Good Life Project - The Truth About Luck [a 4-part formula]

Episode Date: January 5, 2017

Luck. It’s a source of envy, denial, opportunity, anger, frustration, creation and astonishing success. When it happens to us, we revel in it. When it happens to everyone but us, we lament it. It’s become vogue in the world of performance and popular psychology to say it does not exist. Luck, we are told, is […]The post The Truth About Luck [a 4-part formula] appeared first on Good LifeProject. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's episode is brought to you by my new book. I know I'm our sponsor. So you guys have heard me talk about it in the past, I think towards the end of last year, my new book, my latest book, How to Live a Good Life came out and I've been blown away by the reception to it. It's very straightforward, surprising science, soulful stories, and practical wisdom. It's a blend of pretty much a lot of what this show is about, but really distilled into pure, actionable wisdom and insights designed to walk you through a process and introduce you to a model that I call the Good Life Buckets that I hope will really help you live a good life. It's a great time of year to be exploring this and really using it as a tool to do the things you're here to do, to become what you're knowing you can become, and also to find the

grace in being just as you are. So check it out. You can find it pretty much all over Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstores, indies, how to live a good life. Okay, on to our show. Hey there, it's Jonathan with our first Good Life Riff of the year 2017. If you are new to the podcast, and we have had a huge influx of new listeners, so welcome, welcome, welcome. This is our weekly sort of short and sweet riff. And I pick one topic and just sort

of share some thoughts on it. Sometimes we also mix in questions from our listeners. So if you have a question you would like to maybe have answered on a future riff, feel free to send it over to support at goodlifeproject.com and we'll see if we can mix it in. Today, I want to talk to you about a little thing called luck. And it's kind of piggybacking a little bit off of my Monday conversation. So on Monday, I did an unusual episode. Normally, every Monday, we do a long-form conversation. And we will be back to those again as of next week. So don't worry, we'll dive back in.

We have an amazing lineup of guests coming up. But this time, I actually, I want to start off the year with something called my success scaffolding. I call it my 7P framework. So if you haven't listened to that, check it out. And when I talk about, you know, there's a lot of structure, there's a lot of support that we put into place in our lives to move towards, quote, success, however we may define that. There's something else that tends to happen when we try and make big things happen in our lives. And that's this little thing called luck,

four-letter word called luck. And it's become kind of vogue in the world of pop psychology to say that, oh, there's no such thing as luck. Luck is preparation meets opportunity. It's the universe, the ether, the whatever it is that you may call it, simply rewarding you for staying with it and not giving up.

And hey, look, I'm a science-backed guy, but at the same time, I am certainly open to things that I can't explain and open to possibilities. But if you ask pretty much anyone who has succeeded on a large scale in pretty much any pursuit, from entrepreneurs to artists to people in deep relationships to leaders across nearly every part of government, business, world, art, they'll pretty much all tell you that, yeah, they worked like crazy to make it happen. There was a tremendous amount of effort and intentionality in what they did. But if they're really being honest, almost to a one, at least

the ones that I've spoken with, the ones that I've had the good fortune to meet over a lot of years now, they'll pretty much all tell you that at some moment along the way, they got lucky. That luck, this thing called luck, also played a role. And sometimes it was a small opening that then set in motion sort of a tumbling of dominoes to greater and greater opportunity. Sometimes it was one massive door that crashed open. But the truth is, you know, this has played a role in the journey of so many people. And we tend to downplay it a lot because we don't like to acknowledge that there is a part of success in nearly every element of life that we do not have full control over. You know, had Steve Jobs, had Twyla Tharp, had Einstein, had Oprah, had any of the greatest writers, artists, or creators or leaders been born to a different time, a different place, a different family, a different set of friends, a different set of circumstances, they would have been different people. They would

not have had the same grounding in opportunity, in belief, in knowledge, in wisdom, in relationships, in resources. And they very likely would not have set themselves up, no matter how hard they worked, no matter how smart they were, to do the same things they did. There's a certain amount of luck that comes all of our way. And in my experience, I fall somewhere in the middle here. So luck to me is actually a formula. And part of that formula is, in fact, within our control. In fact, a substantial part is within our control. But part of it is also not within our control. So let me share that formula in my mind, and you can agree or disagree, and deconstruct each one of these elements so we can understand

what actually is within our control, so that we can optimize those things that are what is not within our control. And there's only one out of four elements that is not within our control. And then we can build around them. So here's a simple formula. And you can see this sort of written out for you in the show notes if you want to sort of be able to copy and paste it or write it down or remember it easily. Luck is quality times volume divided by serendipity plus openness. So let me break that down for you. Quality. What do I mean when I say quality? And it's pretty simple.

Quality is about devoting yourself to a high enough level of competence, skill, or mastery so that you're actually creating something that is worthy of attention and opportunity. You know, a lot of us, we start to look for our lucky breaks from the very beginning and they don't come. And we also never really put in the work, the effort needed to develop a level of expertise,

of skill, of mastery, so that we're actually doing something extraordinary. So that when and if it does come, what we're putting into the world is worthy of the possibility that it creates. So this is about devoting yourself to producing something that is truly extraordinary. So that's quality. But I said quality times volume. And I put these in parentheses, by the way. What do I mean by volume? So if you look at, for example, the greatest photographers, people talk about, you know, those 10 iconic shots, it may be one iconic shot. And they say, wow, she is a mind-blowingly gifted, incredibly talented.

