☘️Making Our Own Luck☘️
🔥Welcome to volume #0047!🔥
I’m Christian Champ. This is ☯️The Middle Way Newsletter ☯️. It is a place where I write, explore, share, and invite you along for the journey.
A big shout out to Leo Mascaro, who designed the new The Middle Way logo. 🙏
☘️Making Our Own Luck☘️
Do you consider yourself lucky?
What if luck is merely contingent on our belief that we are lucky?
We wear our favored jerseys, socks, or sneakers to tempt the gods in our favor. We run into periods when we possess the hot hand. Lady luck is on our side, and everything lines up like sunny days on a beach vacation. Other times, it’s only rainy and windy. We feel as cold as the Chicago winters.
Luck is how we define luck. It’s circular. We change our fate by changing our view of our luck. What if our luck is always a feature and never a bug because of how we frame it.
If we change our expectations, our view of luck changes. When we can meet victory and defeat and treat them the same, our luck shifts.
When we come with gratitude, we get lucky. When we find the ramps and create momentum, we increase our luck. When we wonder what will happen next, it opens us up to possibilities to get lucky. When no matter how the wind blows, we view it favorably, we view ourselves as lucky.
The parable of the Taoist farmer might be the best example of this in action.
There was a farmer whose horse ran away. That evening the neighbors gathered to commiserate with him since this was such bad luck. He said, “Maybe.” The next day the horse returned but brought with it six wild horses, and the neighbors came exclaiming at his good fortune. He said, “Maybe.” And then, the following day, his son tried to saddle and ride one of the wild horses, was thrown, and broke his leg.
Again the neighbors came to offer their sympathy for the misfortune. He said, “Maybe.” The day after that, conscription officers came to the village to seize young men for the army, but because of the broken leg, the farmer’s son was rejected. When the neighbors came in to say how fortunately everything had turned out, he said, “Maybe.”
The Watercourse Way, by Alan Watts
When we change how we view luck, we guarantee we get lucky.
It is always best to be lucky and good.
📓Articles to Read📓
Windows of Opportunity by Tiago Forte
Tiago explores how windows of opportunities show up. How important harnessing them through awareness and movement is.
NASA had an analyst that found a window of opportunity that lead to the Voyager spacecraft and one of NASA’s greatest successes.
As he researched the possibilities, Flandro made a stunning discovery: according to his calculations, the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune seemed to enter an extremely rare alignment once every 176 years.
This alignment meant that a spacecraft launched from Earth in a precise window of time could “slingshot” from one planet to the next using each planet’s gravity. This would allow the trip to be made in just 10 years, instead of the 40 years it would otherwise take.
The next alignment would occur in 1977, just 13 years away.
NASA got straight to work, and used Flandro’s discovery to launch the Voyager program. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft left Earth at just the right moment to kick off the greatest tour of planetary discovery in history.
What is a window of opportunity?
A Window of Opportunity, according to Eric, is “A rare set of circumstances and a brief moment of time in which an otherwise impossible outcome is potentially achievable.”
How do we harness them?
As Eric puts it, “Think about the Windows of Opportunity that lie ahead. They’re open. All of us, in all of our domains, they’re swimming in front of us. We have to look up. We have to be willing to open our eyes and really see what’s there. Where are paradigms shifting?”
Windows of Opportunity are less about dreaming up fanciful visions completely divorced from reality, and more about staying as sensitive as possible to your environment. What’s changed, and how can you change to match it? What goal is unusually achievable right now, even if it’s not the original goal you set for yourself? What opportunities are you blind to because you’re too wedded to the current path?
To take advantage of them, we have to be opportunistic, a dirty word that we typically associate with thieves and scoundrels. But there is a positive way of being opportunistic: to follow the path of least resistance, to go around obstacles instead of through them, to concentrate your efforts on the greatest leverage points.
What does this mean?
Eric describes it this way: “The greatest risk of all, is that you don’t even see the window. That you don’t recognize it. You don’t see the opportunity. You don’t understand even if you see it, what it means to you. You don’t know what to do about it. Or you do, and you fail to act within the window…that opportunity’s gone forever. All the value that could have been created is lost.”
There is a common misconception that you will always have the opportunity to achieve any of your goals. That’s simply not true. Most goals don’t wait around until you can find the time. They are open only for a season, when the planets align just right, and then they are gone forever.
