It’s easy to look at someone that has the kind of life or career we want and think “they are so lucky.” It’s unlikely that luck had anything to do with it.
Luck assumes chance. That fate has blessed one and not another. That it’s completely random whether the odds are ever in our favor.
Looking at my life, some might say that I’m lucky. I certainly feel very fortunate. Yet what I see is a little different. It’s preparedness meeting opportunity.
The quote from Seneca stands out, and is one I’ve been drawn back to since I first heard it. This version of luck implies that we can all be lucky. We can be prepared, so that when opportunity presents itself, we can be ready to receive it.
If we want more luck? We can do our part to prepare.
1. Look within
Preparedness begins within each of us. We start where we are, and that takes a level of knowing beyond the “you are here” symbol on a map.
Looking within, we can consider where we’ve been, where we are, and what has been driving us to get here.
Next, we can evaluate where we want to go and our why. Push at it and determine if it still holds true. Our motivations, fears, and dreams all have a part to play in the future we’ve been moving towards.
As does what we have been doing to realize or avoid it. We cannot step to the new with one foot caught in the old.
Finally, we can decide what the future looks like that we want and who we will be in that future.
Matthew McConaughey gave a speech in 2015 about his hero. His hero is always a version of himself 10 years in the future. Every day, that hero is a day older. Each decision he makes is in service to that future version of himself.
Our path starts with where we are, headed in the direction of where we want to go. Understanding our now, and the future version of us we desire, is the first step in being prepared.
2. Prepare for the future you
Once we know the future version of us, and the future life we want, we can prepare for it.
We can make decisions with that person in mind, yes. We can also do the inner work and development necessary to become ready for what that new life has to offer.
Talking with a client recently, she’s been working on knowing herself better and what she wants. Following a difficult divorce, she wanted to start dating again and find a healthy partner. Her first step was to develop a list of values she’d like in that person.
And then she started working on those things in herself. If she wanted patience in a partner, she worked on her own patience. If she wanted to be loved, she worked on loving herself first so she would be ready to receive love from someone else.
By focusing on the values she wanted in a partner, and ensuring she was living those values herself, she became ready to receive the kind of person she was looking for.
Now that she feels ready to date, what she attracts will be different than if she had not prepared. She might have received something similar to her prior experience. Rather than fear that, she made purposeful efforts to become the version of herself she saw in this future relationship.
3. Be open to opportunity
In addition for preparing for the future version of us, we can also be open to how opportunity shows up. We may be waiting for a door to open. If we stay too focused on the door, we’ll miss the window that’s waiting for us to climb through.
Sometimes opportunity shows up in unexpected ways. A job that doesn’t sound like what we thought was the “right next step” but is giving us exactly the experience or connections we need for the role after. The family we’re looking for in the form of deep, lasting friendships. Or in my case, a second child in the form of a foreign exchange student who is an older brother to my son.
The important part of our future selves is the kind of person we want to be, not the trappings.
As leaders, we learn that if we focus on people, they take care of results. If we focus on results, we risk marginalizing our people. We may get the results, but at a cost that’s not sustainable or healthy.
The same is true for each of us. If we focus on our growth and being prepared, the opportunities tend to show up. If we focus on power, position, and money, we risk becoming a future version of ourselves that may struggle to look in the mirror.
Feeling lucky?
There is some question as to who made the quote, but it goes something along the lines of “the harder I work, the luckier I am.”
Luck isn’t chance or fate. It’s knowing ourselves, investing in our future, and being open to the ways opportunity shows up.
Three of us could be presented with the same cracked door, let’s say a healthy partner. The one who is not looking will not see him or her and walk by. The one who didn’t prepare sees this person, but may struggle to commit. Only the one who is prepared and looking can build a relationship, while the other two may lament about the limited pool of good partners.
We are surrounded with opportunity in every moment as we make thousands of decisions each day. Are those decisions moving us in the direction of the future we want? When we have the future in mind, we see not only what is, but what can be.
What can we be doing today to become the future version of us we aspire to be?
