We all want a little luck in our lives, right?
Check that. We want buckets of the stuff. We want luck stalking us and spamming us and kneeling at our feet.
But what is luck, really?
Some would have you believe that luck is a mythical beast, and that those who say they are lucky are just lying to make the rest of us feel better.
Some would persuade you that luck is kind of a meandering and vaguely dipsy do-good fairy, whose Wand of Fortune makes a random appearance every now and again (but is never to be relied upon for a star turn at children’s parties.)
But most of us would agree that luck is out there, somewhere. We just wish there was a way to summon it to us (heeeeeere lucky lucky lucky! Come ‘ere luck! Here boy!) and make it stay (down luck, down! gooood boy.) Ok, enough with the doggy talk already.
But yesterday, I was standing at the kitchen sink, thinking about the word luck while I stared at my boxes (did you know that moving house is supposed to be more traumatic than divorce? And I have moved so many times that I should be in permanent therapy really. Seriously. I can’t even tell you how many times I have moved because then you may think I’m a little strange or something. AND I have a nine week old baby and 2 other kids. Feel free to send me chocolate. Or red wine.)
Anyway, I was rolling the word “luck” around in my head and noting the ways that we use it in our conversation. Because very often the way we use a word gives us a powerful insight into the nature of the word itself.
So, when we use the word luck, we say things like “We’re in luck” or “I’m feeling lucky” or “Oh, that was lucky”. An object can be a lucky charm. Or we can look forward to “My Lucky Day”.
And it occurred to me that we seem to have an understanding that luck is truly a state of being. We are in it or feeling it or being it.
It is not something that “happens” to us, any more than happiness just “happens” to us, or fear just “happens” to us.
It is a state of mind, a feeling that we can choose to feel.
If my hubby buys me flowers for example, this makes me ridiculously happy (mainly because this just isn’t something he normally does.)
But he doesn’t have to buy me flowers for me to feel happy. In fact, he doesn’t have to do anything at all for me to feel happy. He could even buy me flowers and I could feel miserable because he never buys me flowers and the one time that he does buy me flowers only makes the times that he doesn’t really stand out.
So if we can choose to feel happy despite our circumstances, then equally we can choose to feel lucky. To be in luck, in the state of luck. So why wait for something to happen in order to justify the feeling? That’s like saying “I’ll just wait for something to make me happy first before I feel it.”
(And there are many, many people who do this all the time. Ironically, they are often the same people who are total ninjas at feeling fear without any justification at all.)
So why do you need evidence to appear before you can feel lucky? Perhaps feeling lucky first is the best way to get more of it?
Do you have a back up plan lurking somewhere?
Is it propping you up?
Is it standing by your side, stroking your brow?
You can almost hear it whispering a creeping sleepiness that causes your ambition to get all snoozy and want to crawl back to bed and snuggle under the blankets.
You get comfortable. You stretch and yawn and pat your inflatable life raft reassuringly.
Yup, still full of air.
And so you drift off to sleep.
But listen!
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss…….
How do you expect to face the giant swells ahead of you in a life raft with a slow leak?
Your back up plan isn’t designed to hold your purpose.
It can’t possibly contain those wriggly, restless passions that keep you awake at night, snoring in your ear, stealing away that comfy blanket and squatting beligerently on your chest.
Your purpose needs ballast. Something weighty with a solid platform. How do you expect to surf tall and straight on a flaccid fall back that has had most of the air sucked out of it?
Your purpose wants room to accommodate others, those you can serve, inspire and encourage. How could you ever hope to shift them, move them, transport them, when your safe little boat has barely enough room in it for you?
No. You want to cross an ocean? You need a ship!
Never rely on your back up plan to house the monster that is the thing that you really want to do.
Because even if you hit that iceberg and go down in a watery blaze of glory, that little life boat will only get you so far. It may prevent you from freezing over in despair. It might rescue you from suffocating from failure.
But it sure as hell isn’t going to be enough to support the journey you really want to take. That you must make.
