What Lucky People Do Different
jonathanfields.com
What Lucky People Do Different
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Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#2I agree completely with this article. Every year that goes by, I'm absolutely staggered at the ridiculous luck, serendipity, whatever you want to call it, that I have experienced in all aspects of my life. And I definitely attribute it to having an open and light-hearted (yet focused) approach to life: I have just always believed that if you do your part, the right thing will present itself. You just have to recognize it when it happens.
I guess you could say, then, that I've always followed a sort of hybrid Panglosian/Yodan approach to life: i.e., be positive, everything really is for the best, and be focused in the present, while keeping an open mind and "letting go" towards the future.
Indeed, when I look back on what I had once perceived to be the worst, "darkest hours" of my life, I see now that they turned out to be the very best things that could have happened to me.
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#3I loved his disclosure at the end.
"You should always assume that pretty much every link on this blog is an affiliate link and that if you click it, find something you like and buy it, I'm gonna make some serious money. Now, understand this, I'm not talking chump change, I'm talking huge windfall in commissions, bling up the wazoo and all sorts of other free stuff. I may even be given a mansion and a yacht, though honestly I'd settle most of the time for some organic dark chocolate and clean socks. Oh, and if I mention a book or some other product, just assume I got a review copy of it gratis and that me getting it has completely biased everything I say. Because, books are like a drug to me, put one in my hand and you own my ass. Ethics be damned! K, you've been warned. Huggies and butterflies."
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#4I read something by Richard Branson that said--and I'm paraphrasing--that everyone is given about the same amount of luck. It's all about what we do with the luck when it falls in our lap.
Fantastic article.
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#5"The harder I work, the luckier I seem to be." - Thomas Edison
From this, I take "hard work" to mean working mindfully, not "counting photographs" as in the article. To work and live mindfully is to do each thing as if you did nothing else: you are fully present in each moment, drinking in your surroundings without judgment or abstraction. A hundred trees are not a hundred trees--each one is a new experience, with different patterns in its bark and different rustling in its leaves. To use the article's example, a party is not a "party". To the "lucky" person, to the mindful person, they are not "at a party"; they are simply talking, laughing, connecting.
I strive for this kind of mindset, and grasp it sometimes. Like zen, the harder you try to hold on to it, the quicker it slips away. At least, I can always look at the trappings of my privileged middle-class life and know that, for these things, I am lucky, and that helps me stay mindful.
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#6One of my favorite quotes is this:
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." -- Seneca
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#7I agree completely with this article. Every year that goes by, I'm absolutely staggered at the ridiculous luck, serendipity, whatever you want to call it, that I have experienced in all aspects of my life. And I definitely attribute it to having an open and light-hearted (yet focused) approach to life: I have just always believed that if you do your part, the right thing will present itself. You just have to recogniz…
Your comments confuse me. I have experienced both phases of life - lucky and unlucky as in the article. My darkest hours were during the "unlucky" mindset and I indeed consider them the best days, but I don't see what you're trying to say.
If you claim the best hours were the darkest, are you saying you were in the lucky mindset during those?
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#8[deleted]
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#9-ly. DifferentLY.
Re: What Lucky People Do Different
#10Whenever I see these kind of articles, two words run through my mind: survivor bias.
I'm also unconvinced by the John Galt argument that if Steve Jobs had not taken calligraphy courses, we would not have nice typefaces on computers today. After all, typography predates the Mac and it would have been only a matter of time before someone else figured it out. If you don't believe this, look at practically every major discovery / invention in the past few centuries -- in almost every case more than one researcher / scientist / dilletante was working on something similar. The lucky one was the one who got there first.