Category Archives: Lucky

Are You Waiting For Luck?

Are You Waiting To Get Lucky?

I saw this movie the other night about King Arthur.

This is one common story in Western Culture.

In this particular story, Sir Lancelot had to run this huge obstacle course.

It was for some carnival they were setting up.

In order to get through it, he needed strength, flexibility, balance and a lot of luck.

Kind of a “foreshadowing” event of what he’d need to navigate the deeper politics of the movie.

Most successful people, if they’re truly honest, will admit that “luck” plays a HUGE role in how they did what they did.

Of course, “luck” is one of those things that we all think we know, but it’s pretty hard to agree on the definition.

Certainly if you’re NOT lucky, that makes a ready excuse for not being successful.

And even if you ARE successful, part of you may think it will be snatched away, so if you attribute at least part of it to “luck” then you won’t feel so bad in the “rags” part of your “rags to riches to rags” story.

But if you REALLY want to reverse engineer success, a fantastic book is “The Millionaire Next Door.”

Sure, these guys got “lucky,” at least sometimes. But part of being lucky means to always be on the lookout for opportunities, and always being ready to take advantage of them.

And most of those guys in that book realized that success is a long, consistent effort more than anything else.

If you want to do ANYTHING very, very well, then you better be willing to put in the consistent practice.

Instead of asking yourself, “what can I do to be successful,” a better question should be, “what kinds of things should I do on a daily basis to slowly BUILD my success?”

Of course, few people think of success this way.

They tend to think in terms of winning the lottery, or “meeting” the right person.

But if all you did were a few mental exercises every day, ten minutes per day, you’d soon have skills most people don’t know exist.

The heart of nearly all success is the ability to communicate effectively.

Not just to communicate YOUR ideas, but to carefully elicit the ideas of others.

Because when you get YOUR ideas working along with the ideas of others, THAT’S when you start to build MASSIVE success.

Get Started:

Interpersonal Resonance

See Through The Noise

See Through The Noise

Don’t Be Blindsided

There’s a concept in investing called a “Black Swan.”

It basically means a completely unforeseen event that sets of a chain reaction.

A chain reaction that sends markets plummeting, and the economy reeling.

It’s also used to describe things that set off revolutions, or great wars. Like the assassination that allegedly started WWI.

One small, seemingly unrelated event that sets of a huge chain reaction that literally changes the world.

Of course, looking back in retrospect (as hindsight is ALWAYS 20-20) it seems pretty obvious. We usually ask, “Why didn’t they know what was happening?”

For example, during the financial crisis of 2008, nobody really knew what was happening at the time. But a few years later, it was pretty clear. So much that everybody asks, “What were they thinking?”

This doesn’t only apply to negative things.

They happen EXACTLY the same way with positive things.

Looking from the outside in, it seems that one “lucky” event made somebody rich, or led them to meet the right person at the right time.

An those who are struggling tend to look at those “lucky” people and say, “How come that never happens to me?”

But if you look closely, you’ll see that “lucky” people are living on the same planet as the rest of us.

Moving through the same world we are moving through. Meeting the same people we are meeting. Living within the same 24 hours every day that we are living through.

It’s just that they see things a little differently. They see opportunity where others see noise. They see people as potential answers to their prayers, rather than people to simply obstacles to not bump into.

They look at the world with curiosity, wonder and positive expectation, instead of worry and fear.

They say that luck is merely preparation meeting opportunity.

But when you “prepare” your mind, opportunity is suddenly EVERYWHERE.

And it’s waiting to meet you.

As the famous saying goes, when you see a fork in the road, take it.

Most people want to be told which path is better.

Most people want to be reassured they are doing the right thing.

Most people want to see somebody else go first, so they know it’s safe.

But most people rarely get lucky.

How about you?

When you see that fork in the road (which happens MANY times per day), do you take it?

Or do you hesitate?

Fortune favors the brave.

Simply shift your mind, and you’ll see opportunities.

Do You Prefer Checkers Or Chess?

How To Think A Few Moves Ahead

Ditch The Caveman Brain

There’s an old joke whenever two politicians get together.

This is usually when one guy is thought to be “smart” while the other is thought to be “stupid.”

Of course, we all think our guy is smart, and the “other people’s guy” is stupid.

This can apply to any two politicians, from any point in time.

Anyhow, the way the joke goes is “guy A is playing chess, while guy B is playing checkers.”

Meaning one guy is only thinking in the short term, while the other guy is thinking many, many moves ahead.

Being able to plan far out into the future is a very good trait to have. This requires that you not think of ONLY what’s in it for you now, but what might happen tomorrow or a week or even a month from now.

The problem is our instincts are designed to look only a few moments into the future.

It’s been said that “being civilized” simply means planning on a more distant future, rather than relying on our instincts, which can only think of the future right in front of our faces.

This isn’t easy, it isn’t natural and it definitely takes practice.

This is thinking behind Benjamin Franklin’s famous statement, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”

Our instincts our telling us to stay up late and sleep in. But if we can overcome our instincts with conscious planning, (sleeping and waking up early) we’ll be much more likely to make something of ourselves.

Here’s another way of looking at it.

If you’re only focused on the near term future, you have a kind of tunnel vision. But if you are focused FAR out into the future, you can see a lot more things. A lot more paths. A lot more opportunities. A lot more options that you might have otherwise missed.

But here’s the cool thing.

Part of you is ALWAYS looking WAY out in the future. That super genius part of you that operates BELOW your conscious  awareness. That part of you that is ALWAYS playing a VERY LONG RANGE game of chess, while our conscious minds are always playing checkers.

Unfortunately, that super genius part of us can ONLY speak to us in intuition. Feelings. A gut level hunch that tells us we should maybe choose option B when our short term checkers brain is telling us option A is best.

When you tune into this part of you, magic will happen.