It won’t be luck, it won’t be magic, it will be inevitable

Think about someone you know to whom lucky things happen naturally and consistently.

Someone who gains a greater return on their opportunities than others.

Do you think it’s magic?

Sure, maybe in the beginning when something lucky happened to them that first time. Definitely a magical moment.

But the thing about good fortune is, if happens to a person twice or more, then it can’t be luck completely. Particularly if that person is smart enough to try and retrace and recapture the exact steps of their mental process.

That’s the real difference maker. The mindset you hold before, during and after strokes of luck. Let’s tease out all three of these.

Beforehand, there’s no expectation. You’re not holding onto some old hope that a great stroke of fortune will come rescue you. You simply accept that a percentage of your success will be due to market timing, luck, fate, talent, or a combination thereof.

Meanwhile, you keep showing up to do your best work time and time again.

Okay, next is the actual moment of luck. When lady fortune comes to you with both hands full, there’s a certain way to talk to yourself to identify how you are uniquely lucky.

One is positive association. When something amazing happens, even if it was the result of luck, you still have to assume that it was the result of some degree of talent. Don’t be bashful. Somewhere you did something right.

Another talk style is persecutive. When an experience of bad luck happens, you announce that it is not a blow to your sense of the meaningfulness of life, and when an experience of good luck happens, you announce that it is not signal that the gods have shined their dine line down upon you.

Here’s one more element, which is gratitude. If you luck out, but aren’t sure what you did to deserve to end up here, you embrace your position anyway. Trusting that once you have earned it, you will figure out how to get it back.

Emerson said it best when he noted, win like you’re used to it, and lose like you enjoyed it for a change.

Now that we’ve talked about how to prepare for and experience lucky moments, the final piece is leveraging the luck you get.

After a lucky incident, you carry the momentum forward by reverse engineering what went right. Say people start coming to you to extract value from your brain on a regular basis.

That’s not blind luck, that’s a pattern you capitalize on. You can put yourself in a position where that kind luck finds you again and again. Focus on out how you got where you are.

Why did those people come to you for help? How did they find you? What did you tell them? And how did that specific advice improve their condition?

Take notes so you can replicate that in the future. Then keep doing it for as long as you’re still lucky enough to have people who want that work from you.

At that point, it won’t be luck, it won’t be magic, it will be inevitable.

How do you increase your return on luck?