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How You Create Your Own Luck

By Bayo Ogunmupe
14 November 2015   |   3:12 am
IT is generally believed in this country that success is luck, that is to say, you need luck to succeed in life. Although science or research disagrees with that belief, like religion people still believe in luck all the same. However, science believes that you can create your own luck. However, believing in luck stems…

SuccessIT is generally believed in this country that success is luck, that is to say, you need luck to succeed in life. Although science or research disagrees with that belief, like religion people still believe in luck all the same. However, science believes that you can create your own luck.

However, believing in luck stems from superstitions and many people are superstitious. But champions can create their own luck by being quick to meet a need when they see it. Champions are mainly solution providers who see ahead beyond present problems. So when champions meet identified needs, they position themselves for good fortune.

For the famous writer, Richard Branson, the stupendously successful businessman, being lucky means being a creative workaholic. Beginning his life with Virgin Records, Branson simply gave his customers the product and service, which they wanted. The author presented a well-thought out relationship between risk, opportunity and a commitment to excellence in service delivery. Branson’s public relations mantra is: be on the move. Be visible, take risks, be creative, get yourself heard and take the fight to them before they take it to you.

Another example is the New York City mayor, Rudy Giuliani. He forced his face into the consciousness of the world by his actions in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City, United States. Before then, Giuliani had spent seven drab years as city mayor and was sliding into oblivion. However, by stepping into the podium and coordinating responses to the attack, he changed his luck.

Giuliani’s handling of the disaster became the defining moment in his public service career. He had arrived at the scene within minutes of the second plane crash and he immediately took charge of the rescue operations. Thus, he saved no fewer than 20,000 lives. This lack-lustre New York city mayor made his own luck by seeing a need and addressing it.

According to the inventor of telephone, Graham Bell, preparation is the key to success above all else. Those who do not prepare for success, eventually fail. Fortune does not only favour the brave, it also favours the prepared. Failure prepared Abraham Lincoln to save the United States from disintegration. After contesting and failing thirteen times, Lincoln muttered, ‘‘I shall prepare myself for better luck in the future.” Like he said, fortune smiled on him as he contested the fourteenth time, and winning the greatest prize of all, the presidency of the United States.

Indeed, fortune favours the prepared more than the bold, for it does not announce its arrival, it does not wait for those who are not ready to receive it. Those who wait till they are thirsty before digging their well usually die of thirst. In order to make your luck, you must be in perpetual state of preparation. Champions prepare themselves mentally by increasing their stock of knowledge. They know that no one can do more than he knows, which is why when luck smiles on them, it meets them fully ready.

The way to beat the competition is to think ahead of your competitors. To boost your chances of being lucky, you must commit quality time to thinking and generating solutions to nagging problems. Thomas Jefferson was the third president of the United States. He was deemed lucky by his contemporaries for everything seemed to fall on his laps without effort. He was the author of the United States Declaration of Independence. He was elected the U.S. Second vice president who went on to become the third president by beating his principal’s second term bid. But according to him, the secret of his luck was his commitment to hard work. As America’s first philosopher king, it was Jefferson’s encyclopaedic memory that enabled Americans to prefer him to one term president John Adams. Jefferson said, ‘‘the harder I work, the luckier I get.”

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