Tag Archives: Luck

What’s the Plan?

I was having a drink with a couple of friends the other night. We went to a pretty popular bar downtown. It’s kind of a small “warm up” bar that you go to on the way to someplace else. Or sometimes you just go there and hang out for the whole night, because you can get involved in some pretty decent conversations. It is pretty small, and many nights it fills up, so if you are planning on going to a place like this for the night, it’s best to get there a bit early, otherwise you’ll have to find an interesting experience somewhere else. Which isn’t really hard to do, since you can create an interesting experience pretty much anywhere you go. But this particular evening, we were lucky enough to get a table to sit all three of us. We had planned only to have a maximum of two drinks, as we each had other plans we had to be getting to.

Plans are an interesting thing. You never really know if you are in charge of your plans, or if your plans are in charge of you. And when you involve other people, everyone’s plans can merge together into one super plan that is bigger than everyone. And before you know it, you are all collectively submitting yourselves to some nefarious “plan” that has overtaken all your conscious reason. You begin to make sacrifices in the name of the “plan.” It’s like you voluntarily give up your capacity to think for yourself, and choose your own direction. And even when there isn’t a “plan” to submit your higher intelligence to as an offering in exchange for imagined safety, you pretend there is one anyways.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience. You are with a few friends, sitting there, on a Friday or Saturday evening, or whatever evening is your night to relax. You sit around looking at each other, and keep asking yourselves “So, what’s the plan?” Your lack of a plan keeps you from making the most of your time so that you can enjoy yourself. Sometimes you’ll go out and have a fantastic night, all planned by somebody else. Or sometimes not planned by somebody else. Sometimes events are just random strings of overlapping coincidence, which when strung together seem to serendipitously give you a night of fortuitousness enjoyment. What is the difference between luck and chance?

Of course, when you do make a plan, and it comes off without any major hitches, you feel really good. Because you have given yourself a strong message. You can plan and choose your reality. You can choose to live your life however you want. And if you are really bold, you can ask yourself after your plans have flawlessly come out, “Aw, geeze, why didn’t I plan something even better?” I’m sure you know what that is like, right?

So we sat there in the bar, hanging on to our self imposed two-drink minimum. The place filled rather soon after we luckily got our favorite table. So naturally, we were reluctant to leave our seats. If so many people wanted to sit where we were sitting, our seats must be pretty important right? More important than anything else we could do by going out and creating something new, right? Or maybe not. Maybe we were just fooled that because other people wanted what we had, we thought it must be important. And here we were thinking that we were following our own plans. Funny when that happens.

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Instant Powerful Luck

Have you ever had one of those days where everything just seemed to flow? Everything just happened exactly the right way at exactly the right moment? As if the gods of serendipity spun the wheel of chance  and it landed on YOU, giving you the grace of their attentions for a short while?

How surprised will you be to discover that there really are no gods of serendipity, that everything that happened that day, all those lucky circumstances, were in fact, created by YOU?  And how impressed will you be with yourself when you discover the simple and natural way to cultivate the powers already in your possession so much that others will want to hang around you in hopes of catching just a small sliver of your stray luck?

It’s easy, it’s fun, and it makes you feel really good.  Ready?

Step One.  Train your brain to look for opportunities. How can I use that? What can I learn from this experience, how can I make these learnings my own? Start slow. After every experience, as yourself, “What did I learn from that,” and more importantly, “How can I do better next time?”

Step Two. Have a forward pointing outlook. You want to learn from your past, not wallow in it. There is a reason your front windshield a car is about hundred times bigger than the rearview mirror. Looking back is for information only. For learnings. Looking forward is for choice. Where do you want to go?

Step Three. There is no failure. You can learn from everything. If you start to realize that you can learn from every interaction you will be training your brain to look forward to EVERYTHING with the knowledge that regardless of what happens, you can only get better and better.

Step Four: Ask self affirming questions. Not “why not,” but how? Not “why didn’t I,” but “what did I?” Not “why can’t I?” but “How can I?” One powerful way of doing this is to ask yourself questions like this as you fall asleep at night. “How can I improve myself tomorrow? How many ways can I find opportunities tomorrow?” Once you send your brain in the right direction, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can achieve what you want. 

Step Five.  Help other people, without any expectation of a thanks or even an acknowledgement. You will increase you confidence, your charisma, and both of these are necessary to attract the good things in life.

So there you have it. The sooner you start to take small steps to easily and naturally take these principles as part of your life, the easier you will notice that you can almost without trying, take advantage of the opportunties that you will start to see growing around you as if by some mysterious force. But of course, you know the truth, now, don’t you?

Please come back often for more helpful articles, and tell your friends to come check out this site as well, because I will be updating it often.

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