How to have good luck

Good luck is having great Peripheral Vision

Successful people are more lucky! But they do not depend on luck to happen to them, they create lucky openings and do something with those openings. Successful people are always curious. They routinely put themselves in situations where good things are likely to happen. Go to new places where they meet interesting people, are lifelong learners, set goals and follow through with deliberate actions.

Recently I heard “Good luck is having great peripheral visionâ€, and felt the wonderful feeling that comes when one suddenly sees a set of concepts fall in to place – eureka! Let me explain….

I have long believed

(A) “Have clear purpose and be very flexible how to get thereâ€

Knowing your personal purpose is critical to living a fulfilled life. What brings you fulfilment, what do you want people to say of you when you are gone, who do you want to be? Remove “should†from your thinking … all the things you ‘should’ do because parents would value it, because that is what ‘people do’, because friends are doing it. Instead of ‘what I should be’, face in to the hard and exciting questions of yourself … who do I want to be?

With your purpose in mind, you can start to plot a path … the fulfilment of each stage of the journey and the excitement of each milestone achieved. And, be very flexible regards that path. The world is unpredictable, many things are out of your control … the most certain thing is that the journey will

not be as you planned. So the key is to be flexible, to take each twist and turn for it’s learning, love the life you are given, and hold your purpose in mind.

I have also had some belief in

(B) “The more I practice, the luckier I getâ€

… but never felt quite as absolute in my commitment to this thought. Yes, to perform at the highest levels requires determination, great coaching, and lots & lots of practice… to achieve flow under pressure … to be unconsciously competent. But surely ‘performance powered by practice’ is different to luck. In fact, surely what lots of practice does is reduce the importance of luck, by increasing how much of the performance is in my own control.

And then my eureka moment….

(C) “Luck is having great peripheral vision…â€

and I am going to evolve it to….

“Luck is having great peripheral vision …. and doing something with itâ€

This enables me to harness luck within the flexibility I need to achieve my purpose. I can recognise that creating lucky openings is a ‘success behaviour’ I can develop, while neither being dependent on the ‘whims of luck’ nor being a slave to the notion that all success requires ’10,000 hours of task practice’! Be clear of my purpose, and create a plan to achieve the goals which come from living my purpose. All the while that I am focussed taking the deliberate actions of my plan, I also maintain great peripheral vision … keep looking around, putting myself in to new and unexpected situations, follow intuition, accept invitations. For sure I will develop new perspectives which make me more adaptable / flexible, and I will come across things that were not in the

plan, but feel right. And at that point, have the confidence to do something with it.

We see this in great leaders. They could be busy in the business all the time, yet instead they (a) choose great people, empower them, ask great questions; and (b) spend a good chunk of their own time outside, talking with thought leaders, experimenting, presenting the company vision & gathering feedback. They are using their peripheral vision. Do you use yours?