EP123 – THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE STRATEGY OF GOOD LUCK

Forget “flawless” success! Learn from failures, embrace luck, & strategize for long-term like Groot. Money’s stored energy, make wise choices now for future harvest. #Success #Strategy #Luck

Do you want to learn how to attract good luck?

Seneca  said…“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” –

Bill Gates once said, “Success is a lousy teacher; it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.” Let’s kick off from there. In moments of extreme success, it’s crucial to realize that things may not be as perfect as they seem.

We must acknowledge our vulnerability and understand that luck played a role in our success. Luck and risk are like family members, sometimes harmonious, sometimes not, and in those less harmonious times, good luck can swiftly turn the other way.

However, Bill Gates’ statement is not entirely true. Failures can also be instructive. Smart individuals learn from their mistakes, reflecting on poor decisions to control the unforgiving nature of taking risk. They build walls around their past errors, ensuring future decisions steer clear of repeating the same blunders, increasing the likelihood of finding success and luck again.

Mike Tyson’s famous saying adds a punch to this insight: “Everyone has the perfect strategy until they get punched in the mouth.” So, the secret to good luck is understanding the role of luck in success, acknowledging the underestimated risks in failures, and releasing ourselves from the immediate outcome. Instead, we should focus on understanding the consequences of our disciplined actions. The long-term perspective often reveals that nothing is as great or as disastrous as it seems in the short term.

Let’s reflect a little bit about the origins of strategy from an anthropological point of view. This means from the origins of humankind. Our ancestors, before learning to grow crops, were either hunting or gathering to survive. Then one day, Groot and his friends joined their forces to catch a bigger prey than what they were used to. We can think that if fortunate, they could hunt alone birds, small mammals, or fish. But only by joining others, they could actually go and think about hunting a mammoth. But with enough people, they could aspire to do that. So, once they actually did and managed to kill a mammoth, what now? Well, they could not eat the whole beast at once, even together. So, what did they do? They took some of those meat pieces and stored them for bad times. But still, that was much, and perhaps they had the need for some fruits or nuts that other clans had, so they exchanged those products, and it started not only the trading idea. It also started the idea of thinking in the long term. If I give you this and I can get some of that, I store it for bad times, and I survive.

Now, years went by, and now people are not only trading goods but also learning to grow their crops. Why? Because now that Groot learned to save goods for bad times, he does not need to move that much around, so what happens, he learns to observe the environment and has time to observe that seeds grow plants and plants and trees provide food. Now there is a chance to survive in the same place even longer.

But now that Groot has established his residence in one place and is not moving around, he observes that seasons come and go. Sometimes crops grow, sometimes not. Sometimes animals are there, sometimes not. And now, Groot observes these powers of nature as gods: the sun, the night, the rain, and the thunder. So now, Groot is depending on the gods to help him have a longer time of good luck, having food, and providing a good place to live and survive. Now that Groot understands that trading things with the people of the surroundings allows him to stay longer in the same place. He gives part of his mammoth to a neighboring caveman and he gets fruits and crops. He has the chance to be in a better place. Perhaps he can make the same trades with the gods. So what happens? He offers his food to the gods so that he has the fortune to have the gifts of the gods back: rain, sun, animals… and so there is the first sacrifice. And well, some people would say religion was born, but people like me would say strategy was born.

What happened after we learned as humans that we need to sacrifice some of the benefits that we may have today for the better good of tomorrow, we realize that we can create a longer plan. We can think about the future.

Still, we need to understand that things will happen. As Groot and friends discovered, there are accidents, there are things that become difficult. No strategy is ever perfect, but by storing energy and trading it for future benefits, we create our own fortune. And it is not a coincidence that the word fortune means the same for a lucky person or a millionaire. Money is nothing but stored energy and resources. It is more or less the same as back in the day of Groot. You provide a product, for example, your know-how to somebody, and you get paid for it. That payment nowadays is money that allows you to get other benefits. People storing it as savings are storing energy.

Now, in the long run, people with savings are saving energy to provide for their future in most cases. That is one good strategy.

Returning to the initial question: Is luck a one-time occurrence? Is it about making the right decision in a high-risk moment? In reality, luck is about consistently making the right choices at the right times. It involves preparation, much like Groot planting seeds and adopting habits until the opportune moment arrives, all while ensuring energy is stored for the journey ahead.

Angela Merkel – “Preparation is key, but opportunity knocks. Be ready to dance!” –