Gay Hendricks - Conscious Luck: Eight Secrets to Intentionally Change Your Fortune

Luck, good or bad, is the invisible play of mind upon affairs, the effect of mental aptitudes and habits which are not in sight, but which work and bring forth their due issues.

James Vila Blake, Essays

Life is about to change for you.

Youre about to make a big shift in consciousnessas big as when you first learned how to speak and understand language. This shift will make many things possible for you that were out of your reach until now.

The word radical comes from the Latin word meaning root or core. To make a radical change is to change something at the very core of your being. That level of change is what this book makes possible for you now.

Its likely that a crucial piece is missing from your approach to creating what you want in your life. It was missing for me, and it was missing for many of the people Ive worked with. So if its missing for you, youre not alone. Countless intelligent, hardworking people are missing out on a remarkable path to abundant wealth and harmonious living, simply because they havent looked in the right place. I want you to look carefully into that right place with me: focus all your powers of attention on this for a little while and youll have a treasure you can draw on for the rest of your life.

It took scientists a long time to figure out that the ocean tides rise and fall according to an invisible force a quarter million miles away. If youre like me, it probably took you a while to figure out a similar great mystery about your own life: The visible results you experience are created by invisible forces within you.

I glimpsed the power of this mystery principle a few times growing up, but it wasnt until I was in my twenties that I discovered how it actually worked and how to apply it to my own life.

William James, the father of American psychology, has been credited with saying, The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.

Lets start by altering our attitudes of mind about what it takes to flourish mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially. Creating success in all areas of your life is partly about having good ideas and working diligently to implement those ideas. However, good ideas and persistence are often not enough to get you to your goals. Sometimes, in fact, theyre not even the most important part of creating success. Theres a crucial factorone of those invisible forces at workthats often overlooked, and its my intention here to show you what it is and what you can do about it.

What is this crucial, overlooked factor? Its luck. Thats rightL-U-C-K. Most of us probably dont even think about it, because we dont realize luck can be changed. We think luck comes from outside of us and is bestowed on us by chanceif youre lucky, youre lucky, and if youre not, youre not. Were wrong. Though there will always be a random component to luckboth good and bada great deal of your luck can be changed, and quickly, with a little conscious attention on your part.

In the same way that there are rules for improving your healthget enough sleep, eat well, stay hydrated, exercise regularlythere are specific guidelines for improving your luck. These guidelines, which we call the Conscious Luck Secrets, are laid out for you in the following pages, and if you follow them, youre going to get luckier. In fact, its easier to become lucky than it is to work harder.

Another way to look at our ability to create luck comes from Dr. Tina Seelig, professor at Stanford University in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, who says that the key is understanding that luck is rarely a lightning strikeisolated and dramaticbut a wind that blows constantly. You need to build a sailmade up of tiny behaviorsto catch [the winds of luck]. More than a century earlier, Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore is attributed with saying much the same thing: The winds of grace are always blowing, but it is you that must raise your sails.

In this book, my coauthor, Carol, and I will show you, in enough detail for you to master it for yourself, how to intentionally change your fortune.