Category Archives: Thoughts

My general thoughts

Attract your luck

Thoughts

Attract your luck

On a flight from Melbourne to Sydney a young man sat next to me.  As soon as he settled in, he pulled up a few raffle coupons that he got from the airport.  Some marketers were promoting a new product and were distributing raffle coupons for cash and other prizes.  I remembered seeing them in the airport but didn’t bother to stop and pick up any coupon.  Maybe because down deep I wasn’t feeling lucky and thought that I wouldn’t win a prize anyway.  I looked at the man next to me as he was diligently completing the coupons with his name, address and phone number.  I was saying to myself this man really thinks he is lucky and that he is going to win a prize.  He looked at me, and as if he read my mind he said: “Mate, you need to be in it to win it”.  A very good point.  I didn’t think that I would win any prize and therefore, I didn’t pick up any coupon.  He thought that he will win some prizes and got some coupons, and even more, he is meticulously filling them.  The result: clearly, there is no way I would have won anything; and probably he would have won something.  Simply put, he attracted his luck while I deliberately pushed it away.

You need to be in it to win it.  If you want to get better at playing a musical instrument, you need to practice it or get training on it.  If you want to advance in your job, you need to rub shoulders with the powers-to-be.  If you want to get married, you need to mingle with eligible bachelors.  If you want to win the lottery, you need to buy a ticket.  In other words, if you want to be lucky, you have to attract your own luck.

You might say that you are doing all of this and trying hard to attract your luck.  Yet, you are not getting any results.  This is very possible.  This might mean that you need to consider alternative ways in attracting your luck – you may not be writing your phone number clearly or correctly on your ‘luck coupon’.  Think differently, ask new people, visit new places, read different newspapers, check out different websites, watch other television channels, take a different route to your work or school, sleep and wakeup at different times, break the routine in some way or another and some results ought to happen.

One more thing I would like to add here.  An important component of ‘attracting your luck’ is to be prepared when your luck strikes.  In other words, you have to be ready for what you are attracting.  If you are working on getting a promotion at work, make sure that you are ready, willing and able to take on the duties of the new position when opportunity knocks.  There is nothing worse than ‘nagging’ to get that new position, only to find yourself overwhelmed with the new duties and responsibilities of the new position when you are promoted. It is much better to be prepared for an opportunity even if it didn’t eventuate, rather than having an opportunity when you are not ready to exploit it.

Good luck.

Strategic Intuition

Thoughts,

Sun Tzu, the author of ‘Art of War’ wrote in his book “Strategy without tactics is the longest way to victory.  Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.  What a beautiful description of strategy and a powerful demonstration of its indispensability.  Strategy is the manifestation of your goal, objectives, and purpose in whatever task you are doing.  If you don’t have a goal, go out and get one.  Without a goal or  purpose there is no taste of success when you complete your task, or as Sun Tzu puts it, there is no victory.

One way of ensuring that you have a goal or a purpose for whatever you are doing, is to develop your strategic intuition.  Much the same as you develop your ‘car driving intuition’ that helps you to hear music, answer the phone or carry out a challenging conversation with the passengers while you are driving your car at high speed and manoeuvring the traffic lights and busy intersections; it is imperative to develop your ‘strategic intuition’ to make sure that you carry out the tasks that will lead to the ‘victorious result’ you want.  Strategic intuition is the skill that will let you ‘drive safely’ through the maze of life challenges to get to your destination.

What is strategic intuition?  I like to describe it as the gut feel that lets you make the right decision at the right time.  Haven’t you noticed that, when you wait for the lift in some buildings that have two or more lifts, you stand in the middle of the lift bay so that you have the shortest route to any lift when its doors are open?  That is strategic intuition in its simplest form.  On the other extreme, strategic intuition is the decision about the texture of white colour that Steve Jobs chose to his Apple devices.

So, how to develop strategic intuition?  My answer is: the same way you developed your driving skills?  Practice.  You need to explicitly ask your self why you are doing whatever you are doing.  If you can’t have a good and satisfying answer, don’t do it.  When you make the effort to ‘train’ your thoughts and impulse actions to make a decision based on the purpose of each and every task, you will certainly develop the skill of intuitively making the right decision at the right time.

Whether at work or in your personal life, you should always know which way you are going.  Otherwise you may end up like Alice in Wonderland when she got lost in the woods and asked the Rabbit which way to go.  The Rabbit asked Alice: “Where do you want to go?”  Alice said: “I don’t know”.  The Rabbit said: “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go”.