'Oh they're so lucky! They always get the great opportunities!'
Maybe they are lucky. Or maybe they are prepared for the opportunities. There is a growing swell of opinion (supported by evidence) that, not only is luck a mindset or perception issue, we can create our own luck by being open and prepared to recognise opportunities.
What does this mean?
According to Richard Wiseman, unlucky people are more anxious and focus on details and specifics. Lucky people are more laid back and therefore open to opportunities without anxiety.
"... lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good"
So how can you change your luck? Well by listening to your gut and by expecting positive things, you can markedly increase your luck. Is that all there is to it? I don't believe so. I believe a lot of us miss opportunities (or even the preparation for them) through our fears of what might happen if we are lucky. How our lives might change. What will that mean for us. Of course we need to begin to understand that.
We also miss the opportunities in front of our nose, because we have very specific or detailed ideas about what we think we are looking for. In the absence of that 'thing' we don't notice something even better or don't think creatively about how to make other opportunities work for us.
How often have you gone shopping for a specific item of clothing? You know exactly what you want and how it should look. You won't find it. Or are less likely to find it. By being so prescriptive about what we want, we exclude other possibilities that might be as good or even better. And those possibilities pass us by. It's the same with jobs/friends/partners. By learning to be open to a variety of experiences, we become luckier.
A coach can help you break down what it is you truly want to achieve, not as a job title (restrictive and detailed) but as the elements of what you want in your life and role, making it easier to recognise those opportunities as they appear.
If you are feeling that everyone else gets the luck and the opportunities and you want more of them to come your way, drop me a line as I would love to help you.