by Now What?® Coaching Founder, Laura Berman Fortgang
It is often debated whether you can make your own luck or not. Personally, I find my luck-making skills to be seasonal but
fundamentally in place and ever-improving. However, through 20 years of clients and hundreds of Now What? ® Facilitator anecdotes, there is enough evidence to point to the circumstances that cause great luck to find you.
Skip Your Reasonable Ideas
Time after time, clients come to the career transition process with two versions of what they’d like to accomplish. One is the version they feel they likely have the power to make happen. The other, is the deepest truth about what they want.
“If I were to tell the truth….” is a statement I hear very often. Why wouldn’t you tell the truth? Why is it dismissed as a pipe dream? Those ‘impossible’ dreams hold the springboard to a new direction whether it’s a literal move to the dream or some interpretation of it.
Once the true desire is given air-time, it cannot be taken back, so action becomes inevitable. Small steps start to get promising results and the traction and speed often take off from there. Blocks seem to move away and your luck ‘magically’ changes. The truth WILL ‘set you free’!
Scare Yourself
The bigger the chances you take, the greater the ‘lucky’ things that begin to occur. Taking risks is a very big factor in shaking the trees and causing ripe fruit to fall into your life.
Michael, who had been out of work, had thought of calling an old boss, but talked himself out of it because their final encounter had not been the most stellar. He felt a nagging urge to call him but he was afraid to and did not feel it was appropriate to hope for a job by reaching out. With some encouragement, and a lot of butterflies, he gave his ex-boss a call. The boss was so glad to hear from Michael that he invited him in to see him. They met, found they both had felt bad about how things had been left earlier and Michael left with two strong leads for jobs at companies where his boss had contacts.
As ‘luck’ would have it, after several weeks, Michael’s old boss had an opening that was a better opportunity than the other two leads he had been pursuing.
Get Gracious
Wanting your luck to change is almost the worst way to get your luck to change. What I mean is that when you focus on what’s missing, what’s wrong, what’s hurting, it’s really hard to get results to the opposite effect.
The way to shifting results and changing your luck is getting in synch with what you have. Despite wanting better, being gracious about what you already have, will pave the way to better luck.
Think of it in dating terms: If you’re desperate, insecure and twisting yourself into a pretzel to make a match (any match!) your long term relationship wish will be bumpy. If you are comfortable with how you are and like your life the way it is, you will make a charming, interesting person to meet and your chances of a match go up. It’s the same in making a goal come to be.
Find the good in the ‘bad’ and you will navigate on a smoother road to better days.
Using your endless well of creativity (yes everyone has it), you can find a bridge between your current circumstance and the one you want to create. You can find a way to align the secret goal with the reasonable plan and come up with one luck-changing game for your life.
Let us know how we can help.