This actually would have been a more appropriate entry on 3/17/07, since the topic of today concerns luck. Luck isn't monopolized by the Irish, you know! Luck is what you make of it, to be honest. It's really not something as random as you believe. I've seen the word luck defined as "a chance happening, or that which happens beyond a person's control." OK, believe that and you've essentially sentenced yourself to floating along the jet stream of life aimlessly. No wonder you feel adrift, out of sorts and out of control! Believe it or not, I completely disagree with the definition, and below is an explanation as to why.
Luck is what great motivational speaker Anthony Robbins refers to as an acronym: "Labor Under Correct Knowledge." Luck really is probability taken personally. Put another way, luck is really about believing that you're lucky. A study was performed where people were put in a room with a $20.00 bill on the floor. Those that described themselves as lucky found the cabbage, as opposed to those who didn't think of themselves as particularly lucky. Jean Paul Satre and Sigmund Freud both believed that a belief in luck has more to do with a locus of control for events in one's life, providing an escape from personal responsibility. According to their findings, those who claimed their life was the result of "bad luck" were in fact living risky lifestyles. Those who felt blessed by "good luck" invariably turned out to be individuals who had a cheerful outlook and satisfying social relationships.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman agrees. In his book, The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life, The Four Essential Principles (Miramax 2003), he espouses the theory that lucky people think and behave in ways that create good fortune in their lives. "Lucky" people find fortune because they see it, they're open to it...the "it" being possiblity in general. "Most people are just not open to what's around them," Wiseman says. "That's the key to it."
"OK," you say. "You suck, Stacey. That's a load of crap. You cannot possibly tell me that I didn't have bad luck the other day when [some form of tragedy] befell me." Oh yeah? I would have felt that way back in February of 2000, when in the space of one week I lost (A) my then-boyfriend; (B) my job; and (C) my beloved best friend, my Nanny. I would have told you back then that I was the unluckiest person in the world. In fact, everything was a struggle, and I felt like I was walking uphill both ways in life. But you know what? Looking back, I realize that I was extremely lucky. HOW??? First, the job I worked totally sucked. I hated my boss, but loved my paycheck and the fact that I worked at a nice firm on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. I never, ever thought I'd get paid better anywhere else, so I kept trying to hang on to a very yucky work environment, rationalizing that I needed to stay there to pay off my mountainload of student debt. When I was downsized, along with three other members of my team, following my firm's having lost an account post-business merger, I was devastated. However, within a matter of weeks, I was working much closer to my home, and...surprise...I earned better money. I also went from working in a tight little cube to an office all my own. Would I ever have looked for the new job had I not lost the old one? Back then, the way my life was going, where my head was at, probably not; I'd have been too busy running around like a maniac with a long commute and a million things on my mind.
And to say that losing my then-boyfriend was a blessing in disguise is an understatement. He looked, acted, and even SOUNDED like Carol O'Connor from All in the Family (well, a much younger version). No Casanova, OK? It's all so easy for me to say, "What was I thinking?" now. But then, I was too blind to see the good fortune in a creature like that deep-sixing a sad, unbalanced, unfair relationship like the one we had going on. Back then I couldn't see the great fortune and luck in the experience of being dumped. (Do you know that following his discovery of my engagement last summer, he actually told a mutual friend that he was sorry he let me go, that he'd never loved anyone like he loved me??? Ha!! Living well IS the best revenge, thank you very much dahhling. (As I channel Ivana Trump to the max).
Losing my Nanny wouldn't seem like such a lucky thing. She was my best friend, my protector, and the spunkiest, funnest woman in her eighties ever. But you know what? She suffered at the end, in a hospital bed, filling up with water as her body shut itself down. I cried, I ached, and I barely function watching her suffer. I got horrifically sick from the stress. On the last day I saw her alive, she assured me that when she passed she was going to a better place, and that we would all be released from our suffering, she and I. And although getting on the other side of that horrific hump of an experience took a while, and included the help of a fabulous grief counselor, do you know what? It's better now than it was when the misfortune struck me in 2000. It got better far sooner than now. And my Nanny, knowing her, would be extremely proud of me for moving on. She would never have wanted to suffer one picosecond more...it wouldn't have done anything, changed anything. (This is also a woman who was so common sense about things, so detached from drama, that when my mother asked her what to do with her body once she passed, she shrugged and said, "Throw it away, Sandra." Of course, we didn't do that!)
Was that horrible week in February 2000 a lucky week? Looking back, it was. I lost an awful lot of negativity and earned myself a better future. No more grief. No more subpar work environment for what appeared to be a fab salary. No more, "Stacey, get me a beer, huh?" Back then, I didn't believe myself to be lucky, so I missed the proverbial $20.00 bill lying on the floor, waiting to be seen (i.e., the relief from grief at some point down the road, the better job/dating opportunities all around me). Believe that luck is not a random strike of supernatural lightning. You channel your own luck, your own opportunities, by what you actively look for and what you actively filter out. Change your outlook, change your destiny...and change your luck!
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