“Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.”
J. K. Rowling
I find it funny how some things in life just snap — together easily, like a rubber band desiring its original shape, and other things in life only come together (if at all) after many hours of beating your head up against them.
One day you’re having the best day of your life — creativity flowing, success at work, upgraded to VIP. And the next day you’re having the worst day ever — spilling coffee on your new shirt, food poison, traffic, lots of traffic, crying yourself to sleep with an empty tub of ice cream in your hands.
Maybe funny is the wrong word. Funny is the word we use when we are far into the future, thinking fondly about how great — or how terrible — that day (or time) in our life was. Another word that comes to mind is ‘luck’.
What is luck?
Is luck a good night’s sleep?
Is it something we do or not do?
Is it the alignment of celestial bodies in the galaxy?
Luck is the word we use to describe a thing we can’t quite describe.
If you asked me to draw ‘luck’, I couldn’t.
If you looked at luck under a microscope, its boundaries would be muddled, it’s picture hazy.
I can give you a thousand examples of what luck is, and yet still not have a definitive definition. This is the best I can do —
Luck is in our minds. When things go our way, we call it being lucky, and when things go against us, we call it being unlucky. Luck is confidence mixed with charm mixed with timing mixed with charisma mixed with magic moon dust.
One type of luck we think about in the digital age of media is something going ‘viral’. What makes something a video go viral? Hard work? Perfect timing? Zeitgeist / relevancy? It’s likely all the above plus a little extra something we can’t quite put our finger on.
I don’t think it’s binary either — luck isn’t on or off. Luck exists on a spectrum (a rainbow of charms, if you will). Certain things we do, think and surround ourselves with add a little more luck to our luck thermometer. And certain other things reduce our luck.
Here’s the cheese: it likely comes down to belief and perspective. Believe in yourself isn’t going to make you successful at everything you touch. But believing in yourself will move the needle. Confidence (and finding the things that make us. feel confident) makes us feel more capable. It makes good things shine and makes bad things easier to handle.
So if you want to be luckier, start believing that you can be. Start acting lucky.
STAY BOLD, Keep Pursuing,
— Josh Waggoner | Daily Blog #804
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