Don’t wait for good things to happen- go out there and make luck work for you!
The old adage that success can be achieved by simply outworking the other guy definitely has validity to it. However, it’s widely accepted that “luck” also plays a major role in any business success. As super entrepreneur and multi-billionaire Richard Branson confessed in a recent online interview:
Quote courtesy of LinkedIn interview series
So, if you need luck to succeed, how do you put yourself in the right place and time to catch that lucky break? What lucky sauce do you need to beg, borrow, or steal to help create that delicious sandwich of success? We’ve gathered insights from some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs to try to explore the idea of luck and how you can make it work for you.
1. Use Visualization to Improve Your Odds
Famous self help author, Robert Collier, describes the importance of visualization in becoming successful. There’s no scientific evidence that visualization of your goals and success has any bearing on becoming successful but the benefits of positive thinking and having a clear thought of what you want to achieve can do nothing but increase your chances of being lucky by putting you in the right frame of mind. Being positive, motivated and confident are the results of visualization and that is an achievement within itself. People are drawn to confident people, and therefore confident people draw luck to themselves.
To open yourself up to the possibility of luck, think daily about your goals. Try to visualize what success will look like and work backward to figure out how to get there – imagine where you see yourself in a year from now, then work towards it.
2. Fortune Favors the Brave
The opinion that good fortune and luck is favorable to those who “put themselves out there” has always been a popular one and makes logical sense. People who isolate themselves and do not go looking for clients, customers and opportunities, will have less chance of good things to happening to them. Like Wayne Gretzky suggests, you increase your odds of winning dramatically simply by stepping up to the plate, so that when even the smallest opportunity arises, you can capitalize on it. If it doesn’t work out, so be it. Failure is part of life that is typically fleeting but regret can haunt you for eternity.
If you haven’t already, start building your network of luck in the following ways:
- Accept invitations to meet or to attend industry events – try to make time, even if you’re tired or busy
- Don’t just join LinkedIn and other social media groups – spend time to create quality content and make a real effort to connect with relevant business groups and individuals
- Attend conferences on a regular basis and when you’re there, be friendly, chatty and confident
- Contact important people in your industry directly – share feedback or articles that might be of interest, compliment them on an achievement, suggest networking at the next event, and generally start building important connections
There are endless stories of people who were tenacious and just kept going through the worst luck until they found that golden opportunity. Getting out there and selling yourself takes a certain amount of bravery, but those who put themselves on the line and aren’t afraid of setbacks tend to get lucky at some point. So give it a go.
3. Magnetize Luck with the Right Personality and Attitude
It’s worth considering that we look at the whole idea of “luck” all wrong. We tend to think of it as something that has little to do with us personally – as a consequence of fate, heavenly reward, karma, mystical force, etc. Unfortunately, it’s naïve at best to think this and worse, gives people an excuse not to look inwardly to make positive things happen. As Orison Swett Marden suggests, looking inwardly is how we can realize that golden opportunity. Maybe we can affect luck ourselves.
The idea that luck happens to those with the right personality was a theory tested by Professor Richard Wiseman at the University of Hertfordshire in England and his findings were published in The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind. He interviewed hundreds of successful men and women who considered themselves lucky, as well as those people who considered themselves to be unlucky and discovered that the lucky people shared four traits that helped them make their own luck:
- They’re good at spotting chance opportunities
- They listen to their intuition when making decisions
- They have positive expectations
- They have a resilient attitude that helps them change bad luck into good
Professor Wiseman concluded that by changing our personality and attitude, we could become a magnet for luck. Strive for the four characteristics (outlined above) in all your business and work interactions, and you just might invite luck.
4. Being Good Can Lead to Good Luck
Put yourself on the other side of your business relationship. If someone acts out of pure generosity to you, won’t you be FAR more likely to help that person in future interactions; do business with that person, recommend that person, or find a way to payback their kindness? Kindness breeds kindness and creates luck. We tend to think that successful business people must be cutthroat and devious, but people like fashion design superstar, Diane von Fürstenberg attributes her success to being generous, breeding positivity and ultimately having that same generosity reflected upon herself.
Author Anthony K. Tjan has a theory about luck in his book, Heart, Smarts, Guts, and Luck: What It Takes to Be an Entrepreneur and Build a Great Business which suggests that luck can be cultivated through generosity rather than thinking in terms of our own needs. The theory is a beautifully simple one:
Helping five new people is more likely to attract opportunity for you than trying to extract favors from five new people.
As a way to test your own personal disposition and see if you have the right outlook to build a successful business, take Tjan’s online test and see what level of lucky traits you possess.
At Roland DG, we believe that positivity in all aspects of your personal and business outlook can bring you luck. However, we also trust in the power of action and in putting your business plans, strategies, and design ideas into effect. Take a look at our digital printing equipment, sublimation printers, engravers, milling machines and other formidable technologies and make sure you have all the tools you need to become a magnet for luck.
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Article sources:
http://www.brainyquote.com/ (quotes courtesy of)
http://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/13-proven-ways-to-make-your-ownluck
