HOW TO GET LUCKY

HOW TO GET LUCKY

The entire field of business and government has been studied and analysed to the point that, from the viewpoint of a rationalist, they look like rational enterprises – except for some unexplainable “sometimes”. But when you ask CEO's and other leaders in both fields how they got where they are, the most common answer is a non-committal shrug of "luck" for which they're stumped for a reason.  Looking back on their careers, they see — and often marvel — that at key moments they just happened to be at the right place at just the right time.

If we are being mathematical, Luck implies randomness, which means that success could just be random, too. And there's no shortage of people who feel un-lucky who''ll avow the randomness of it all. Knowing what I now know as I look back on life and the timeline of evolution so far, I agree that there's a lot of randomness going on. But that's not the whole of it.......

When you engage with Randomness, and look at it in a wider perspective, it seems to have some a sense of direction. There's a knowing somewhere that seems to know what it's doing. But it only becomes discernible when you become aware of...........

SYNCHRONICITY

Syn (Greek) = with; together

Chronos (Greek) = time.

So Synchronicity means that one thing is”with” another - together in time and context. When there's Synchronicity, there are two or more states of being co-inciding and so creating a Coincidence, in which more than one thing improbably and unpredictably happens in close proximity with another, whether that proximity be in spaces of time, feeling, state of mind or conscious awareness.

Just lift your head for a moment and look outside your window. A neighbour is walking past, a clock is ticking in your kitchen, there is a faint aroma and a lingering taste of your last meal, a bird is pecking at the lawn, an ant is scurrying across the path -- a blindingly infinite number of same-time Synchronicities are happening all around us at every moment. We are blinded to them, however, by our lack of prior experience of the events, or by the limitations of what's relevant to whatever we're currently focused upon to the exclusion of all else, and also by what we expect. A simple example of this is when we fail to recognise someone who is actually quite familiar to us, simply because we've only ever seen that person in another completely different context. Another is the famous story that American Indian medicine men did not see Columbus' three ships when they anchored. Because they had never seen a ship before, they did not see three of them now. But they were there.

Our expectations limit us almost to crippling point. Expectations prevent us, usually, from seeing just about every coincidence there is. The only ones that get through our own unconscious filtering to our awareness are ones we see as “relevant”. Expectations allow us to notice only coincidences that fall within a limited scale of “that means something to me”. For example, I never realised how many Renault motor cars there were on the roads until I bought one. Suddenly it seemed that hundreds of people had dashed down to the dealers to buy one! Of course Renaults were there all the time. I just had not noticed, until..........

Our problems arise because most of our relevance sorting is done without thinking. We allow the filtering to go on unsupervised. Coincidences are rejected as “irrelevant” by our ego, acting without any consultation with us. We just don't notice them. No wonder we miss what successful people pick up on, because they're training themselves to Notice!

Your level of conscious Awareness totally governs you ability to see and put two things together in a way you've never done before. The more generally aware you become, the more synchronicities you notice, and the more possibilities you become aware of in coincidence. And those who see coincidences before anyone else stand a better-than-even chance of getting “lucky”.

Now I come to another difference between people who notice synchronicity and those who don't. You are familiar, I'm sure, with the bumper-sticker that says “Shit Just Happens.” It is a rule of co-inciding phenomena that there is no inherent connection between any two things happening coincidentally. It is the observer that creates connection in his/her own mind. It is an inherent trait of mind to create connections that, until created, do not exist anywhere outside the realm of Possibility. If we didn't have this automatic connecting trait (“This now is like that then”), we would never learn from experience.

Most people do it at a very low level of awareness, thus joining a lot of dots that really don't belong together. And because it was mind that made that connection, and mind insists on preserving its conclusions, it will base subsequent decisions on those faulty prior connections, all the way down the line until a catastrophe occurs of sufficient strength that invites us to change our mind. Until then the result is a life disjointed and lacking direction, and most people, sadly, do not accept the invitation to change. People with higher levels of awareness learn to discern intuitively what belongs together and what doesn't. The connections they make add up to much more than just the sum of the two parts. By creating such dynamic connections, we begin to turn Possibilities into Probabilities.

