Luck: Four Rules
With St. Patrick's Day last Friday and photos of four-leaf clovers everywhere, it focused my attention on luck. Some people are lucky and others aren't. And, anyway, what is luck? To me luck means good fortune. Things are working out the way you want them to, and even if they don't always, they eventually do. Nevertheless, life is not perfect, and even those who are lucky most of the time are not always lucky.
But generally speaking, how do you become lucky? Here are 4 rules:
Rule #1: Believe you will be lucky. If you don't believe it, how can you be lucky?
Rule #2: Sustain your belief in luck, even when you are not lucky. That's the only way you will eventually get there. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter says in her book Confidence, someone with confidence will win out almost every time over equally talented but insecure people. The same applies to luck.
Rule #3: Play your cards right. When challenges emerge, look broadly at the strategies available to you to resolve problems. Don't just think about them. Confront them. Have the courage to act on the ones that make sense. That is the only way you can end up having the good fortune we call luck.
Rule #4: Say thank you and express your appreciation to those who helped you overcome the challenges you met to correct messy or unfortunate situations. Think of the aftermath and the attitudes toward you afterwards. Then those people may support you again in the future.
I believe you make your own luck. As Gary Player, one of the most successful golfers of all time, said "The harder I practice, the luckier I get."
Technorati Tags: luck
But generally speaking, how do you become lucky? Here are 4 rules:
Rule #1: Believe you will be lucky. If you don't believe it, how can you be lucky?
Rule #2: Sustain your belief in luck, even when you are not lucky. That's the only way you will eventually get there. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter says in her book Confidence, someone with confidence will win out almost every time over equally talented but insecure people. The same applies to luck.
Rule #3: Play your cards right. When challenges emerge, look broadly at the strategies available to you to resolve problems. Don't just think about them. Confront them. Have the courage to act on the ones that make sense. That is the only way you can end up having the good fortune we call luck.
Rule #4: Say thank you and express your appreciation to those who helped you overcome the challenges you met to correct messy or unfortunate situations. Think of the aftermath and the attitudes toward you afterwards. Then those people may support you again in the future.
I believe you make your own luck. As Gary Player, one of the most successful golfers of all time, said "The harder I practice, the luckier I get."
Technorati Tags: luck
posted by Ken Makovsky at 9:12 AM
1 Comments:
Fascinating topic. Luck is not picking the right pony or the right lottery ticket. It is believing in yourself and what you are doing and perservering until good luck finds you. It is not something you can force or control.
I saw Woody Allen's new movie "Matchpoint" and it is coincidentially about how we underestimate good luck in life's equation. Of course, Woody was speaking in a different context (literally, getting away with murder) but the protagonist was determined to make his own good luck despite stumbles along the way.
Especially in the PR business, where you cannot really control or predict outcomes, good luck happens when you act in the best interest of clients and colleagues, and put your own interests aside.
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