Luck, Positioning, Skill, and Staying Out of Your Own Way:
Setting yourself up without tearing yourself down
Goal Assumptions:
For our purposes in this post, I assume you have goals you’d like to reach. If not, please revisit my earlier post “Purposes and Values”. Or… take a nap.
So, with a goal or a set of goals in mind, you’re ready to start making them happen. But wait, there’s a little more to consider.
For each goal - consider how much you want it. Are you willing to die for it? Work hard for it over weeks, months, or years, pay someone else for it, or only hope it happens so you don’t need to do anything? What’s the Wish? Remember that for every goal you set, you must give up other goals.
Do you have a clear picture of the goal? How will it affect you and others? What does it mean in detail? What Outcome do you want?
What is in the way? If your wish is to play in the NBA and you’re a 72-year-old with titanium knees, your reality distortion field better be much stronger than mine. Sometimes, the only thing in the way is simply the willingness to go for it. Sometimes there are real Obstacles. Figure out what they are and your first steps to deal with them.
A goal without a Plan is just a wish, so let’s assume that you’ve started with a plan. This is called the WOOP framework - Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan.
It’s a great starting point for your goals.
Let’s take it a bit beyond the “having a goal” starting point and discuss how other things affect your progress.
Positioning: Where you are before you start
Positioning is the deliberate act of placing yourself where opportunities are most likely. Your initial position matters, a lot. Let’s assume your first goal in life is to make “a lot” of money. Hard to do if you’re a high-school dropout working two jobs at minimum wage so you can eat and pay rent. Much easier if you’re a college graduate with an in-demand skillset. Maybe your goal is to learn a new language. If you’ve learned several languages, the next one comes more easily. So, one general rule you can derive from this is: “Always work toward a better position.”
Skills
Consider the tools you bring to the job. Do you have the skills? The time? The energy? If you can’t reach your goal alone, (and most worthwhile goals are communal) do you have the skills to get others to help? A second general rule: Always add to your useful skills.
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca
Luck
Random events affect every part of our lives. Good decisions, great skill, and excellent positioning are in our control. But, even with all of these, luck, fate, chance, and randomness affect everything. The absolute best you can do is up your odds of success and make resilient plans that may benefit from some randomness. Next general rule: Learn to think in probabilities. The idea here is not to win on every hand, it’s to stay in the game and win over time.
Get out of your own way
Your emotions drive you toward your goals. They are pervasive and powerful. We all have less control over them than we’d like. I’ve posted before about how our conscious choices and our subconscious drives are like a monkey riding an elephant. The consciousness can sometimes gently influence the direction of the elephant, but when the elephant is excited, the monkey can only hang on for dear life.
Emotions are a force multiplier. They can multiply your efforts and goad you to succeed, or they can multiply all of your efforts by ZERO.
My final general rule for reaching your goals: Learn to use your emotions effectively.
The main thing I’d like you to take away from this post is that you should always take the small, simple steps to improve your position, improve your skills, understand the probabilities, and work with your emotions. Set up a system to make your goals reachable.
That’s My Perspective.
P.S. This week is moving week for us, so I’m going to take a short break from the blog posts until I get settled in the new apartment and have something of value to say.
P.P.S. Hopefully, neither will take too long.