HOW TO BE LUCKY IN LIFE - 2

These articles are for all the people who think luck is for someone else. It is a book for everyone! We are sure you have, in your life, already been lucky. One cannot go through life without being lucky many times. The minor problem is that we just don’t pay much attention to beneficial events that are laden with luck.

We will explore how observing, daring, and doing can make you luckier, no matter your age, or stage of life.

To us, broadly, we refer to LUCK as good things happening in our lives. And sometimes even events that people consider negatively, may be for the good. We believe you can seize moments in life and make them signals of good luck. By daring and doing, not just dreaming, and wishing we can change our lives!

Further, luck is not all about money. Let’s make this quite clear from the outset.

The word extends to innate gifts, learned abilities, such as love is in all its many forms, relationships, family, friendships and even in our very own minds which create our dispositions, personalities, attitude, and gratitude!

Luck is Not winning at roulette or the lottery! Those are games, and life is not a game. Furthermore, 70% of lottery winners are broke after one year, and a sizable amount of them are in bankruptcy court in no time. As for casinos, most casino employees say your chances of keeping your money go way down as soon as you take the first step in the door! The old sayings “the house never loses, or the house always wins,” is nothing but a myth. We know that casinos often go broke as we saw that most casinos closed in Atlantic City. If that is luck—someone else should keep it!

Attracting Luck Through Ambition? The Studious Artisan

“Ambition is the immoderate desire of glory. Ambition is the desire by which all passions are cherished and strengthened and consequently, this passion can hardly be overcome.” (Part III, Spinoza, Ethics).

O, what a world of profit and delight,

Of power, of honor and omnipotence,

Is promised to the studious artisan!

• Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe

Most of the stories you’ll find in this book come from the jobs we have held in business and from academia. It is a book for self-growth, self-help, designed to inspire you to action.

It is about luck and effort.

As a young lad that came from Lima, Perú, I can say that I am lucky since many lucky things have helped me to live a long life and free from the fear of not having done enough.

I will state a few facts from my bio, not to brag but to prove my luck, and in this manner assure you that luck exists—that luck follows us. I have three degrees from an Ivy League university. Three children (all college grads). Became an investment banker. Was a financial officer at Lincoln Center. Was a college professor. Co-owned several small businesses. I am also a decorated and disabled Vietnam War veteran, survivor of the TET Offensive.

To begin, we must learn from our triumphs and from our defeats, our winning vs losing, health vs illness, wealth vs poverty, and misfortune vs happiness — and pass on our experiences for others to benefit.

Because the chapters that you’ll read I first gave as lectures in various venues, some repetitions occur. So, rather than plucking them out, I’ve chosen to leave them, hoping that readers can see that we can also learn from repetition. Even repeat offenders learn; to include those who thirst for happiness in marriage such as Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Lopez, Nicolas Cage, and so on.

Most people in a market economy earn a living in three ways:

(1) Selling skills; the higher the skill, the higher the income.

(2) Selling a product, and

(3) Earning while you sleep (passive income), including Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays.

If anyone can find a fourth way, kindly let me know.

In my case, I set my goals on all the three above points. I’ve always been a seller of my skills or some product. And after I learned the basics of the stock market, I invested some of my savings to earn passive income.

Dante, the greatest poet of Christianity, once said, “The secret of getting things done is to act.”

Hence, the subtitle of this book is: How to Attract Luck by Daring and Doing.

Just what did the poet Christopher Marlowe (a contemporary of Shakespeare) meant by "the Studious Artisan?" Only the promise that “a world of profit and delight, of power, of honor and omnipotence,” will follow those who dare do.

That promise may be an exaggeration, and I might agree. I was never interested in power, honor, much less omnipotence.

But in profit and delight, yes!

So, throughout my long years, I have always been a studious person. I read daily across all fields. This activity enriches my life daily. As for being an artisan, the common view is that an artisan works with his hands, shaping things with great skill. The rare view is to think of an artisan as someone who is always busy doing something. Not being idle.

Ambition and motivation

The word motivation comes from movere; To move from point A to point B. If I am watching a baseball game and during the commercial, I walk to the fridge and grab a beer or a soda, I could well ask: “What motivated me to move from the living room to the kitchen?”

So, clearly, motivation is an impulse that moves us to do something.

To attain our goals, to achieve our dreams, to aspire to something, I believe one must grasp what ambition is about. To me, that grasp came at an early age, when I was an undergraduate at Columbia University.

Because the dormitories at the university were too expensive for my student budget, I rented a scantily furnished room: there was only a sink, a small closet, and a sofa-bed. I smothered during the summer and froze during the winter, but I survived there during my first year.

That summer, as I walked towards Central Park on 72nd Street, and passed in front of the gates of the Dakota building, I felt a deep delight caused by the beauty of the architecture, the elegance, the courtyard of the building. All enhanced by the uniformed, white-gloved, and top-hatted doormen. The Dakota is the same building where an insane man gunned down John Lennon, of the Beatles.

I recall asking myself, “Who lives in this gorgeous building?”

The answer came to me quickly:

“People of means.”

“People who have achieved something to afford to live in such quarters.” In sum, my answer was in terms of money, because to afford such a place, one must have money.

I asked myself: “Why couldn’t I live there in the future?”

I realized that what happens in the future depends to a large degree on the decisions we adopt in the present; that life is a process. A continuum. Immature as I was, I put off the answer to the future, though I never left the idea that I could always live in a better place than the squalor of my furnished room.

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