She is one of the greats. But when you actually look behind the scenes, what you'll find is most photographers for that one stunning shot or for the 10 stunning shots, they very likely have taken hundreds, if not thousands. They may have shot 10,000 images to get 10 or 100 incredible ones. So what we don't see is that it's largely a volume game. So getting to that level of quality, also part of that equation, it's not just deliberate practice where you're getting better and better and better. There's a volume element to it. There's a willingness to keep doing it over and over and over and over again so that you raise yourself to the level that you're really extraordinary.

And at the same time, that volume keeps you repeatedly out there it keeps you putting stuff into the world over and over and over for a long enough period of time so that the people who might stumble upon it who would enable those moments of fortune of luck actually could so sometimes you might equate volume then with frequency, right? For example, volume could be just showing up in comedy clubs over and over and over if you're an aspiring standup until the right crowd is there when you're absolutely on your game and the right gatekeepers in the audience who can come up to you later and say, oh my God, that was incredible. I need to get you on stages and booked

and on tour and producing media and back you for that. Right? So if you give up after the first six times you're on stage, then you're not, you're, you're not going to create the volume needed to increase the likelihood, A, that you'll get really good at your craft, and B, that you'll keep doing it once you're good enough times and produce enough of a volume of work and have enough frequency so that the right opportunity, the right moment in time will actually coincide with your putting yourself out there. right so if you were an author and you know you kept writing books even when nobody was buying them and then on your seventh or eighth try or in your hundredth try you finally got the attention of an agent or an editor or a publisher and then turned around and had a giant home run that then launched your career it's a similar idea and that leads to the element, and that is serendipity. So we've talked about quality. You need to be actually creating quality work. We've talked about volume, and you can call that frequency if it just sits better with you, which means that even after you've reached a point where

you're creating quality work, you are continuously putting more and more of it into the world, so that it has more and more opportunities to interact with those moments of serendipity. Serendipity is the third element of luck. And this is the part that bothers us because this is the part that we cannot control. It's about how external circumstances completely beyond our control happen to coincide with our fierce effort to put quality work into the world over time. This is the collector who sees you chalk painting on a sidewalk, recognizes your gift, and offers to introduce you to a gallery owner, or the editor who just happens to stumble upon your manuscript when killing time by going through the slush pile after

everyone has left for the day and they just can't do any more editing and they figure why not just give it a shot and you know 10 deep you have that manuscript you sent in six months ago and it's sitting there these are the moments that we actually cannot plan. This is the coincidence of fortune. And you may be thinking that, well, these days we do in fact have control over serendipity. We can go around these gatekeepers. We can build our own engines of impact and connection and commerce and create the circumstance that opens the doors for us. And that is entirely true. We can do that increasingly, but that's also not luck. That is about vision and will and intention and control. And those are also critically important. They must be a part of this equation that really features more into

the quality and the volume part of this. But at the same time, if you go back and you sit down and you ask anyone who has achieved extraordinary levels of success across nearly any domain in their lives, if they're being honest, they will tell you that somewhere along the way, there was still this moment, with very rare exception, there was still a moment where they didn't even see it coming, by serendipity, that last chunk that we don't have direct control over, plus openness. Openness is that fourth element. We have to be open. not tell you how many times I have seen serendipity drop from the sky, appear in front of somebody, and then that person just completely ignore it. Either they're not ready, or they don't believe it's true, or not infrequently, they don't feel worthy of it. So they choose not to see it,

even though it's right there in front of them. And then they wonder, why is the world always fighting against me? Why do these moments of serendipity never come to me when in fact they present themselves on a pretty regular basis? We just never see them because we're not open to them being possible. We're so linearly focused on the task and only the task, on one way to do things, on getting from point A to point B, that when all of these unforeseen moments of serendipity, things we didn't see coming, drop into our laps and give us answers and pathways and possibilities, we don't see them. We're not, because we are not open to them. and in doing so, we don't follow them, and we never get to that place.

Richard Wiseman did a really interesting experiment not too long ago where he gave people who self-identified as being lucky and another group who self-identified as being unlucky a newspaper. And he said, count the pictures in this newspaper. And the group of people who said, I'm unlucky, largely took something like three minutes and said, okay, there are 42 pictures in this newspaper. And the group of people who said, I'm unlucky, largely took something like three minutes and said, okay, there are 42 pictures in this paper. The group of people who said, I'm lucky, took about three seconds and counted the same 42 images in that newspaper. What gives? Turns out this was a special newspaper. On the inside front cover in block letters above the fold was a message that said, stop reading. There are 42 pictures in this newspaper.

Go tell the proctor. The people who identified as being lucky were opened to the possibility of serendipity, of something that they hadn't planned, something beyond the very linear task presenting itself to them and them having a success, having a different answer, a different pathway. The people who did not identify as being lucky were so linearly focused on the end and only the end, the task and only the task, that they did not see serendipity when it appeared before them. They were not open to it. So think about it. Luck, luck as a formula, equals quality times volume divided by serendipity plus openness.

How does that land with you? How does it sit with you? As always, love to hear your input. You know where to find me across social media. And if you want to have a conversation about this with other folks that you know, and explore, do you believe this? Do you not believe it? Feel free to share this around. Because I'd love to see us all do more of the things in that formula that will make it far more likely that these moments of serendipity that

are the only part of the luck equation that we don't have direct control over come into our lives more often, present themselves. And when they do, the more that we create quality, the more volume and frequency we have, the more open we are to seeing it, the more we'll experience those moments of doors opening, those moments of possibility in our lives. Hope you found that valuable. Very much looking forward to lives. Hope you found that valuable. Very much looking forward to hanging out with you again next week. We will be back to our regular schedule with a fantastic Monday deep dive conversation. And until then, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.