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 almost like rational enterprises – except for some unexplainable “sometimes”. And 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"; they can justify their success, but 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.”

Was that just random chance, or is it possible that what we call “luck” can be influenced? If so, by what; if not, how do we explain the phenomenon of a particular level of “luck” repeatedly showing up in some people’s lives?

If we are being mathematical, Luck implies randomness, which means that success and failure could just be random, too. And there's no shortage of people who, lucky and un-lucky, will avow the chanciness of it all. Knowing what little I know about quantum physics, and as I look back on life and the timeline of evolution so far, I agree that there's a lot of randomness going on. Some things happen simply because there’s a chance that they might.

But that's not the whole of it.......

When you engage with Randomness, and step back to look at it in a wider perspective, there seems to be some evidence of pattern and direction. I remain open to the possibility that there's a knowing somewhere that seems to know what it's doing. It becomes more 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 in a similar context, 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 space, time, feeling, state of mind or conscious awareness. It’s that seemingly chance proximity of previously spaced-apart elements that mysteriously generates a powerhouse of new possibilities.

This same principle shows up cosmically. When a continuum is bent back upon itself and the two previously wide-apart elements at either end of the line are brought into close proximity, Convergence happens and – Kaboom!!!

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 can be blinded to them, however, by

o   overfamiliarity with them,

o   by our lack of prior experience of the events,

o   by the limitations of our mind unilaterally deciding what's relevant to whatever we're currently focused upon to the exclusion of most else,

o   and also by expectations we may have about what we think ought to be happening next.

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 – Sorry, I didn’t expect to see you here. Another example 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 preconceived expectations can limit us down to crippling point. Our prior expectations prevent us, usually, from seeing just about every coincidence there is. The only ones that get through our own robotic filtering to our awareness are ones we recognise either as “relevant”, or those that are so glaringly at odds with what “should” be happening that we get slapped awake.

Previously programmed 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 was just blind to them until Renaults became relevant to me.

Some of our problems with seeing opportunities or possibilities arise because most of our relevance sorting is done without conscious consideration. We remain largely naïve about the number and density of filters we have intervening between us and what’s actually happening, and we allow the filtering to go on unchallenged and unsupervised. Coincidences fly past unnoticed, rejected as “irrelevant” by our ego, acting without any consultation with us. In our self-imposed absence from the office, we miss what successful people pick up on, because they're training themselves to be present and available, and take Notice!

Our personal prevailing level of conscious Awareness broadly governs our ability to see and put two things together in a way we've never done before. The more aware that we are and the more observant we train ourselves to be, the more attention we bring to every moment, the more widely sensitive we become to everything that’s happening inside and outside of us, and the less hidebound we are by preconceptions of how things should be, the more synchronicities we notice, and the more possibilities we become aware of in coincidence. And those who see coincidences and possible future connections before others stand a better-than-even chance of getting “lucky”.

You and I both used to be like that. As babies and toddlers we brought our full attention to every moment. We noticed what was going on inside and out. We were sensitive to all of it. But as the months and years passed we ever-so-gradually sold out on our self and went along to get along with less sensitive grownups.

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 “meaning” and “connection” in his/her own mind. It is an inherent trait of mind to create connections between chance events that, until created, do not exist anywhere other than the realm of Possibility. If we didn't have this automatic connecting trait (“This now is like that then”), we could never learn anything from experience. The ability to connect dots is a necessary tool in our early development, but only for a limited range of uses – a screwdriver is an essential item to have in the bottom drawer of the kitchen, but not for cutting the Sunday roast.

Most people join dots at a very low median level of awareness, which may be why they connect recalled moments that really don't belong together. And because it was mind that made that connection, and mind insists on being right about, and preserving its conclusions, it will base subsequent decisions on those faulty prior connections, all the way down the line until the whole thing falls over or grinds to a halt; a catastrophe occurs of sufficient strength that often invites and later urges us to change our mind. Until then the result is a life disjointed and lacking direction, based on mistakenly false connections, conclusions and meanings. Most people, sadly, do not accept the invitations to change, and many refuse the later imperatives; they’ll do anything but change their minds. Unfortunately, that’s a built-in weakness of the mind – when it comes to its own ideas, concepts, judgments, opinions and beliefs, it doesn’t naturally mature with age and experience. All minds, even the most evolved ones, hate change. Your ego will do just about anything to avoid losing face. I just thought it’s about time you know.

