Possibility Thinking, The Luck Factor, Serendipity, and Good Fortune —Too Much For a Person to Expect in One Lifetime? Part 2—

Opportunity, says a famous writer, is like oxygen. It is so plentiful that we fairly breathe it. – Quoted by Robert Collier, Riches Within Your ReachnnnNot long Ron called me. A year earlier I had taken his 12 Keys to Effective Salesmanship Course in Austin, Texas.nn“Where are you calling from Ron?” I asked. “I can’t hear you. Too much traffic.”nn“I’m at the pay phone--hold on, there’s a truck going by, I can’t hear myself, can you hear me now? I’m calling from the 7-11,” he replied.nn“Why are you phoning from the 7-11, Ron?” I asked. “Hang up and call me when you get home.”nn“I don’t have a home,” Ron admitted. nn“You don’t?” I inquired. nn“No, I’m living in one of the storage units across the street. It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he said unconvincingly.nn“You’ve rented a storage unit? That’s where you live?” nn“For now,” he admitted. “It’s a temporary thing. Until I get on my feet again.”nnSix months earlier Ron had been living in a $2300 per month rental home in an exclusive area of Austin. The home belonged to a woman he met at one of his seminars. When she realized how fast Ron was going through her money she became very practical, which meant giving up her illusions that he was--by his charisma and charm (which he possessed in abundance) the next change artist who would--with her financial assistance and publicity skills--become one of the best known motivational speakers in the U.S.nnLiving the cushy life in plush surroundings while cruising through her money at an almost record-setting pace, Ron seemed to lose his competitive edge. He liked dining out (and being seen) at Austin’s finest restaurants. When the love of his life realized he didn’t have the “hunger” or desire required to become what she envisioned fashioning him into, she cut her losses, and told him to move out. He was so cash poor at that point that the only place Ron could afford was a storage facility, #2-A I believe. nn“I have lost my magic,” Ron said. This was a line I never forgot. “I have lost my magic. I don’t know where it went or how to get it back.”nnI looked at the diploma displayed on the wall of my office. “This is to certify that James Clayton Napier has completed all the requirements for The Advanced (I won’t name the company for obvious legal reasons) Master Salesmanship Course with all the rights and privileges accruing to the bearer of this certificate.” My diploma had a very nice pressed “gold” seal attached. Next to the gold seal Ron had signed his name with sweeping bold strokes. Below his signature I saw “President” next to his defunct company’s name.nnUntil the storage shed incident, I thought Ron was one of the luckiest people I’d ever met. He was lucky in love (every few months he would tell me how at last he’d finally met the right woman) and Ron was, you might say, a money magnet (he had a knack for attracting wealthy women who were mesmerized by that indefinable something he possessed ), but when he lost his magic Ron also lost his magician’s hat, rabbit, cape, props, assistant as well as his paying audience. The magic show was over. Closed. At least until Ron figured out a new angle for making money which he always does.nnSo, let’s look see how possibility thinking, the luck factor, serendipity, and good fortune are interrelated—each situated on a single strand I see as prosperity awareness. Our service to others is a present, a gift we give of our time, skills, and talents. Our giving attitude convinces the “inner us” that we already have a lot, that we are prosperous [lucky] and expect to remain so. Also, any questions about where to start your money flow can be answered by asking yourself the question, “What is it I get the most praise for doing that I love and enjoy? What have people suggested I do more of?” What riches within my reach am I overlooking? In your imagination, travel back to your youth and answer Joseph Campbell’s question, “What did you do as a child that created timelessness?”nnThe lucky will do this.nnSomewhere, somehow along the line, far too many of us forgot what we did as a child that created timelessness and became unlucky.nnNext, THINK LUCKY! R. Eugene Nichols in his book The Science of Mental Cybernetics writes, “Like a slot machine, some minds are set up to pay off abundantly, others designed to break even, and still others are set to lose.” Nichols goes on to say, “If a person has been playing the game of life without hitting the jackpot, it is due to the set of his [or her] mind.” What set of mind? How about, “It always happens to me. I’ve come to expect it. That’s why I’m not surprised that I’m so unlucky in love, money, you name it. I haven’t had the breaks. I’m a loser. That’s what I am.”nnTo reverse our unlucky life, Nichols says