How does a mug student like me work out which connections exist and which don't? I do it by risking “failure” and testing them. By putting them together “as if” they might belong, and watch what transpires. Whatever happens, I've learned something.

So, as I look at success from the viewpoint of consciousness, I see synchronicity as an alternative to luck.  Dr. Deepak Chopra defined “good luck” as “opportunity meeting preparedness”. And he went on to say that “Synchronicity is the manifestation of that.” Synchronicity and coincidences are anonymous gifts of God: developing your awareness is your contribution to noticing those gifts and their possibilities when they're dropped at your doorstep. In the process, you engage with your soul, which is the greater extension and expression of your self.

A useful working definition of synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence" — for example, you think of an old friend you haven't seen in years, and the next minute that friend calls you on the phone.  We've all experienced such moments, but they rarely change our lives or how we think of the world. But sometimes they do. I was working here at my computer in Adelaide one afternoon when my cottage literally exploded with the sound of a magpie singing full-throttle. It was standing outside my open door, looking at me and singing it's head off. I talked to it, and it sang back. That went on for several minutes, until it flew off to a nearby tree. 30 minutes later I got a telephone call from Melbourne to say my daughter had died half an hour before. Coincidence? Of course. Did it mean anything? Well, that's up to me, isn't it?

If you take the influence of Consciousness seriously, there are unexplainable attributes of success in every field that can be put to rest by recognising the presence of synchronous coincidence. Now it you're a one-sided rationalist, that just isn't going to work for you because it is irrational. But then trying to find a rational explanation for everything isn't going to work either. You disagree? Fine. I'll check back with you in, say, 15 years. OK? Reason, I think you'll find, is a tool of limited uses.

When famous success stories are recounted, you hear the same sentiments repeated over and over. 

• He (or she) made his own luck.
• The waters opened before her.
• Nothing could stop him.
• He knew he would get to the top his first day on the job. 
• She led a charmed life.

An effective way to exempt yourself from being available to“luck” is to regard it as a kind of exceptionalism that everyone else in the club who isn't smitten by it admires and envies. Everyone would like share in the luck bucket, but it never seems to come their way. My contention is that there's a reason for that.

It's a pity, I think, that synchronicity isn't taught as part of academic programmes because Synchronicity is neither irrational nor accidental.  It involves exercising an intention to take a perceived convergence and turn it into a result.  Let's say that you are working with a team on the solution to a problem. Your intention is to solve it.  The result you want is growth, learning and, hopefully, wisdom. How do you get there? The usual method is focused concentration, late hours, and sweat. But there are times when, no matter how hard and long you try, this make-it-happen approach won't get you where you want to go.

The real key is creativity, and creativity — which comes out of the blue and often strikes at just the right moment — is synchronous.  A creative approach (ie. open-minded and free of prior presumptions) delivers answers without the linkage of cause and effect.  Synchronicity operates at a much deeper level of consciousness than mere reason.  And yet it certainly isn't accidental, any more than a great painting or a magnificent symphony or the invention of the wheel are accidental. Admitting to and relying upon your potential for creative solutions is the first and strongest way to "make your own luck." 

Creativity has become such a clichéd term that it means very little anymore. Well, with the help of Colin Hayes I'm going to refresh that for you right now. Creativity is the art of bringing something forth from nothing. How's that?

The best that most people can manage is Change, which is the process of converting something to something slightly different. Some people find ways to Transform – by allowing some part of themselves to die in order to activate and access something that previously was locked in state of innate possibility. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is one such example; the grub has to die before the butterfly can be released and nurtured to life. Both Change and Transformation are, however, just different forms of something becoming something else.

Creation, however, is entirely different. Creation begins with a no-thing, a question. A typical creation-starting question is “What if....? eg. What if I put this with that? Another more common creation-starter is “What am I?” It's my contention that this question is not just common, it's universal. Each and every one of us, at some stage after we were born, asked “What am I?” We don't remember asking it, because we didn't have language at the time to formulate it in mind. But formulated, it was. An ego was developed as we gathered all the evidence we could find, and what we are now is the answer, at least so far, to that question “What am I?”. Later in our life, some of us, if we haven't done so already, will encounter a major crisis that causes us to realise “Something is dreadfully wrong! This isn't working. Maybe this is not what I am at all!”, and we will return consciously to the question “What am I?” and start exploring different avenues and lines of enquiry – this time on purpose. And the ultimate answer will be the very realisation that all your previous experiments have been running away from.