People with higher levels of awareness learn to discern more intuitively what belongs together and what doesn't, and they pay attention to those messages. They then ride the impetus for synchronicity in two ways:

1.    They look at the flow of what’s going on, and how it’s working, and they consciously, deliberately and gratefully step into that space, merge themselves into that flow of “how it’s working here” and, by their presence, expand that space.

2.    They make valid connections between vibrant coincidences that, when introduced to each other, add up to much more than just the sum of the two parts. By creating such dynamic connections, we can begin to turn Possibilities into Probabilities. We become creative -- on purpose.

How does a mug student like me work out which connections are valid and which aren't? I do it by risking “failure” and testing them. By putting them together “as if” they might belong and watch what transpires, I get to learn something, about them, about the world evolving, and about me. How can that ever be a “fail”?

The surest way to fail is to spend your days avoiding failure. It’s a great recipe for Un-luckiness.

Dr. Deepak Chopra defined “good luck” as “opportunity meeting preparedness”. You’ll notice that in this view, preparedness is not an absolute cause/effect guarantee of “success”, but it invites luck by offering ideal conditions for germination. Dr. Chopra then went on to say that “Synchronicity is the manifestation of that (meeting of opportunity and deliberate readiness).” Synchronicity and coincidences are anonymous gifts of God: developing your awareness is your required contribution. Your conscious awareness primes you to notice and recognise 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 eternal self – your direct connection with eternal abundance.

Another working definition of synchronicity that I find useful is "coincidence pregnant with possibility" — 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 had many such moments, but they rarely change our lives or how we think of the world. But sometimes they do.

One of the most spectacular that happened to me --- 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. Without thinking about it, I began humming the Beatles’ song “Blackbird”. 30 minutes later I got a telephone call from Melbourne to say my daughter had died half an hour before. Coincidence? Of course. A few minutes later an old friend rang me out of the blue. I told him the news, and of the song “Blackbird” popping into my head. He jokingly said “Well, magpies are not really blackbirds”. I agreed. When we finished our conversation, the magpie returned with a crow, both singing to me. Did it mean anything? Well, that's only up to me, isn't it? But I did see a lot of magpies and crows in pairs around on the day of her funeral in Melbourne. This begs my next question……..

Can we human beings have subtler-level influence on surreal non-things like coexistence. We certainly can, but not from denser levels of being that are ruled by our egos. Which is why my answer to the next question – “How can I influence luck?” would be – “Who wants to know?”

If you take the possible influence of Consciousness seriously, there are unexplainable attributes of success in every field that can be put to rest by recognising the co-presence of synchronous coincidence, preparedness and apparent attraction. I think you know, as well as I do, people in our lives we’ve labelled as “lucky”, and others as “unlucky”. They seem to be a magnet for what similar experiences recurrently befall to them. Now if you're a one-sided rationalist, then irrational events like synchronicity, coincidence, chance and attraction just aren't going to satisfy you. But then trying to find a rational explanation for everything isn't going to work either. Logic and reason are wonderful tools, but of limited uses. Try using logic and reason to shift a politician’s righteousness.

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

•    He (or she) made his own luck.

•    The waters parted 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.

Unfortunately, none of the above offer any real insight into the “how?” of the matter. They remind me more of a verbal shoulder-shrug, abdicating a desire to actually dig deeper and maybe become more proactive in our own fortunes. 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 to share in the luck club, but it never seems to come their way. My contention is that there may be reasons for that. Rather than wait for lightning to strike, we may have to do something in order to qualify for the chance.

“What possible reasons could there be that I’m not lucky?” you may ask.

