Are You Lucky?
by Brenda Maxfield
Good Luck!
Tough Luck!
What luck!
He's naturally lucky!
Some people have all the luck!
Oh, a four-leaf-clover, now you'll be lucky!
How many times have you heard these sayings? How many times have you said them yourself or had them said about you? I remember when I was first dating my husband, his sister kept saying, "Oh that Paul, he was born under a lucky star."
I thought I heard a bit of jealousy seep into her comment, and it sure made me curious. What exactly did she mean? I started to pay close attention.
Indeed it did seem like my husband-to-be was lucky. Things just seemed to naturally go his way. College came easily to him, his grades were good, he got the job he was after, people were drawn to him. He lived with a casual grace.
Luck, my future sister-in-law called it. But I wasn't so sure.
I noticed certain things about the way my boyfriend lived, I realized that certain things in his life were always in place. For starters, he regularly had very specific goals, and a healthy confidence that those goals would be met.
I noticed that he worked hard. He made a schedule and stuck to it. Yet (and this used to perplex me because my family made rigid plans) he was flexible and able to roll with unexpected events. Somehow he was able to take those unexpected events and assimilate them into his agenda as if they'd been put there intentionally.
My boyfriend laughed a lot. He enjoyed people. He was interested in them and in what they were doing. He knew how to make casual conversation in a crowded social setting.
When things did go wrong, which did happen, he would get discouraged. But the discouragement was temporary, and he would quickly bounce back and tackle his goals again.
Luck. Hmmm. Was it? Or was something else at play here? Because Paul expected things to turn out well, they usually did. Things did seem to come his way.
I came across a definition of luck that seems to fit in with what I was observing: "Luck is the events or circumstances naturally resulting from an individual's decisions, expectations, emotions and thought processes that operate for or against that individual."
---Charles Burke
After all these years of marriage (nearly 23!), I have come to the conclusion that Paul's decisions, expectations, emotions, and thought processes do operate for him instead of against him. His luck is embedded in persistent work and an attitude of hope and prosperity. Listen to what David Joseph Schwartz says, "Take a second look at what appears to be someone's 'good luck.' You'll find not luck, but preparation, planning, and success-producing thinking."
I believe that we can all make our lives, our businesses, and our relationships "lucky" by monitoring our thoughts, decisions, actions, and attitudes.
We should all be so lucky!
Blessings to you and yours.
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