Becoming the Luckiest Person

The Epidemic of Giving Up

Does it ever feel like everything is hopeless?

That you aren’t going to achieve your goals, no matter what you do?

That the deck is completely stacked against you?

If that’s you, you’re definitely not alone! More and more people live in quiet desperation. Never really satisfied with life, but seemingly unable to do anything about it.

People think you have to “get lucky” to have any shot at success in life.

In today’s newsletter (a day later than usually), you’ll learn how to manufacture luck through a couple of simple principles you can start following today.

The Story of Two Brothers

Once upon a time, there were two brothers.

They didn’t have the best childhood growing up. You see, their parents were alcoholics. And so they grew up with neglect, in poverty, had to endure violent outbursts. You get the picture. Not the best start in life, that’s for sure.

Fast forward 30 years.

As it turned out, one of the brothers followed the family tradition to a tee. He became an alcoholic himself, didn’t have a stable career and lived his entire life in misery and despair. The other brother has a loving family, stable job, is doing well in life and has never touched a drop of alcohol.

But here’s the kicker:

Both of them were asked why their lives turned out the way they did.

And they gave the exact same answer!

“I became this way because my parents were alcoholics.”

Here’s what this story means:

Two people can go through the same situation in life, and come out of it COMPLETELY differently. What this means is that it’s not about what happens to you. It’s about the meaning you give to the things that happen to you.

And about how you react to circumstances.

Most people react quite poorly…

What do you do when you try your best and fail utterly?

Most people would take that as a sign that it wasn’t “meant to be” and give up on their goal. Successful people realize that they just achieved something great! They know that (frequent) failure is the price of admission for success.

It’s not true that “lucky” people just happened to succeed right away.

They usually experienced more setbacks than others, they just didn’t let it stop them!

Changing Problems to Opportunities

I know it sounds easy when I put it like that.

But, how do you actually do it?

This starts with taking control over your RAS, the Reticular Activating System.

This is also called your selective focus. To put it simply, this is the lens through which you see the world. It’s the reason why one person can find hope while another finds despair in the exact same situation.

The RAS creates different meanings from experiences.

Try this for the next 30 days:

Whenever anything remotely negative happens, ask yourself something along the lines of:

“In what way is this actually a great thing?”
“How can I benefit from this situation?”
“What’s the silver lining here?”

Here’s why it works:

Your RAS focused on what you ask it.

If I ask you to focus on everything around you that is blue, your eye immediately spots things. But you probably ignore the rest stuff, because you’re not looking for it. Likewise, you probably weren’t focused on the way you’re breathing or the feeling in your right leg, were you?

But you probably are now.

Because I hijacked your RAS!

Through asking questions around opportunities and positives, you’re hijacking your own RAS to focus on the next step forward. You’re moving away from looking for problems, and towards finding solutions.

At first, enforce this for yourself!

Over time, you’ll start automagically doing this.

Watch Your Mouth, Boy!

Has your mother ever told you to watch your mouth when you were swearing?

She had a great point!

But…

She didn’t understand the true power of “watching your mouth”.

An old mentor of mine once told me that we all speak our world into existence. This goes back to the old Henry Ford quote: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right!”.

If I can hear your self-talk, I can predict your future accurately!

How Your Self Talk Destroys Dreams

Keep in mind that your mind takes everything personally!

Imagine the following scenario:

You’re out biking in the countryside for some fresh air and exercise. You cycle by a huge mansion that catches your eye. As you’re looking, you notice a young couple walking out the front door, locking it and getting in a luxurious sports car.

What goes through your mind?

“They must have rich parents.”
“Maybe they won the lottery.”
“Could they be drug dealers?”
“Maaaaaaannn. they sure got lucky…”

Guess what your mind does?

Your mind now instantly relates it back to you.

Your mind now assumes that you either need to have rich parents, win the lottery, sell drugs or otherwise get lucky to get rich. Your mind will go a step further in think “Well, I don’t have those factors going for me” and then writes off your dreams and goals…

All because you didn’t watch your mouth!

Conviction Creates Luck!

The above is an example of what not to do.

Most people fail before even trying!

They tell themselves it’s not for them, they’re not lucky, not good enough and they spin a thousand stories about their inability to succeed. The words they speak to themselves and other clearly lay out a story of defeat…

And so they speak their world into existence!

But, you can use this in a positive way as well!

It all starts with knowing exactly what you want and what you’re going to achieve. Keep that top of mind. Speak those dreams to yourself as well as others. Muster up as much conviction as you can in your ability to achieve it.

In a way, you could say these are positive affirmations.

But the crucial part is to back it up with action!

