Friday, December 6, 2013

Thought for the Day - There's No Luck, Only Preparation

I do believe this now. There is no luck, only preparation. When you are fully prepared you start creating those opportunities. You have the consciousness to accept such opportunities. The ground is fertile so to speak, for things to grow.

Now there is much confusion on this preparation. How prepared should I be? How does it show?

Mostly it shows up through improved performances. Performances that make a difference and are noticed. You will receive compliments, praise for the improved effort.  When you are prepared, the opportunities, the lucky breaks start showing.

Preparation must be on all three counts - skill, physical and the mental. The mental takes up 70-80% of the preparation process. It deals with the what, how, why, where, when and whom. One part of the mental preparation deals with expertise. Another part of the mental preparation is to do with self-worth - your concept of your worth - which guides your capacity to receive.

Let me take the example of growing a crop on mother earth. You can look at your patch of land and wait for it to give you the crop. Or you can till it, clear it, fertilise it, make the soil fertile, plant the crop in an orgainised fashion, in the right manner, in the right season, with the right intention and you are certain to get a better yield. You cannot call this luck.

But what if the crops are destroyed, one may ask. Good. You travel this far in terms of expertise. The key for prosperity is preparation on self-worth. If your self-worth is low, then you may find more obstacles than most. But if it is high, you may find less. It happens more slowly for some, but it will yield as all others, to constant effort, to persistence and a happy and enthusiastic state of mind.

When the ground is fertile, when all aspects has been explored, experienced, practiced and understood, when basics are strong, process right, somewhere at that stage we find luck happening more often in our favor. By now we are not bothered about luck anymore - we are bothered about the learning.

Luck comes in at that stage. Until then, its all preparation, consciously or unconsciously.

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