Are you clinging to your back up plan? Or are you focused on launching, maintaining, repairing and clinging deliriously to your ship?
I remember standing next to the diving block, staring down at the strong smelly pool water, and being scared out of my mind.
There was no way I was going to jump in.
I could see some of my school friends taking the leap next to me, but they were so much taller that me. (I’m only 5 feet tall now, imagine how small I was when I was 7 years old.) They were more experienced, had stronger arms…and besides I couldn’t stand getting water up my nose either.
I remember stepping up onto the block and the teacher cajoling me from the side of the pool. “Jump!” he cried out.
And then a thought occurred to me.
Ok, I’ll jump. But I’ll jump as close to the edge as I can, so I can hold on to the side of the pool. That way there’s no way that I’ll drown.
I closed my eyes and threw my tiny body off the diving block, aiming for the edge…
Next thing I knew I was being pulled from the water, a mouth filled with blood, while one of my precious little teeth floated away to the bottom of the pool.
That day I learnt some valuable lessons about leaping into the unknown.
- Lesson #1 : Expecting something dreadful to happen, usually makes it pretty damn certain that something dreadful is going to happen.
- Lesson #2: Forget your excuses – you don’t need to know how to swim to be free to jump. Just get the hang of floating first.
- Lesson #3: Ironically it’s safer to jump where the water is deepest.
- Lesson #3: Don’t half leap into something, thinking you have a back up plan when things go wrong. If you’re going to jump, just bloody well do it.
- Lesson #4: Have faith – because even if you have nothing to put under your pillow, the Tooth Fairy still rocks up. Awesome.
So tell me, what’s stopping you from jumping in at the deep end?
“One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.” ~ Anthony Robbins
Did you know that by the end of January, most people will have failed to keep most (if not all) of their New Year’s resolutions?
So what happens to all that excitement and burning motivation? Why do our great intentions fizzle out so easily?
Perhaps we aim too high. Or maybe the idea is there but the way just isn’t clear – so instead of just picking up and pointing ourselves in the right direction, we feel the fear and creep back to the squidgy spot we were before.
(And it’s still warm. Hmmm, sometimes it’s just more cosy to not have to change anything at all.)
But from my experience, there is one thing that can totally make or break how successful you are at maintaining the momentum of a new intention. continue reading…
Thank you!
After my recent Help Haiti Blog Challenge, I am honoured to announce that we raised $120 for Partners In Health.
This was a project that could so easily have missed the transition from thought to action. But what we don’t do, doesn’t matter. And I’m so grateful that we did something.
So massive, unadulterated, chocolate-flavoured hugs of gratitude to everyone who sang along with me for Haiti. (And to Kelly Diels and Danielle La Porte for kicking the idea into the world – you girls rock.)
‘Happiness is a journey, not a destination’.
The beginning of any year can be a turbulent but invigorating place.
It is the time when we pick over the year that was, piercing out the ruts and cracks that have tripped us up and held us back and tied us down; bad habits, unresourceful mindsets, unconciously poor attention to our lifestyles, our bodies, our families and our networks.
But we also have an opportunity to plan anew – to start building something of value instead of focusing on the tearing down of stuff that hasn’t served us.
There is always so much potential nestling in a New Year. We can dream big and wide. We can bust the cubicle apart. We can even plan to dominate the world.
But I want you to think for a moment about those times in your life where something that you have planned to do did not turn out the way you intended. continue reading…
I’m a great believer in not watching the news.
Especially since I became a parent. There is a British comedian called Al Murray (aka ‘The Pub Landlord‘) who observes that the minute you have children you suddenly find yourself more right wing. (In context this is really funny – sadly you won’t get the joke here.) The often grotesque and explicit images fed to us via the media – particularly those involving children -literally make me physically sick. I feel that twisting, clawing, eating up inside that comes from observing people in distress…and I don’t like that feeling.
BUT if there is a cry for help, I do not turn away and do nothing.
