How lucky are you?

Sweet territory? Great clients? Fantastic field partners? Solid manager? Good company to work for? Nice cubicle? Are you just lucky to have all these in your life or did your hard work earn you with the right?

Luck in business and in sales is a big topic of discussion. It’s easy to blame a salesperson who always comes out looking good that they were just “lucky” and were in the right place at the right time. It’s not as random as when a lady bug flies over and lands on your arm.

There’s a lot more behind luck- it’s called hard work, focus, perserverance, intention and determination. That means you must work hard for luck in order for it to come in your direction. I was reading ProBlogger’s “Be Lucky” post and he explains how luck has come his was and shares some great quotes on luck:

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have.” – Thomas Jefferson

“All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.” – Robert Collier

“Be ready when opportunity comes…Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.” – Roy D. Chapin Jr

“I’ve found that luck is quite predictable. If you want more luck, take more chances. Be more active. Show up more often.” – Brian Tracy

Where do you begin? What you decide in your mind accounts for up to 50% of the success in luck you’ll achieve. Many of you may be familiar with the basic principles from the Law of Attraction which is based on the premise of creating and attracting what you want in your life.  Richard Wiseman, PHD and author of the book, The Luck Factor believes we have far more control of luck than we realize, he says:

“Lucky people create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives, if luck means being in the right place at the right time, being in the right place at the right time is actually all about being in the right state of mind.”  He suggests the following:

Prepare your mind. Don’t leave chance encounters entirely to chance, instead, try doing a little predictive encoding and get your mind ready for good things to happen. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” Seifert says, quoting Louis Pasteur. If you lay the groundwork, then when something happens by chance, your memory goes right to work and “you notice it for free.”

Give chance a chance. If you always pick apples in the same part of an orchard, Wiseman notes, you’ll eventually run out of fruit. The same applies to luck. Pursue an active life — get out there and do things — and you’ll increase the likelihood of good things happening.

Relax. If you’re anxious, stressed, or preoccupied, Wiseman believes, you probably won’t notice good things waiting to happen. You’ll walk right past money on the ground or miss an opportunity to speak with someone in a coffee shop. A laid-back attitude can lead to all sorts of possibilities, but you have to be ready to go with the flow.

Build your network of luck. Stay connected to the people you know, and try to meet new people. You can become more of a social magnet by paying attention to your body language. It may sound obvious, but make smiling a habit. “Remember that you are surrounded by opportunities,” Wiseman writes. “It is just a case of looking in the right places and seeing what is really there.”