Monday, September 17, 2018

I Don't Believe in Luck





Dear Readers:

Today, I wanted to write a post today about luck.

First, I don't believe in it. I know there are events that "just happen" but most of those events can be traced back to something we did or influenced. I'm not saying that there are no accidents (though Einstein did say this once). Some of these so-called "accidents" are good. Others are not so good. But believing in luck implies that "the gods" somehow either like us or have it in for us. I don't believe in either of these ideas. The former attempts to create the idea of "victim mentality" where everything is against us no matter what we do. The latter creates the impression that God plays favorites and that only the few he chose for success will find happiness. Both of these ideas are wrong.

God is impartial, but the Bible does give some credibility to the idea that he looks after his own (faithful Christians) to a higher degree than people in the world. Still, "it rains on the just and the unjust" which would imply that, instead of luck, it's just 'life' and what happens in an imperfect world with people who don't always make the right decisions, including us.

That being said, when it comes to entrepreneurship, I think luck is what happens when we apply our talents and abilities to a great opportunity. Whenever I prospect a new client, I think of it as a card game. I picture myself with my hand of cards in front of me and ask myself, "Which card should I play with this client?"


If it is a magazine publisher for an education magazine, I will play the "teacher card," (the fact that I taught in a public school system for over 15 years). If it is for a technology blog, I will play the card that I own my own technology and digital media company.

Whatever your abilities, experience, or education, think of these are the cards you play to get the jobs or clients you want to obtain or to reach the goals you have set for yourself.

So, when an opportunity comes along, it's not luck if you have done your job in prospecting clients, the opportunities (good luck) will present itself. People sometimes tell me I must be "lucky" because I am making a full-time income writing at home. But I tell them that there was never an opportunity that just landed in my lap. I scoured the web, searched writing sites, and browsed hundreds of opportunities on writing forums to find excellent opportunities. Is that luck? No. It's hard work.

A Story About My Youth

When my sister and I were in our teenage years, we got obsessed with finding four-leaf clovers. I don't know if we just got bored growing up in a small town or what, but we decided to see how often we could find a four-leaf clover. At first, we only found three-leaf clovers. Then, with some time and applied effort, we did find one four-leaf clover. We were so excited and said, "I guess this is our lucky day!" Then, we continued looking in the same clover patch and, amazingly we found another and another and another! There were about 5 or 6 four-leaf clovers in that same patch.

We decided to make it our new hobby. We would go up and down our street looking in patches of clovers just to collect more four-leafers to add to our collection. Our grandparents owned a farm, and they had a large yard so we would carry our obsession of finding four-leaf clovers over to their house, as well. It was indeed an obsession.

To sum up, by the end of the summer, guess how many four-leaf clovers we found?

56!

That's right. With some applied effort, we were able to locate almost 60 of the evasive clovers that most people are unable to find even one of.

Conclusion: Luck is what happens when you apply your skills, your determination, and your energy on a task and never let up until you reach your goals! One side note: it's too bad that there isn't such a thing as just plain good luck. If there was we would have hit the gold mine finding 56 good luck charms!

I thought you'd enjoy this story. I'll be talking about this on my internet radio station in this week's podcast. Be sure to tune in at: http://player.live365.com/a32814?l

I still don't believe in luck, and now you know why. It's not what happens that makes the difference.
It's what we do with the opportunities that matter the most.