“What do you think?” I would reply.

Write down every answer that comes to you for the next 21 days. Then pretend that you are a very good, close friend who isn’t afraid to speak plainly, and review your list of “reasons why”. Then ask “How are these reasons working for me? Are they in my favour, or against it?” Then – “Who is feeding these reasons?”

It's a pity, I think, that synchronicity isn't taught as part of academic programmes because Synchronicity is neither completely irrational nor accidental.  We are part of the equation. It’s part of the human condition, and how we handle it has some real bearing on how effective and satisfied we are with living. At the very least, we can regain some sense of personal authorship by exercising intent to take a perceived convergence and do what we can to turn it into a beneficial result.  

Let's say that you are working with a team, at work or in a social setting, on the solution to a problem. Your intention is to solve it.  The result you want is mutual growth, learning, self-discovery and, hopefully, wisdom. How do you get there? The usual method is by exerting 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 very efforting gets in the road. As Yoda said in “Star Wars” – Try not. Either do, or not do.

The key you’re looking for, the key that will work for everyone, is a mostly unrecognised truth that each of us is Creating what we each want. We are “create-ures” creating all the time, but until some spoilsport like me points it out, we either don’t notice it, or we flat-out deny it. That doesn’t matter. The truth is we are always creating. The question is, “What are we creating?” Answer: We’re creating what we get. The problem is that when this is brought to an unlucky victim’s notice, he/she rejects it outright. Not possible! The responsibility is always something or someone else’s. Whether the outcomes are desirable or undesirable, we will not go responsible for our contributions to what we get (Aw, shucks! I musta just got lucky) If only we would look more closely at how we are creating (usually unconsciously by default instead of awarefully on purpose), we might discover the viruses in our programming that bring us up short of our nobler intentions.

What is Creativity? The notion 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. Something gets modified but retains much of its character in the process. The act of Creating, on the other hand, involves Transformation, a complete break with what went before it. Creating brings into being a completely new idea and direction; what no longer works is let go to pass into history. What emerges is a completely new approach, a new context, a new idea, or coincidence of ideas, that open up a completely new packet of possibilities.

Coming as it does out of the blue and striking at just the perfect moment — creativity arises from a level of potential it shares with Synchronicity. A creative approach (ie. open-minded and free of prior presumptions) delivers inspirations out of nowhere, without bondage to the linkage of cause and effect, which belong to lower levels of being. Synchronous things happen because they have a chance to. Lucky people create chances. Synchronicity operates at a much higher/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 exploring your potential for creative solutions and looking to improve them is the first and strongest way to "make your own luck."

Some people creatively find ways to do something radically different from change. They get involved in Transformation – by allowing some part of what they’re working on to die in order to activate and access something that previously was locked away in state of innate, but hidden, possibility. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is one such example; the grub has to die before the butterfly potential can be released and nurtured to life. If Change was the only option available, there would be no butterflies – just a growing population of slower, fatter, geriatric grubs.

Both Change and Transformation are forms of something becoming something else. We humans are uniquely equipped to be the agents of both. Creation, however, is radically different, both in how you go about it, and in results. Creation begins with a no-thing, a question that invites possible “answers”. A typical creation-starting question is “What if....? eg. What if I put this with that? What if I try another approach? If there is more to this than we can see right now, what might that be?  Another more common creation-starter is “What am I?” It's my contention that this powerful question is not just common, it's universal, and may well have preceded what’s called The Big Bang. Each and every one of us, at some stage after we were born, has asked “What am I?” – maybe many times over. We don't remember asking it in the first instance because we didn't have language at the time to remember it in mind. But formulated it was.  As “answers” we gathered whatever experiences were delivered to us, our reactions and conclusions we cobbled together from them, and all the corroborating evidence we could find. We put all those “This is me” assumptions into an operating system called Ego, which is what we decided to go with as the answer to What am I? -- at least so far.

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 again, this time consciously, to the question “What am I?” and start exploring different avenues and lines of enquiry – this time deliberately and consciously on purpose.