I have written recently about the idea of contrast and we can use how negative events in our lives as a defining mechanism – as a way for us to observe the devastation and to launch within ourselves the desire for something better.
So when a disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake takes place, it is for us to take it in. And then to focus intensely on making the situation better.
While the mainstream media glory in the death toll, the footage of bodies piled into tractors and the failures of the emergency systems to fully cope, it is up to us to do whatever it is we can, however small, to construct a different future.
When Kelly Diels launched The Help Haiti Blog challenge (inspired by Danielle La Porte) I was immediately in.
Regular readers will know I am already throwing everything I can at the scarce snippets of time that I have at my fingertips.
But hell, why not start spinning another plate? continue reading…
Have you ever stopped to notice how often you complain about something?
Think back over the past 24 hours and try to remember the conversations you had, not just with other people, but with yourself.
What did you spend your time focusing on? The good stuff? Or the stuff that really made you mad, annoyed, sick, upset, depressed or pissed off?
We tend to get a lot of mileage out of being miserable. Why is this? Is it somehow more beautifully tragic? More attainable? A tasty way to get more attention? Or do we place so little trust in our own ability to deal with our negative experiences that we have to seek out the solutions (and sympathy) from other people?
Or maybe it’s just that we’ve learned, over time, that no-one wants to hear how great we’re doing. That would be bragging. Cocky. Just weird.
We can get the same effect by storing up all the crappy stuff in our head instead, like a proud and wounded ninja unwilling to burden those around us with our noble inner turmoil. But the effect is still the same, whether you share it with the world or keep it to an internal monologue.
It’s called focusing on the stuff we hate. And it only breeds more of said stuff to hate. Which makes you talk about it more, think about it, broadcast it to others, label it in neon lights as “true”…before you know it, there goes another funky little failure mantra over and over in your head like a bad song on a loop. continue reading…
Compromises. You make them all the time – humble little decisions to acquiesce that keep the wheels of life oiled and generous.
You may make a simple compromise over where to go for a meal, or what kind of car you buy or who gets to do the dishes. You may argue a compromise with yourself, but more often than not it involves a certain amount of “haggle” with another person.
I like to think of it as sitting on a see-saw, and you’re just taking it in turns to go up and down. It’s probably more fun being up than down, but you can’t have one without the other. (And it’s no fun sitting on a see-saw all by yourself, is it?)
Whenever you choose to compromise, you generally make a choice to give something up in order to get something of consolation back – usually something you perceive to be roughly of equal value. You’re happy to take the highs with the lows because you know that the ride will probably even out in the end.
But at what point does a compromise become a sacrifice?
If a “compromise” is an evenly matched ride on a see-saw between two people of roughly equal weight, then a “sacrifice” is more like a game of tug o’ war, where one side is doing all the pulling, and the other side – you – gets dragged across the floor, through the mud, over the line with nothing to show for it but rope burn and a face full of dirt.
Whether you get up, spit out the mud and walk away red-handed but joyful depends on what you are making a sacrifice for. continue reading…
Have you ever thought about why it really bugs you when your partner leaves the lid off the toothpaste? Or why you are obsessed with being on time while your best friend thinks nothing of always turning up late?
Why does one person live perfectly at ease surrounded by piles of clutter while another would consider it an irritating mess? I remember visiting the flat of an ex-boyfriend for the first time and discovering he basically never washed a dish. Ever. His kitchen sink was like a horror movie. And I just couldn’t understand why that didn’t freak him out.
It was clear that we each had a different set of rules.
Our rules are hugely important in helping us to quickly and easily navigate our way through life. They allow us to shape our reactions to the things we experience and to judge whether we are moving towards things that work or moving away from things we want to avoid.
But we don’t usually choose these rules knowingly – most of them we soak up from our parents, our culture or our education. They may be obvious and mundane – like manners, the highway code or the etiquette of queuing. (Seriously, in the UK it’s an art.) Others are more ethical and moral, such as vegetarianism, or our laws against killing and stealing.
Whether we’re aware of them or not, all of these rules share something in common. continue reading…
