“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson

Learn To Cultivate Your Luck

Did you ever notice how some people are especially lucky? Things just seem to go their way. Fortuitous circumstances open up like blossoming flowers before them. Their work is chosen above other comparable works.

I have a friend like that. She applied for a job last fall. She didn’t get it. However, a few months later when the position opened up again. Rather than re-posting the job they just called and asked if she was still interested.

People contact her over Facebook or Twitter and ask if they can work with her. It’s not like she’s famous or well connected, but doors seem to open as she passes them by.

Prepare the ground so seeds of success can flourish

The thing about my friend that I haven’t yet mentioned is that she is also one of the hardest working people I know. She is an artist and a story teller. When she gets home from work, rather than letting whatever’s happening on Netflix entertain her, she entertains herself by cultivating her craft. Instead of using her weekends as downtime she pursues her passions.

She doesn’t do these things specifically to get work. Rather, she does them because it makes her feel good about herself. Watching her work evolve is fulfilling and rewarding in and of itself.

Hitch your wagon to a star

When people meet her, they invariably want to work with her. Part of that is because her work is good, but that’s just the beginning. Beyond that they can see she isn’t going to stop doing what she’s doing. She is bound for success. Because my friend is obviously going places, others want to attach themselves to her to get carried along for the ride.

To someone who doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes it might look like my friend is a magnet for luck. Those of us who know it realize the force behind the magnetism is hard work.

A Solid Foundation To Build Success On

We all want to advance ourselves personally and professionally and there are probably thousands of way to do it. To save you the burden of trying to choose, here are three things you can do to get you on the right track.

Make yourself a small fish in a large pond

Sure it feels good to feel like you’re the smartest, most successful person in the group, but if you want to grow and take yourself to the next level you shouldn’t be afraid to let yourself feel small. Instead of surrounding yourself with people who think you’re great, surround yourself with people you aspire to be like. People who are smarter than you, more successful, more motivated and involved in their lives. Those are the people you want to emulate. Those are the vibes you want to absorb.

Instead of wasting time with things that don’t fulfil you in some way (like endless hours of TV or falling down Google rabbit holes) find things that inspire you to be a better person. Learn, share, teach, grow. You get to choose how you spend  your time.

Start each day the night before

If you wake up then start planning your day, you’re already behind on what you can accomplish and you feel about the day. If you already have plans for the day waiting for you to get going the second you wake up, you’ll be inspired to get on with it. You’ve already got things to achieve on the go. You’ve already got a plan.

Creating a plan for the next day isn’t all you should do to inspire yourself. The last thing you should do to set yourself up for a great tomorrow is to remind yourself of what was great today. Write down anything you learned. Note whatever positive things happened. Going to sleep with a grateful heart will carry on right into the next day.

Choose one thing to get really great at

There are probably all sorts of things you want to improve in your life and career and that’s great. You should be striving to improve on lots of levels, but the way to get really good at anything is to give it your full attention. That means choose one thing you want to get great at. Give yourself a timeline to achieve your goal, say a month, two months, six months, whatever you believe it will take. Then push for that particular goal or achievement with everything you’ve got during that time.

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.” Ernest Hemingway

Sometimes I look at the people I admire and think about how much I’d like to be like them or if possible – better than them? What would that be like?  To have even more success than the people I aspire to emulate. Other times I think about people who I’d really actually like to better. The ones whose success I resent because I’m pretty sure I’m more competent than they are.

Wasted energy

Aspiring to be like the people who inspire us is a good starting point as we set out on our quest for success. Setting ourselves into competition against those whose talents we believe we surpass can certainly fuel us forward. The problems start to show up when those other people we are working to emulate or beat take up too much of our mental space.

The time you spend thinking about other people and dwelling on what they did/are doing/will do is time you could have spent thinking about what you should be doing. Why waste energy thinking about someone else when you could be using that valuable commodity (your mental energy) thinking about yourself?

Make your future self the person you aspire to become

Imagine yourself already having achieved everything you aspire to. Future you has all the qualities you envision for current you. Current you is the person you want to better, the one you want to beat on your way to reaching future you.

By casting yourself as the hero of your story AND the person you are competing against, the person you end up focusing all your energies on is YOU. You are constantly thinking about ways to better yourself to reach tomorrow you. About ways to get to your destination faster than yesterday you.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to be better yourself every day, on the way to becoming your best self.  

The Process of Achieving a Goal

What is it you want to achieve in life? Do you want to be the owner of your own company? Are you looking to save $100K? Is writing your passion? Do you hope to see yourself in a leadership position? As a manager? Each of us is striving for something.   

The pressure of end result thinking

Obviously, it’s important to have goals, to be working toward something. However, making that goal the focal point of your life, keeping it in mind 24/7 may actually be detrimental to your efforts.

The unrelenting thought of your goal creates a lot of pressure in your life as you focus all your hopes and dreams on an outcome. An outcome with no guarantee. It makes every failure feel worse. Every delay feels longer and more significant than it need be. Others in the same field become competitors rather than allies.

The outcome is out of your hands

Absolutely strive. Do your unmitigated best, but don’t become too attached to an outcome exactly as you picture it within the timeframe you decided in advance. You have no control over the outcome of any goal or venture.

You cannot control the other people who wrote and published a book in the time you spent looking for (and not finding) an agent. Nor do you have any control over other people who reached your financial goals while you were still trying to pay off debt.

The only thing you have any control over is you. Your attitude is within your control. How you react to circumstances, positive and negative is in your ballpark. Even if someone is striving for the same things as you, their journey is theirs. Your journey is the only one you should be focusing on.

No one starts at the top

As you watch other people succeed while you still working so hard to get your goals off the ground, remember they too went through a learning curve. No one simply pops into existence at the finish line. Each person works, strives, fails in their own way and their own time.

The way to avoid the pressure cooker is to avoid focusing solely on the goal or other people who have or haven’t reached a similar benchmark. Maintain balance by putting in the required effort everyday – without worrying about the outcome. Get better, stronger, more able for the sake of getting better stronger more able. The only person you should be competing against is yesterday you. You cannot control the outcome, but you can control the process and transform through it.

Give Today The Attention It Deserves

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You get up every day around the same time. You stumble into the kitchen, turn on the coffee maker. Or if you’re totally with it you grab the coffee from the machine you had set the night before. You eat a variation of the breakfast eat every day. Maybe you go to the gym. Maybe you skid into work just under the wire. You put in your eight hours and come home.

Days fold into weeks

The days fold so seamlessly into each other that you start counting weeks instead of days. Life zips along. There’s nothing wrong with your zipping life. It’s actually pretty good – except who’s driving it? Without dedicated monitoring it’s easy for us to let routine take charge of our lives.

The downside of routine

There is nothing wrong with routine. It streamlines the days, it gives us time to think about new things while older ones take care of themselves. Routine makes for a smooth-running life and society. The problem isn’t routines exactly. The problem is when, rather than adding convenience to life, life becomes routine.

There will never be another today

As we automate our days to make them run smoothly we can lose track of absolute specialness beyond the automation

Your kids won’t have the experiences of today tomorrow. The song you shared with your best friend won’t come on the radio at the moment you think about her tomorrow. The trees won’t all burst with new life on the same day again until next year. The preciousness of each day lies in the fact that it is unique. Rushing through the days on the train of routine we often forget to look out the window to see what’s on offer.

Make sure you take time each day to notice what’s special about the day. Savor it. You don’t remember days or weeks. You remember the moments that populate them. Moments that will only come once.