How to control your own luck!

April 24th, 2008

Oprah says that there is no such thing as luck. Lucky people are ready when the correct door opens for them. So you might think that luck is actually hard work, but many of the top business people believe there is more to it than that.

I believe that we can control our luck by learning how to trust our instincts more and how to control what happening to us.

To best way to be ready for this is to teach yourself to know when the correct door is about to open and to then be confident enough to go though it. There is a whole chapter on confidence raising in my book Dyslexia – How to Win.

I help prepare students to become aware of this by playing the following dice game …
so try not to dismiss it without testing it out first. It’s a good maths lesson anyway.

The game

You need

• 2 dice – proper dice from a board game not cheap foam or home made dice as these may not give you completely random results.
• Paper and a pencil.

Stage 1 – do this before looking at stage 2

• Roll both dice together 10 times keeping a note of the scores.
• And add up and total the score.
• Write the total score down and divide by 10. This gives you an average score for each throw.
• Since you used 2 dice your average score should be between 6 and 8. The exact average is 7. If it varies much from this then try again. This could be due to imperfect dice or you could already be doing stage 2 with your dice! So if you consistently get a much higher or lower than average score then try gain with different dice.
• Write down the average score then move on to stage 2.

Stage 2

1. Roll the same 2 dice another 10 times…
   …. but this time try to get big numbers. Imagine your dice landing with lots of spots or a high number facing upwards at you.
2. Write down each result.
3. Total the results and divide by 10 to get an average.
4. The average in stage 1 should have been between 6 and 8. See if your final number in stage 2 is:
   1- higher or
   2- lower or
   3- similar to the stage 1 throws.

It may surprise you to know that some people are really good at this straight away. Others actually get low numbers when they try for high ones.

Keep trying and let me know if you were able to consistently get higher than average scores.

If you do then analyse how you did it, how you felt and what was going on in your head or your emotions when you managed to get the high numbers. Use this in life. If you can control your dice you can learn to control other things.

Other tips

Apart from this, I always apply the following to life.

• Always be ready. You never know when you are about to meet a person or opportunity that could help move your career or life forward. So always be ready and when this happens go for it.
So always look your best. I don’t mean always wear a suit. I mean whatever your image is, be it a suit and polished black shoes or wild dreadlocks and bare feet, always be like that. Always apply the same make up and attention to yourself when you go out. Always wear your type of clothing. Always look like you want to look and your best.

• Always be yourself. I spent most of my life trying to be what my parents and partners wanted me to be, and of course I always failed. I’m still not entirely sure what these people actually wanted me to be like, I just got the feeling that they wanted me different from what I was,
In many ways I am the slowest learner of all. Learn from me and do and be what you want.

• Learn from the successful. If you want to learn how to be a millionaire, a sports person, an artist or whatever, then read what the famous, successful people in that area have written. They are the ones that know how to do it.

• Do what you are best at. Do not spend your life trying to prove that you can be a perfect speller if you are dyslexic because you will waste thousands of hours when if you spent that time doing what you are good at you could have become famous instead.

• Trust your instincts, particularly if you are Dyslexic or Dyspraxic as we all have exceptional instincts.

Entry Filed under: Dyslexia,General