I have always tended to shy away from hardcore motivational posts, à la Tony Robbins. God knows, there are enough of those out there already.
But recently, I got to thinking (always a dangerous event) about the secret of success.
Mainly, I got to thinking about why success has been so damn elusive for yours truly.
My thinking certainly didn’t deliver any ground-breaking results, as it rarely does. I identified 5 key factors. 4 of them are the usual suspects: Discipline, Diligence, Preparation, and Consistency. As you can read, nothing monumental with that…
The 5th, however, might come as a bit of a surprise…
Luck.
The “luck” to which I refer in this post is of the positive variety. Bad luck, or misfortune, is more often the result of the application of physical or mathematical laws, such as getting hit by a truck, or spending more money than one actually possesses. But good luck seems far more nebulous and randomly experienced.
You must admit that good luck plays a key role in anyone’s success. If you aren’t capable of admitting that, well then, you might need to be a little bit more honest with yourself.
It could be the luck of birth, or just the plain old fall-out-of-the sky type of luck that some seem to enjoy more frequently than others.
Even though it seems that some enjoy it more than others, I believe we’d all have to admit, upon reflection, that we’re basically unlucky. Let’s put it this way, if you had to rate yourself in each of the 5 elements of success that I’ve identified above on a scale of 1 to 10, where would you put your luckiness?
I think anyone would have to say less than moderately lucky, or less than 5…wouldn’t you agree?
The problem is we can’t really control luck…or can we?
No, I don’t believe we can control it, but we can influence it.
How?
By increasing towards 10 our degree of the other 4: discipline, diligence, preparation and consistency. That is to say, if we scored a perfect 10 in each of those, our luck might well increase a bit…wouldn’t you say?
And if we can actually increase our luck, well now, that’s a recipe for success!
Some successful people say, rather arrogantly, that they “make their own luck.” What’s really a truer statement is that they work hard to increase scale in the other 4 elements of success and thereby their luck increases correspondingly.
However, there are two overarching constraints that should weigh upon all this effort put forth towards increasing luck…
And those are Balance and Compassion.
A healthy sense of balance is essential to emotional well-being. And if we don’t have emotional well-being, that is, if we’re out of balance, then our efforts to achieve more luck could very well backfire. That backfiring can result in serious consequences, like anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and even suicide.
We need to admit to ourselves that what we are trying to do, well, it just ain’t all that easy. We need to be a bit softer on ourselves. My title betrays the fact that often times, I am not so gentle, or compassionate, with myself. I’ll wager a bet that perhaps you aren’t with yourself either.
Life is hard enough just to get by, that is, to survive. But place on top of that a drive, or ambition, to be “successful”, however, you might define that term, and it becomes seemingly impossible. It’s not…with a bit of luck…impossible, which is the point of this post, but it can certainly seem so.
So, be a bit easier on yourself as you strive towards a higher degree of discipline, diligence, preparation, consistency, and luck. And also be a lot easier on others who are going through their own struggles in that effort.
And for those of you who are already “successful”, thank your lucky stars for it!
Now, some will read this and immediately notice that I left out a “key component”…talent.
However, that implies that one must have talent to be successful, as if talent is an innate character trait that only some are borne with. I’ve never really bought into that. I believe we’re all equally talented at birth. And that is at nothing much, other than being extremely self-centered.
We gradually develop talents as a result of our degree of effort with regard to the first 4 factors, with a bit of number 5 thrown in, again, depending on how well we do with the other 4.
So there you have it, the secret of success revealed. Got it?
Buena suerte!
You can contribute to my luck (and success) by getting my book, reading it, and leaving a review…
My book, The Impact Revolution, is now live on Amazon. It was written to inspire empathy, to inspire connection. It was written to inspire the positive impacts that flow from empathy and connection. It was written to inspire an acceptance of the idea that we’re really all in this together.
Leave a Reply