to build a new self-image which means we must “affirm data about ourselves that may, at the moment, appear to be untrue.”nn“Our doubts are traitors,” Shakespeare writes, “and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” In other words, the unlucky are notably passive.nnAnd yes, bad things do happen to good people. Read Victor Frankl’s book Man’s Search For Meaning for a description of this good man’s life in a German concentration camp. Even in the worst of circumstances, however, there can be charmed moments of sheer luck, and pure enjoyment that easily go unnoticed because of the weighty burden of a situation that is pressing against us. It is exhausting and draining, unlucky, to live a life in which there are few or no pleasures that compensate or more than make up for these other inexplicable situations that seem woven into the fabric of our human existence. Hopefully the preponderance of your life (and mine), however, will be tinged with a light, buoyant, and optimistic radiance. Whoever believes possibility thinking is as easy and natural as water rolling off a duck’s back has yet to grasp how each moment of our existence here calls on us to make the most of what, at first glance, may appear to be the worst, not the best of times. Possibility Thinking is not for the timid. It often requires great courage when we least feel like being courageous.nnAll that I’ve written so far assumes one lives in a country where freedoms of self-expression, creativity, safety and security are ideals (even if not enacted perfectly by that nation). That said, it is possible to be a lucky person living an unlucky life especially if one is born into a totally repressive and restrictive society run by power-mad maniacs like Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, or Saddam Hussein. Go ahead and look up the names of hundreds of dictators [let’s stick with the 20th Century on this] who have threatened poets, musicians, artists, writers, actors, inventors, thinkers, scientists, philosophers with long-term imprisonment or death if they were suspected of thinking or publishing thoughts counter to the lunatic’s repressively unlucky, psychologically reversed regime. Staying alive under this kind of oppressive dictatorship might be considered lucky depending on one’s daily living conditions such as having food to eat, a place to sleep or employment.nnIncredibly talented individuals born way before their time have suffered greatly because they were, it appears, born before their time. The extraordinary inventor Nicola Tesla was such an individual. The Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer and scientist born in 1856 died in poverty. By the time he was 87, Tesla’s inventions included a telephone repeater, rotating magnetic field principle, polyphase alternating-current system, induction motor, alternating-current power transmission, Tesla coil transformer, wireless communication, radio, fluorescent lights, and more than 700 patents. In today’s terminology, Tesla was ripped off by one financial backer after another and his patents used for financial gain by lesser inventors. Tesla was a lucky man in that he saw and helped design the future. He loved his work--he was passionate about and consumed by it. Tesla was unlucky, however, in that he did not understand how the world of big business shysterism worked and it cost him dearly. He died penniless.nnLet’s also be honest about luck and not turn it into a fuzzy concept that is meaningless when taken apart and examined under the microscope of life. There are crazy people in this world who have the power to make your life very unlucky if you encounter them. You don’t want to come in contact with these individuals I can assure you. The recent wave of kidnappings and beheadings by radicals overseas demonstrate this clearly. During my years in television I interviewed several individuals that, even now, I wish I’d never met. Be lucky about your safety and security. Notice at all times where you are and what is going on around you. Take precautions to protect your home and possessions and do not go to places where you’re at risk or enter parts of town late at night where your security may be threatened. The lucky will avoid these dangerous areas and not take unnecessary unlucky risks.nnLou Gehrig accepted his disease with grace and dignity, but this does not mean he considered it a blessing in disguise [see part 1 of this article]. Perhaps it was. Only as the end approached was Gehrig [lucky man though he believed himself to be] able to answer this question to his own satisfaction.nnThe French physician Emile Coue’ told his discouraged [unlucky] patients many times to be optimistic “always and in spite of everything, even when events do not seem to justify it.” Can you do that, be optimistic even when events do not seem to justify being so? The metaphysical