29 Days to Diva: Day 11 – Make Your Own Luck (#29DTD)

In Monopoly, a roll of the dice forces exchange between players. The game cannot continue happening without this impetus. From the beginning, the bank owns all the properties. Then, as the game progresses, your fellow board game enthusiasts start to collect the rents. As those rents get higher and higher, the risk in the game gets more serious. Rolling the dice can get a little, ahem, dicey. You still must, however, roll the dice to keep the game going forward. Sometimes it does come down to actual luck, but don’t let that end your game.

“Is it better to be lucky or good?”

Your Day 11 Challenge is to Make Today a Lucky Day.

I was just recently having a conversation with friends revolving around the question, “Is it better to be lucky or good?” The prompt sets many ideas into motion. Are we born with our allotment of luck? Can we change our luck? Do we mean “morally good” or “skilled” when we say “good”? What do we do if we feel unlucky as a person? These are all the questions I want us to spend time pondering as part of today’s challenge. I posit that luck is a snowball effect. When you are in the flow of “luck”, you seem to generate more of it no matter how much of it you had to start.

When playing Monopoly we have all seen someone who really needs a cash infusion land on a huge free parking pot. Inversely, we have also seen players land in jail time after time. Incredibly, it’s often the same person. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? We cannot change how the dice land. We’ve read this before, in singing, we cannot change where we started or how much support we got along the way. We cannot change the steps that got us to this point – that was just how we rolled the dice in the past.

Preparation Meets Opportunity

‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity’ seems an appropriate maxim for our creative careers. That is why I think we can make a little more luck for ourselves.

‘Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity’

1. Accept Responsibility

   1. We are in charge of all of our decisions as we make them and the way we feel about them. We cannot take them back. When we start to realize our ability to make more conscious decisions about what we are doing and where we are going, then we are able to make choices that put us in optimal positions. What we see as “luck” in other’s careers and lives will start to coalesce into an understanding of their preparation and positioning in the field.

2. What Would Make Me the Luckiest Diva on the Planet?

   1. Ask yourself that question. Turn your awareness to goals or ambitions that might be hiding behind a veil of fear. We often put our hopes and aspirations into the luck category when we cannot see the path to achievement. “Oh, I’d have to be really lucky to get that.” That should show you where you could do more preparation. Is it because you don’t know the gatekeepers there? Is it because you haven’t done the practice or work yet to really grab ears? Is it because you don’t know how to make your desire known for that particular experience? Make your day much luckier by deep diving into these questions.

3. Preparation is Luck in Disguise

   1. Look ahead at the opportunities and experiences you would like to have in your career. Start putting those initial steps into motion as soon as you can. Hectic, last-minute types are often the most unlucky people I know.
   2. Delaying on time sensitive circumstances will be a debit on your luck.

Expect luck to be on your side. I do not want this to get too hippie, law of attraction, on us. I want to be honest about the fact that when we focus on the lack of opportunities or luck in our life it makes our businesses side panicky. We lose our creative abilities to dream up projects and our willingness to collaborate because we are worried about someone else getting what we want for ourselves. C.S. Lewis wrote, in a different context but completely applicable here, “we are what we believe we are.” And divas, you are lucky.

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