To get lucky you need to be extremely flexible and I don’t mean being able to touch your toes or even put your foot around your head. I mean flexible in how you get things done. The world and everything around us changes at such a fast pace that what was good yesterday is not necessarily good today and what is good today, might not be good tomorrow. If you are set in your ways, you will never get lucky because you will not give the luckortuny a chance to get in.
Each day, you have to look at yourself and figure out if you are doing everything the absolutely best way you know possible. Ask yourself this question: “Knowing what I know now, is there anything that I would do differently?” If the answer is yes, then go ahead and start making some changes.
Most people are afraid of change and trying new things. If they would only realize that changing with the world or adapting to change is the only way to get ahead.
Some examples:
Relationships: A guy has been dating a girl for over a year and things were very good at first but as they got more comfortable with each other, the girl’s true personality came out. The guy learns that his girlfriend is really not the person he thought she was. Now, the guy feels that he has invested so much into the relationship that he will continue dating her just for that reason. If he would adapt to change, he would know it was time to move on.
Note 1: This could be the other way as well, where the guy is the one who shows his true self.
Note 2: I do not suggest just dropping the relationship when there is more invested in it such as marriage, children, etc. In those cases, a professional should be contacted.
Investments: John McDonald put together a stock portfolio that he is very proud of. He has 22 stocks from different industries and they are doing well. John leaves his stock alone and only checks up on it once a month to see how he is doing. He decided that this portfolio will fund his retirement.
One day while checking his portfolio, he notices that one of his stocks has been tumbling down. He gets worried but says to himself that it will go back up. Each month that he checks, it drops more and more.
By adapting to change, John would have looked into why the stock was dropping and consider replacing the stock with something else.
Education: A student declares a major in college and after 3 years, decides that he hates it and doesn’t want to study it anymore. Many people will decide at that point to just finish off what they started, graduate and then figure out what to do once they are done. This attitude will cause the student to waste the last year of his college education since he will only be doing it to finish his degree. To get the most of it, the student should reconsider his major and choose something that he actually likes or something that will help him get ahead in the real world.
Change
In each of the above examples, a person can ask himself the question “Knowing what I know now, is there anything that I would do differently?” If you would not start dating the girl knowing what you now know or if you wouldn’t buy that stock or choose that major, then change. Make a conscious decision to do what is best for you now, not what was best for you last year. Because if you live your life doing what was best for you last year, then you will never get lucky. You have to live your life doing what is best for you next year, in 10 years and in 50 years.