Where people go wrong with things like affirmations and the law of attraction is that they don’t provide proof to their minds. Without taking action, your mind is going to call BS on whatever the affirmation is.

Nobody can stop a man who’s working diligently with conviction.

Remember that all success starts inside the mind.

Watch your mouth!

Volume Negates Luck

Here’s a harsh lesson that has kicked in my teeth multiple times:

I thought I was doing great.

Back when I was younger, I had dreams that I was working towards. Back then, I believed that I was doing everything I could. It felt like I was giving it a 10/10 effort. And yet… I was not quite making the progress I wanted.

In hindsight however…

I just wasn’t good enough yet.

The level of effort that I thought was fantastic? Compared to my abilities now, that was more like a 3. I wasn’t nearly doing enough! Like so many others, I VASTLY underestimated the amount of effort required to achieve big dreams!

Here’s what you need to know:

Whatever you think it takes to achieve your goals, it takes way more!

And it’s not a simple 10% or 20% more work required either…

We’re talking about 2x, 3x, or perhaps even 10x the amount of work. Likewise, it’s probably going to take you a lot longer to achieve your goal too! But, you can tweak things in your favor through sheer volume!

The harder you work, the luckier you get!

As a simple example:

If you send out your resume to a company, you might get the job. You might not. But, if you respond to 10 job postings instead of 1, your chances of getting a job increase tenfold. (Wow, such math!)

It’s not rocket science.

Take more action.
Do it for longer.
Make mistakes.
Learn from them.
Adjust accordingly.
Stay consistent (for years).

If you do those things, you WILL achieve your goals!

And then, people will start calling you lucky.

Talk More, To More People

There’s a story I remember from Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment.

At one point in his life, he wasn’t too successful in his love life. Dating, sure. But he wasn’t successful in finding the perfect girl to marry and stay with long term.

So, what did he do?

First, he got crystal clear on the things he deemed important for a partner. Without knowing exactly what it is you want, chances are that you’re never going to achieve it.

Then, Patrick did something extremely simple.

Yet incredibly powerful.

He spoke his world into existence.

Whenever he would talk to people and dating, marriage or similar topics came up, he would tell them exactly what kind of girl he was looking for. Most of the time, it led to nothing.

But other times, someone would make an introduction.

And that’s how he found his wife!

I’ll leave you with this thought:

There is a duality to success.

If you want to achieve your dreams and goals, it’s up to you! Nobody else is going to put in the work for you. So, work hard & smart! At the same time, you can’t do everything alone! Network, tell people exactly what you want, tell them how you can help them, work together with others and succeed together.

There’s a reason coins have two sides, you need both.

Treat People Like Dogs

It sounds awful, but it’s the #1 hack to improve all your relationships!

The truth is, you teach people how to treat you.

Want a better social life, career and relationship? Apply this lesson:

Turning Stagnation Into Action + Announcement

One of my main beliefs around life is that you cannot solve a problem until you truly understand it. Usually this means looking past the surface level to address the underlying issue.

I.E. If you struggle with talking to girls, dive deeper into the fears and insecurities that cause the problem. Don’t try to solve it by memorizing a few lines.

This mindset is why I chose this newsletter’s format.

By creating a long-form newsletter, I would be able to talk about a topic in detail to create the right context to understand a concept. Additionally, I wanted to have the newsletter be action-oriented, and I still do.

But…

I’m going against one of my other principles.

Simplicity breaks down barriers, which leads to progress.

Meaning that the simpler you make it for yourself to take action, the more likely you are to take action. And logically it follows that the more difficult and complex you make things, the more excuses you’re going to create. As a result, you’re less likely to take action.

I have done the same thing to myself with this newsletter.

Planning and writing in this amount of detail (this has been almost 2000 words at this point) takes up quite a bit of my time. As a result, it has started to conflict with others things in my business and life.

For example, I’m sending this today instead of yesterday because otherwise I would probably have had only 5 or maybe 6 hours of sleep.

Do you see the principle in action?

Because I made the activity of writing this newsletter quite big, it created a barrier around the task. So instead, I’m going to follow my own advice, meaning that I’ll be changing the format of the newsletter.

Rather than these huge articles, I’ll be focusing on shorter emails with a single actionable insight or idea. This way, it’s less overwhelming for you and more manageable for me.

This reminds me of the words of Mark Twain (I think it was him):

“I wanted to write you a short letter, but I didn’t have the time. So I wrote you a long letter instead.”

The thing is:

This is going to be a challenge for me as well. These emails end up on the long side, because I like to provide a ton of context. My own learning point is being brief. My challenge will be to take my ideas and simplify them so that they can easily be understood with less words.

Less fluff, more actionable insights.

Look forward to it.

Maikel