What do you think of when you hear the word luck? Do you pick up heads up pennies, carry a lucky rabbits foot, carry a four leaf clover, or don’t wash your jock strap all season (baseball guys are disgusting…well, I don’t know, flys may very welll be lucky. At the Joe Gear Companies, we love garbage trucks to work on and they have a lot of flys…so maybe those baseball guys are onto something). Do you think of it as an accident or random good fortune or as our CFO says, something that is just “Chancy”? What comes to your mind?
According to the latest research by Kevin Daum for Inc. magazine, luck is not “luck” at all, but the result of a series of actions and thought processes that make an opportunist be able to take advantage of the world around them. Inc. breaks these down into 5 main areas.
1. Play to your strengths. – Spend the majority of your time on things you do well and simply partner or delegate the rest to achieve top results.
2. Prepare in advance. – Be proactive and plan for the future. Unlucky people are simply in reactive mode and are constantly caught off guard. The one who stores food for winter is not simply “lucky” when he is able to eat when others starve.
3. Start early. – Don’t just put your energy into things that provide immediate results. Lucky people plant seeds early even if it takes may years to reap the “harvest of happiness”.
4. Connect with as many people as possible. – Success comes from access to opportunity. You don’t access to opportunities without access to people. Give of your time and knowledge generously. First of all to simply help your fellow man and provide value to his/her life and secondly to access opportunities that come from being in community with others.
5. Follow up. – Persistence pays off. “I believe that following up is often more powerful and impressive than the act of initiating.” – Daum Anyone can have a great idea, but idea with execution is meaningless. To execute you must follow through.
Go out and start creating “Luck” today! To read the entire article click here.
