Luck is No Accident
Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life and Career
Some people are luckier than others.
How many of you believe this? Why do you believe it? Are you one of the lucky ones? Or does luck seem to pass you by? And just what is luck, anyhow?
According to John D. Krumboltz and Al S. Levin, there’s no such thing as luck. In fact, they shirk the use of the word in their book Luck Is No Accident: Making the Most of Happenstance in Your Life and Career , opting instead to use “happenstance”, a term with less baggage. Krumboltz and Levin argue that happenstance isn’t something that randomly effects us — it’s something that we create out of the chance situations and encounters that run through our lives:
The key is to recognize these opportunities and to act on them. Here are some techniques the authors suggest we can use to turn happenstance to our advantage.
"Have you ever noticed that unplanned events — chance occurrences — more often determine your life and career choices than all the careful planning you do? A chance meeting, a broken appointment, a spontaneous vacation trip, a “fill-in” job, a newly discovered hobby — these are the kinds of experiences — happenstances — that lead to unexpected life directions and career choices.
Dale Carnegie once said, “Happiness doesn’t depend on ay external conditions — it is governed by your mental attitude.” Some people might dismiss this as bunk, but research bears it out. Don’t worry about circumstances beyond your control. Learn to control the things you can, including your reaction to the world around you. How you respond to an unfortunate event is often more important than the event itself. Krumboltz and Levin write:
You have control over your own actions and how you think about the events that impact your life. None us can control the outcomes, but your actions can increase the probability that desired outcomes will occur. There are no guarantees in life. The only guarantee is that doing nothing will get you nowhere.
Luck is No AccidentInaction is the surest path to failure. You cannot succeed if you never try. My father used to tell me this, but I never took his advice to heart. I became an expert at doing nothing, at never daring to pursue my dreams. Over the past two years, I’ve begun to overcome this fear, have begun to act. I’ve begun to make my own luck.
Luck Is No Accident is a short book. Nothing in it is groundbreaking or revolutionary. Yet its common-sense wisdom is a powerful motivator. Whenever I read this book — I’ve read it three times in the past year — I cannot help but come away inspired, ready to make more of my situation, and to try new things. Is it worth owning? Perhaps not. But if you’re the sort of person who wonders why good things only happen to other people, I certainly encourage you to borrow a copy from your local library.
About the Author: This article was written by John Roth who is the Founder of www.getrichslow.org. Get Rich Slowly — recently named most inspiring money blog by Money magazine — is devoted to sensible personal finance.
This is a book about attaining success through being human, in the freest sense of the word, embracing uncertainties, changes, and mistakes as opportunities.
It's about redefining success as a lifelong work in progress rather than a set goal. If you can begin to see your future as Krumboltz and Levin advise, staying open-minded and letting chance occurrences, or happenstances guide you, the potential for learning experiences that improve the direction your life takes becomes a wide-open horizon.
|
