There's no such thing as luck, just opportunity meets preparedness. You may have heard or said yourself "he got lucky" or "she just has good luck". It's true that there's a magical force in the universe that brings people and things together, but it's not luck. Take a "Hail Mary pass" in football or a "buzzer beater" shot in basketball. The preparedness was the player practicing over and over. The opportunity was time running out, a statistical long shot becomes a literal long shot. There's no other choice, chuck it and hope for the best. Statistically, these long shots don't work out, that's why they're so exciting and attributed to luck. Even take lottery winners, the preparedness is buying a ticket and the winning ticket is the opportunity. If you want to increase your preparedness, buy more tickets. There are still statistical probabilities that aren't in your favor. If your goal is to win then buy all the tickets, you'll spend more than you'll win. But, you said your goal was to win not to get rich!
Let's figure out how you can improve your preparedness and recognize more opportunities.
Preparedness: the state of being properly expectant, organized, or equipped; ready.
Once you have your vision and your why, you'll need to start gaining knowledge and experience, maybe producing some type of work. You'll need to practice to become whatever or whoever you need to be to achieve your goals. The more factors you can identify and prepare for, the better your odds of conquering opportunity when it comes your way.
Preparedness can be difficult and this is why you need motivation (a vision and strong why) or discipline, most commonly some combination of them. You'll have to setup challenges for yourself and keep showing up to take them on. You'll have to fail; fail hard and fail often if you want to learn fast. You likely won't just spend a few minutes getting prepared either, most often you'll spend a lot of your time practicing and building up to where you want to be, so enjoy the process and connect deeply with your why.
Opportunity: an appropriate or favorable time or occasion.
This is the more difficult side of this equation because you can't force opportunity. You can cultivate the conditions, go looking for, or create opportunities, either way you have to be able to recognize it. You may even find it under a different name, a challenge.
One way to attract and recognize opportunities is to use your imagination; the magical force that brings people and things together. Go to that opportunity you are looking for in your mind, feel what it will feel like to be in that moment, hear the sounds, smell the smells, make it feel real. Make it big and bright in your mind, get excited about it. Your mind can't tell the difference between what is happening to you and what you are imagining. Research has shown that imagining yourself doing something triggers the same neurons as actually doing that activity. Using your imagination is building both your preparedness and your ability to see the opportunity when it presents itself.
Another tool for opportunity seekers is journaling and daily review. The idea is to make whatever you are seeking so top of mind that when you see it, you'll recognize it right away. Here's an over used example that I love: when you buy a new car you start seeing that car everywhere. Well, surprise! The number of people driving that car hasn't changed much, but your ability to spot it has. The key here is to create a vision of your perfect opportunity and describe it in great detail, then review it often. Your mind will be trained to see that opportunity when it presents itself.
Let's bring this around to off road driving. You and your buddies head out to a trail, you come to a deep but passible water crossing. You've just installed a snorkel on your rig and your buddy has not. You go for it heading in slow and steady, you don't want to make a big splash and you don't want to speed up. You want to ride right in the wake that your bumper is creating. Your buddy wades in and sucks a bunch of water right into his engine. Were you lucky, no. You were prepared!
If you want to take your Jeep on a triple black diamond trail and get home after, you better come prepared. You'll need lots of clearance, big tires, armor and lockers. You'll probably want a winch and tow strap too, just in case. You'll need to prepare yourself as much as your rig. You need to understand your wheel placement to know what lines you can take to get through and avoid major damage or a roll over.
Preparation is important in off road adventures. From making sure your rig is well maintained and built for the trail you're planning to take, to bringing food, water, blankets and recovery gear. You never know what opportunities or challenges await you off the beaten path.
Once I accepted that there's no such thing as luck I became more excited to increase my preparedness and look for opportunity. I've been very lucky ever since! Some people will look at you and think "he has all the luck". You can just smile and nod.
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