We all have that lucky friend… the person that seems to always be in the right place at the right time, the one who has parking spaces appear out of thin air, gets raffle prizes and who never seems to have to stand in line.
Becoming that person, the one with all the luck – all that info can be found in the first part of this article, The Science of Luck: Improving Your Odds.
Yes, there’s literal science to being lucky and it involves opening up your mindset and attention. Developing the skills behind luck is powerful, and the luck you experience is still random and passive. It happens to you.
What if you could not only be lucky, but you could harness that luck and focus it?
To do that you must build two additional skills: direction and consistency.
Being able to intentionally direct your opened attention AND consistently hold that direction, that is what creates a truly magical life. As with most things of value, it’s simple, not easy.
Author, professor and entrepreneur, Christian Busch calls this phenomenon, serendipity.
Getting crystal clear, and staying consistently focused on your intention are two skills that help turn chance events into breakthroughs. Serendipity involves active skills including curiosity, observation, reframing, and connecting dots.
Serendipity is what creates unexpected positive outcomes from seeming chaos.
“Unless you leave room for serendipity, how can the divine enter?”
~ Joseph Campbell
Serendipity is a Process
Dr. V was on a mission to eliminate needless blindness.
Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (Dr. V) was an Indian ophthalmologist working in the government of India for decades where he created great strides forward. Despite all his accolades, he felt like his efforts were still falling short.
So at the age of 58 he retired from his government position to create an alternate model.
His vision: a self-sustaining system that would provide free or low-cost cataract surgery to millions of people.
He started by founding Aravind Eye Hospital, an 11-bed facility with six beds for patients that could not pay and four for those who could pay modest rates. It was a beginning and not nearly enough, he had global aspirations.
Dr. V had mastered the open mindset (see part 1) so when a series of chance encounters came his way, he noticed McDonald’s operational model: assembly-line efficiency, strict quality norms, brand recognition, standardization, consistency, ruthless cost control and above all, volume.
It was consistent and scalable and he connected dots that no one had noticed until that moment.
Dr. V adapted the model into a surgical system for his hospital – high-volume at low-costs that maintained high-quality. Eye surgeries were suddenly available to hundreds of thousands of people.
Tina Rosenberg for The New York Times wrote about Dr. V’s system, “Each year, Aravind does 60 percent as many eye surgeries as the United Kingdom’s National Health System, at one one-thousandth of the cost.”
His model has been replicated in 347 hospitals across India and 30 other developing countries.
“It’s a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn’t even know you were aiming for.”
~ Lois McMaster Bujold
Throughout his life, Dr V. had developed the skills behind synchronicity
- Holding a consistently clear vision
- The open mindset to notice and track seemingly unrelated ideas and chance encounters
- Connecting unlikely dots
- Willingness and trust to step into the unknown
He did not build his model on past ‘proven’ health care systems.
Instead, his focused attention and his open internal radar led him to see untapped solutions in unrelated domains. The result, scalable innovation that changed eye care throughout a continent, is revolutionizing an entire industry and is being used as a case study in the top 20 business schools in the USA.
Living a Serendipitous Life
You don’t need a massive global vision like Dr. V’s to build the skills of synchronicity in your own life. You do need clarity, consistency, open awareness, a way to track what you notice and a willingness to step into the unknown.
That may seem like a lot, and every journey starts with one step.
✅ Are you already lucky?
👉🏻 Then start playing with directing that luck with the tools above.
🙌 Do you want more luck?
👉🏻 Then start with part 1 of this article (The Science of Luck: Improving Your Odds) and become the lucky one in your group
Either way, carving out regular time in your day or week to practice will begin to transform your life. You will make space for creativity and notice more opportunities. Curiosity will become your friend and options and solutions will suddenly live all around you.
Want to develop the internal skills behind serendipity? Join us for our Inner Mastery Series.
