Engineering Luck

Do you ever catch yourself chalking up an unreached goal, desired outcome, or misfortune to “bad luck?”

I know I do.

Being down on my luck has been just my luck more often than not.

Better luck next time, I guess.

When things go my way, it’s just the luck of the draw.

But of course, then I push my luck until my luck runs out.

What to do?

Luck is simply a story.

Too often, we tell ourselves a story that engineers an outcome opposite to what we really want.

What if we reverse-engineered this process?

Instead of crafting a narrative that disempowers us when things don’t turn out as we’d like, what happens if we define the essential, fundamental steps required to influence a desired goal or outcome?

For instance, if I want to make a bigger impact by getting my ideas in front of more of the right people, I might decide to increase the open rates of my weekly emails from 20% to 50%.

If I start with my luck story, I’d probably just keep writing the same stuff I’ve been writing and hope for a lucky break.

But what if I took a more proactive approach?

What do I need to increase my open rate? It’s pretty simple. All I need are interested subscribers and compelling copy.

Starting with those two fundamentals, I could prune my list and eliminate subscribers who haven’t opened any of my emails in the last month.

I could improve email headlines that hook subscribers’ attention and share ideas they find valuable.

And voila, my open rates start to creep toward my goal (averaging well above 50% now) and I 10X the response rate from readers.

There are, of course, additional tactical moves I could, perhaps even should, make. But that’s the point. It’s the strategy of defining the essential fundamentals first that helps engineer your luck in service of a goal worth pursuing.

Tactics can (and again, should) be tried, tested, and tweaked in service to a well-thought-out strategy.

What’s the difference you’re trying to make today? What happens if you engineered your own luck instead of waiting for luck to strike?

Scott Perry, Encore Life Coach at The Art of Encore Living

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