Every consciously-put question is organised in awareness to have and deliver answers.  Every question. No exceptions. Right at this moment you are getting answers to everything you've ever wondered, every question you've ever asked in your life. So when I am ever wondering about something that is happening with me, I find it useful to ask – “This thing that is happening now is an Answer – what might the question have been?” And if you stick with it, a number of possible “questions” will occur to you, because a lot of life's questions lead to the same answer, just like questions like “What is 8 + 3?” and “What comes after 10” both lead to the same answer – 11. In fact, you will find no end to the number of questions that lead to the same answer, especially questions that lead to the answer - “Me”.

If you really want to have a field day with this, you might like to try this one – “The answer is 'me' – what was the question?” Believe me, the questions that will pop to which “Me” is the answer will reveal a helluva lot to you about what you've created yourself to be and why you've chosen to be here.

And because every answer except one leads to more questions, the process never ends, until you get the ultimate answer to 'What am I?” At which point all questions will cease and silence will reign. Being confident of this hidden fact is a strong attribute of ground-breaking leaders. For such a leader there is always a quick recognition of processes that are no longer working, nor likely to work, and an eagerness to find “another way”. 

When I talk with people about synchronicity, some are startled and sceptical, until they compare notes and find out how important it has been in their own careers. Synchronicity, by matching means and ends without struggle, is a mysterious ingredient from the unconscious. It creates the appearance of what's dismissed by the unadventurous and the lazy as “good luck” by carrying you beyond the tried and true methods that just get predictable outcomes.

I am not decrying rational solutions. But at a deeper level, the answers that change people's lives - and sometimes the course of history - depend on another process. You detach from the level of the problem in order to find the level of the solution. This factor exists in both synchronicity and also in creativity.  A simple example would be a mother confronting a whining, demanding two-year-old. At the level of the problem, she would coax or scold the child, try to reason with it, say that he has to do what Mummy says, and so on.  All of these tactics stay at the level of the problem. If she goes to the level of the solution, however, the mother realises that her two-year-old is tired and needs a nap. The nap solves all the other behaviours because it frees itself of the problem and goes directly to the heart of the solution.

To activate synchronicity, the following practical steps are helpful.

1. Set scepticism aside, and start noticing synchronous happenings. “This showed up with that” – it may not mean anything at the moment, but if it does, that will become apparent at the appropriate time. But if you haven't first taken notice, nothing new will later appear to you.
2. In a calm, centred moment, ask inside for a solution. And pay attention to what shows up. I've found that synchronicity exists, waiting in the wings for you to notice it and put it to work. And you do that by standing in a question that points to solutions.
3. Have a clear and open intention. State what you want without conflict, confusion, or doubt. Then let it be so, and watch what shows up in that space.
4. Await a response—and don't be blinkered by what you expect the answer to be. What turns up may surprise you, and may even not make complete sense at first. It may be the total solution or it could be only a part of it, an interim clue you can follow to the next needed piece of the puzzle.
5. Be alert—your consciousness always responds, but it may happen unexpectedly.
6. Be open-minded. Synchronicity can use any channel, including strangers, overheard conversations, a song or a story on the radio or TV, a child, and even advice from someone you tend to ignore. This latter one has happened to me quite a few times.
7. Keep repeating the above steps until they become a habitual way of being. 

Since all of these steps involve mental and emotional clarity, taking up regular meditation is one of the strongest ways to clear the mind and open pathways to deeper levels of awareness. Activating synchronicity is a skill that becomes easier the more you practice noticing. Everyone has a level of the mind where solutions naturally arise. All you need to do is contact it, get acquainted with it and make it your ally.

Now, just lift your head for a moment and look at what's going on around you. Put yourself on notice.