teacher Neville Goddard told his audiences that our forefathers did not believe in the future so much as they BELIEVED THE FUTURE IN! He told his audiences that their concepts of themselves [as lucky or unlucky] a REWARD in itself! The poet Rilke reminds us that “The future enters into us in order to transform us long before it happens.” The lucky live as if this were so—they have an immense amount of faith and confidence in the future despite any current reality or evidence of their senses that seems to prove otherwise. To the best of our ability let’s attempt, to use Robert Fritz’s term, to be “the predominately creative force in our own lives,” in spite of what the evening news broadcasts indicate is a world teetering on the brink of madness. The lucky know when to stop letting those images enter their minds — believing in the future? For more on this see my article on the net or here at SelfGrowth.com TV News: A Mirror Reflecting the World or Changing It One story at a Time?nnThe lucky among us are doing work they love and are being paid well to do it. Know your talents and skills. The lucky do. “It is impossible,” Melvin Powers writes in the forward to William Edward’s book 10 Days to a Great New life, “to estimate the number of people who dreamed of goals inconsistent with their talents.” At the end of “talents,” add the word desires and you have an unlucky, unhappy person doing the work they do not enjoy. They trade their ATTENTION and life for a paycheck, what the writer Stuart Wilde calls “bio-tickets” they cash in for survival.nnOBSERVE YOUR THOUGHTS—Do you think of yourself as a lucky or unlucky person? One who gets the breaks or doesn’t? Florence Shinn in her book The Game of Life and How to Play It writes that “The Game of Life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, words, and deeds return to us with astounding accuracy.” “The subconscious is a powerful sending and receiving station,” Harold Sherman observed, “with a universal hookup.” The law of boomerangs and self-fulfilling prophecies explained quite nicely!nnMs. Shinn suggests starting your day by reminding yourself [being the lucky person you are!] that “I give thanks for this perfect day. Miracle shall follow miracle, and wonders shall never cease.” Dr. Richard Wiseman in The Luck Factor suggests that you affirm your luck each day, especially when you first wake up! Dr. Robert Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County California often reminds his audiences, “This is the day which the Lord hath made. I will rejoice and be glad in it!” In other words, as noted earlier, believe your lucky future in! Begin each day by reminding yourself how lucky you already are! In other words, count your blessings! That to which we give our attention reveals itself; it expands and multiplies says Robert Collier in his book Riches Within Your Reach.nn“I am a lucky person and today is going to be another lucky day,” is a good affirmation to start with. The purpose of this exercise he says is to set your expectations in the correct direction which also includes Setting Lucky Goals.nn“What is there about having or doing this thing I desire that would take my breath away?” This is my favorite lucky question, a possibility worded phrase that sets the stage for Luck, Serendipity, Good Fortune, and the Magic my acquaintance Ron says he’s lost.nn“To exist,” Henri Bergson wrote, “is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”nnIs our being lucky or unlucky (overall) fated? What’s the distinction between exercising our own free will and determinism (a script already written with outcomes pre-determined no matter what choices we make)?nnIn his book Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life, Nicholas Rescher writes:nn“For us, life is like a chess match played between grand masters. In one way there is predictability: we known perfectly well how they’ll move their pieces—in line with the rules of chess (here the laws of nature). But we do not have fore knowledge as to which moves they will actually make. And this aspect of the game resembles human life: there is significant uncertainty within a framework of substantial predictability.”nnEven within a framework of substantial predictability, lucky as well as unlucky surprises occur don’t they? For example, we expect something bad, but what happens is good. How do you explain that? Or, we expect something good and it turns out to be a complete disaster. Even our best calculated and worked-out-to-the-nth-degree plans fall apart. All we can do is create and adjust, often under pressure on the spur-of-the-moment, and chalk the whole mess up to life’s unpredictability. You may not be the TARGET of bad luck in this instance but feeling and reacting in upset as though you are is you adding internal back luck to “apparent” external bad luck. Shift your thinking and calmly explore what