How to BE Lucky

This is, I hope, going to be a very positive blog and therefore I thought I’d make the first post concretely of that ilk.

Enjoy!

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This ’secret’ about being lucky is something I learnt when I was tiny.
It was a secret given to me by my father.
It was many many years later that I realised other people didn’t know it (although it is slowing becoming part of main-stream teaching – some 30 years later)

I went to a dinner party a couple of years ago.
It was a big party in a grand old house and friends of a lifetime gathered.
The house had been sold and it was to be our final gathering in the wonderful old building.

As we sat for dinner, I overheard friends much further down the table discussing how lucky I was.
How I had the perfect partner, a lovely place to live; that I always got the job I wanted and did well in it.
That I seemed to travel and read and write and – I just always seemed to do what I wanted to do.
Lucky indeed.

I listened with a grin until it suddenly dawned on me that my friends spoke of luck like it was something intangible.
Something that one was born with – or not.
I broached this as a question and they answered that I was right – that luck was charisma, dignity, empathy, good timing, intelligence and so on they gave me the list.

I confess to being quite shocked and offered in response that I was lacking in several characteristics on their list!
That my father had taught me the secret of luck long ago and it was applicable in all walks of life.

By now the entire table had fallen into silence.
Doctors, lawyers, city dealers, sales executives had stopped eating and leaned in to listen.

So I told them how to be lucky.

Luck is made of two components.

The first is preparation – know your subject as best you can.
That does not mean to say that you must be a master of it – just know it as best you can.

The second component is opportunity.
Look for the opportunity to use your knowledge (your preparation)
And when that opportunity comes along, grab it!
If the opportunity doesn’t come along, then look to create it – what do you have to do?

When you combine preparation with opportunity your life will start to spin around in the most remarkable manner.

I grant it might not always be easy – although it’ll often look that way to others – but it will be worth it.

And yes, my friends are right – I am incredibly lucky – and these days, so are they!