and time is about 1 in 400 quadrillion times the number of people there!).

And most important of all, we would all have to justify the fact that WE made the cut. For some reason you are here, right now.

Outside of any external motivator the search for and awakening of this purpose becomes the most central activity you can undertake as a human being.

After all, statisticians would find it hard to justify that you happened by chance. And neither should you.