Napoleon Hill called “the seed of an equivalent benefit” and before you know it the solution you find may turn out to be THE lucky course correction, the best of all possible answers that would never have occurred to you without this crisis showing up. Merely ask yourself, “What opportunity is hidden within this complaint of mine or this situation I hear others complaining about?” You never know. Like a master magician, life has many tricks up its sleeve and often pulls out its best ones at what seems (at the time) the most inopportune moments. “Be CREATIVE,” it seems to be saying. “Don’t just panic. That’s a terribly unlucky state to work yourself into — at this moment of great opportunity! Your first reaction is to get upset? Surely you’re bigger than that aren’t you?”nn“That to which we give our attention reveals itself,” Robert Collier writes in Riches Within Your Reach. What channel are you watching these days? The Luck Channel? Or, the Hard Luck cable network channel?” William Edwards in his book 10 Days To a Great New Life says that by recalling pleasant moments [or anticipating future lucky ones] we can RECOVER our lost energy and enthusiasm and at the same time drain the energy from negative memories.nn“I cannot believe,” Louise Bogan writes, “that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy.”nnThe world is a looking glass and gives back to each of us the reflection of his or her own thought, a paraphrase from the poet William Thackery. Image only what you want to see reflected in your outer circumstances.nnDoes possibility thinking assist the lucky? It would seem to. “When the soul wishes to experience something,” Meister Eckhart claimed, “she throws an IMAGE of the experience out before her and enters into her own image.”nnFollow the reasoning of Colin Wilson when he wrote that “We are likely to find that the untrue can be made true by an act of belief, because the untrue was secretly true in the first place.” The lucky sense this and they do not allow the evidence of their senses to convince them, “This is awful. Terrible. I’ll never get over this.”nnLucky people also know when to let go of a losing proposition or situation. They know, as Max Gunther pointed out in his book The Luck Factor, when to cut their losses. “If you can look at the things that don’t work in your life,” Star Zyir writes, “and realize how they make you feel safe, then you can let go of them.”nnPossibility Thinkers also roll up their sleeves and work on their luck. Remember the lines of Goethe who wrote, “Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage and the mind grows heated;” Only engage and you multiply the likelihood of luck, serendipity, and good fortune finding YOU!nnTHE POSSIBILITY THINKING, SERENDIPITOUSLY LUCKY COUNT THEIR BLESSINGS! “The wealth of a man [lucky man or woman],” the poet Carlyle wrote, “is the number of things he (or she) loves and blesses, which he (or she) is loved and blessed by.” Whatever is praised and blessed MULTIPLIES!nnThat’s The Luck Factor, Possibility Thinking, Serendipity, and Good fortune all rolled into one incredible insight! Whatever you praise, bless, and place your ATTENTION upon will EXPAND and MULTIPLY. We often are, in life, what our thoughts and fears and beliefs have made us. “Your present condition reflects the SUCCESSFUL result of your past thought,” Robert Collier writes.nnEXPECTATION, as Max Gunther pointed out in The Luck Factor, “sends an exciting message to our neural system. While it lasts we are alert and most apt to be rewarded.” Throw out many luck-lines They activate the serendipity response, those delightful little tricks of luck life has up its sleeve. nnWhat is Serendiptity and how is its linked to luck? Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote, “Like many of the finest things of life, like happiness and tranquility and fame, the gain that is most precious is not the thing sought, but the one that comes from itself in the search for something else.”nnSir James A.H. Murray described Serendipity as “The faculty of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident,” and a definition from Webster’s Dictionary described it as “the gift of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for.” nn“He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass,” James Allen observed. “Environment is but our looking glass.” Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who’s the luckiest of them all? Whatever is taking place in the external world, emotionally or health-wise inside, I can’t help but believe that the person who, on awakening, can say with feeling and conviction the words of Florence Shinn from The Game of Life and How to Play It that “I give thanks for this perfect day. Miracle shall follow miracle, and wonders shall never cease,” is TRULY LUCKY! nn nBach’s Law: If something can go right, it must! — Marcus Bachnn