Every question consciously-put to a Greater Awareness is received by that Knowing from which you will get answers. It’s your job to listen. Some will be yelled at you, one way or another; some will whisper to you on the waft of a breeze or the lilt of a song, or a chance remark, or….. That’s how life works. 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. But are you hearing? Are you seeing? Are you tuned in? Sometimes we have to stop listening and hear; stop looking and see.

If you’re presently confused about what’s happening in your life, it may well be that you’ve simply forgotten a question you once asked. So, when I am ever wondering about something that is happening with me, I find it useful to work backwards by asking – “What I am experiencing now is an Answer – what might the question have been?” And if you try this and stick with it for at least 21 days, 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 I find myself in a space where I’m suffering as a result of something I’ve done and its consequences, I’ll immediately assume that at a time when I needed to make a choice, the question may have been What is the experience of taking this route? And everything that has happened since, and how I’m feeling now is an answer to that question. So I got the answer! Time to change the question and explore another set of experiences.

Questions are creative when they invite life experiences as “answers”. Since the questions are yours, you – no-one else - become the creator of your life and its experiences. You’ve gotta be happy about that. Just keep asking questions of Awareness, be patient, stay aware and keep breathing.

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 of life is a strong attribute of ground-breaking leaders. They hold a vision created out of heightened awareness and inspired by the progress of evolution. They put themselves into the flow of some quantum energy that is grander than just them. Moreover, they are eager to share their freedom from disillusionment and resentment with anyone who wants to be something more than this. They may even quote Neil Gaiman (or something similar): “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing”.

Do any of our present would-be leaders evidence such grandness? Sadly, I can’t see it. At best, they are pretending; at worst they are wilfully falsifying. Without a vision we are, all of us, prey to anyone with a hidden agenda.

Effective leaders, I’ve found, quickly recognise processes that are no longer working, nor likely to work, and they reveal a self-generated eagerness to ditch anything past its use-by date and find “another way”. 

A lot of would-be leaders show up around election time claiming to have “The Answer”. Treat them and the ideas they’re pushing with healthy scepticism. When you run a magnifying glass over what they’re offering, you’ll usually find their promises amount, at best, only to some kind of cosmetic amendments, and they’re eager for you to elect them on a promise to do it for you. Well, promises are only made when the promiser seriously doubts that he/she will deliver. And God knows we’ve had enough change, thank you --- enough to find that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Look further afield for someone outside the mould who’s painting pictures of transformation and road maps to get there. And be prepared to have to give up something to make space for the new, and to pitch in to collaborate in bringing rebirth about.

I look around for such a leader now, and don’t find anything likely. That’s probably a “not yet”. Things haven’t got bad enough yet for enough people to take on the challenges of real change. It’s a matter of timing, which is – synchronicity.

 -------------------------

When I talk with people about the existence of synchronicity as a reality, some are startled and sceptical, until they compare notes and find out how important “luck” has been at some time in their own lives. Yet when such people are matching means and ends without struggle, Synchronicity appears as a mysterious ingredient from the unconscious realm. It becomes conscious when they notice it. Its appearance, dismissed by the unadventurous and the lazy as “good luck”, carries those who have prepared for it to new horizons, way beyond the tried and true methods that just get predictable outcomes, one tired step after another.

I am not decrying rational procedures and outcomes. In a world that works for everyone, there’s an essential place for practicality and coherent, consequential solutions. Building a supersonic jetliner and planning the weekly shopping are both examples of the effective application of logic and reason based on past experience and logical assumptions. But at another level, the elements that change people's lives - and sometimes the course of history - depend on another process that goes beyond the limits of what’s reasonable. I’m thinking, for two examples, of Einstein’s research around his theory of relativity, and of the discovery over a century ago of the existence of quantum physics. Any realisation that there could be more to existence than what we know already is, itself, outside the box. So we have to get out of our boxes to even look at the non-rational levels of reality, otherwise we might just as well use an optical microscope to look at radio waves.