This may seem daunting, but there is a silver lining: there is always another window coming soon. The greatest opportunities come in peaks and valleys, feasts and famines, dry spells and downpours. You have to stay flexible and fluid, because the next window won’t look like the last one. You might start a blog instead of changing jobs. You might publish a website instead of a resume. You might start a community instead of creating a product.
To be open to the possibilities, you have to start with the possibility that you might end up exploring a different planet than you expect.
The Spirit of Play by Reddy2Go
Reddy2Go is trying to learn like a child, a blueprint we can all incorporate into our lives.
What I realize from the story though is that frustration is not necessary or natural in infants. And they are the best learners in the universe. So today as an adult if I want to learn a seemingly impossible skill, the how is more an attitude, a spirit than a strategic and tactical gameplan.
So I’m going to channel only the energy and emotion of joy, curiosity, goofiness, and playfulness in my learning adventures henceforth. I’m not sure if my play learning is going to be more efficient than the standard route or the innumerable alternate hacks the productivity community is constantly experimenting with. What I’m sure of is imbibing the spirit of the infant to learn, to play, to destroy, and to create with a smile that spans from ear to ear.
🎙️ Listen / Watch 📺
How to become a great speaker by Robbie Crabtree on the Venture Funds Podcast
This podcast offered some great speaking tips especially in this time of zoom. It reminded me how much I miss going to in-person Toastmasters, working on my speaking game, and being around the others.
I met Robbie taking an online course and if I didn’t have a decent amount of speaking and performance chops, would be taking his speaking course.
Humans need emotions not facts
Inspiration is everywhere. When you get inspired, catch it, note it, save it and use it for a future story or speech
How do I want them to feel and when I felt that are great guides for speaking
Slow down when speaking. Listeners can’t press pause or look up a word.
Step 1 - Sound like a great speaker. Step 2 - Strategy of your speaking
Speaking is remixing stuff that is out there already and doing it in your authentic voice
In the Zoom world, it’s even more important to NAIL IT. We get one chance, so need to be hyper-aware of pacing, body language, and connecting
Community is key to get better at speaking (+1 on my Toastmaster comments above)
Take ideas and steal them and remix them. Listen to other great speakers, and incorporate what inspires you, and deliver in your authentic voice
Eric from Tiago’s article above telling his story on how he took people to space
Seth Godin with Please Don’t Litter
Keep America Beautiful started by the CPG companies like Coke and Pepsi to drive more consumption of their products
Litterbug invented in 1940 to stop people from throwing Coke cans and styrofoam cups on the ground
Culture gets pushed by a more powerful story
📚 Books to Read or Listen to📚
The Archer by Paulo Coelho (Goodreads)
Paulo breaks down the framework for a life well lived by using the story of an archer.
The arrow is the intention. It is what unites the strength of the bow with the center of the target. The intention must be crystal clear, straight, and balanced.
But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyzes you is fear of making a mistake. If you have made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time.
Join with those who sing, tell stories, take pleasure in life, and have joy in their eyes, because joy is contagious and can prevent others from becoming paralyzed by depression, loneliness, and difficulties
💣Words of Wisdom💣
Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
All Gain, No Pain - Bill Hartman
In many cases, if we can “turn off” undesired muscle activity and breath effectively, movement is restored and pain can resolve.
The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow
Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.
How to Take Smart Notes - Sönke Ahrens
The best way to deal with complexity is to keep things as simple as possible and to follow a few basic principles.
Why Buddhism Is True - Robert Wright
The thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi is said to have written, “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
#1570 Willie D (from the Ghetto Boys) on the Joe Rogan Podcast - “I like to tell people my past don't define me. It refined me.”
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - Mark Manson
A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, “What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?” Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
Nlp - Steve Andreas, and Charles Faulkner
Pain is a sign that it’s time to change. If our hands feel a hot surface, we pull them away. Pain is a sign we’re using a poor approach. It’s telling us it’s time to do something different. Lengthy struggle without success is a sign that what we’re doing isn’t working. It’s time to do something else, anything else. It’s time to realize that pain, struggle, suffering, and waiting are signs that it’s time for another approach.
🙏Thanks for reading🙏
How can you notice your luck in a different light? What luck are you forgetting about or thinking about incorrectly?
Any thoughts or comments, please share!
Namaste,
Christian
Some of the work crew from 2019 getting our pump on at the Onnit Gym in Austin. Always feels lucky to work with good people