One entry point to this new box-busting process, may be for you to detach your attention from the level of The Problem, and feel around in the level of Possible Solutions. Let go of every urge to automatically and immediately match a fresh idea to the problem and find reasons why “It won’t work”. Let that habit go. It shuts down space for any extra-ordinary inspiration to show up. It puts you right back in a cell with The Problem and contracts the exit orifice. Stay oriented to solutions and unwrap your space.

This expansive, change-of-level 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 A 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 unlocks both mother and child from head-butting each other, frees the child from the problem and goes directly to the heart of a solution.

A similar example of Problem-Level solving is in the way we treat mental problems and addictions in the public health system. Unless very lucky, a sufferer gets b-grade practitioners who use drugs and/or electro-therapy to alleviate symptoms and get them out of the medical system. That solves the problem of easing the patient’s immediate suffering and the problem of getting the patient out of a bureaucracy with too few beds, strapped resources and inadequate nursing staff. But it doesn’t come even close to addressing the psychological and social causes and healing of the patient’s actual problems. They’re discharged, unaddressed back onto the streets. Epic fail.

To get back to Synchronicity, I’ve found the following steps to be helpful in activating the potential dynamics needed for transformative solving. In no particular order…..

1.              Set scepticism aside, and start just noticing synchronous happenings. “This showed up with that” Don’t dismiss anything as inconsequential, or go looking for any “meaning”– just notice that two things happened together, leave it at that and move on to the next “blip”. Develop a habit of noticing parallel occurrences – processes or events happening at the same time -- whether meaningful or not.

Now you may be asking yourself Why bother to do something that may seem so pointless and silly? “Pointless and silly” are critical judgments from your rational mind. Just let the self-criticism go, nod “Thankyou. I don’t yet know, but it will come to me” and keep doing it anyway.

The habit of simply noticing has a threefold advantage – firstly to sharpen your general awareness of what’s going on around you. Secondly it reawakens a perception of yourself as the creator of what you decide is reality and gets the creative juices flowing. Thirdly, the new habit opens opportunities for a noticed synchronicity to produce a new idea. It may not always be evident at that moment, but if there is any possibility in it, that will become apparent at the appropriate time. But if you haven't first taken notice, nothing new is likely later to appear to you.

2.              We often do not know what to do about something but, since there’s nothing new under the sun, admit that you don’t yet know, but you know that the knowing is available. Put out for a solution. In a calm, centred moment, ask humbly from the soul of your being for possible options. And pay attention to what shows up. I've found many times that synchronicity exists, waiting in the wings for me, by noticing it, to trigger it and put it to work. And you can do that, too, by standing in a question that points to possible, rather than probable, solutions. I’ve been doing it long enough now for standing in a question to become a habit – one that serves me well on many, many occasions.

3.              Have a clear and open intention. State what you want – or something better -- without conflict, confusion, or doubt. Then let it be so (So be it) and watch what shows up in that space.

4.              Await a response—and don't let yourself 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 might be only a part of it, an interim clue you can follow to the next needed piece of the puzzle. Whatever it is, that will show up in good time.

5.              Be alert—your consciousness always responds, but in its own time. Epiphanies have a history of happening unexpectedly.

6.              Stay, as much as you can, open-minded. Synchronicity can use any channel, including strangers, overheard conversations, a song or a story on the radio or TV, a child’s remark, and even advice from someone you tend to ignore. This latter one has happened to me quite a few times. A valid message is sometimes delivered by an unlikely messenger. Get to know your personal biases and practice putting them on hold while you listen for messages that may matter for you.

7.              Keep repeating the above steps until they become an habitual way of being. 

Since all of these steps involve mental and emotional clarity, practice centring yourself as many times during the day as you think to (it only takes a second or two). Taking up a regular meditation habit is one of the strongest ways to clear the mind and open pathways to deeper levels of awareness. Conscious awareness generates synchronicity; 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. Then explore ways to uplevel your awareness. Deliberate practice is an essential start.

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

Who knows, you could get lucky.