Is luck a fluke? Or is it something more concrete and repeatable? If you ask serial entrepreneur Mark Lachance, he’ll assert that being lucky boils down to nothing more than repeating a formula.
It might sound crazy, the idea that you can somehow steer your way into luck. Yet Lachance swears that one reason he’s been successful has been his ability to master the recipe for good fortune. And he’s sharing his insights with the world in his inaugural book, The Lucky Formula.
Seeing Luck From a Different Perspective
Chapter after chapter, Lachance makes one thing clear: Luck isn’t something that we stumble upon. It’s something we call to ourselves through our habits and decisions. In other words, you could become a luck magnet, as long as you follow a few guiding principles.
It’s easy to see how Lachance’s positive thinking style can be beneficial and encouraging, particularly if you’re building your personal brand. Who wouldn’t want to be able to count on luck, instead of hoping and praying for it to materialize? Yet you can’t achieve the status of being what others see as a “lucky” individual without taking a few steps.
1. Master yourself internally.
Lachance pushes hard for being in total control of everything you say and do. In fact, part of his formula for luck involves revamping yourself starting with the way you think.
This may sound like a tough pill to swallow because it requires you to change your behaviors—few people love change. However, making internal changes can lead to far-reaching advantages. For example, Lachance explains that before 2016 he didn’t believe in the practice of visualization. Though he knew athletes would often visualize wins before games and matches, he didn’t see how it could benefit him. After reading The Science Behind the Law of Attraction, though, he gave visualization a try and found that he could more powerfully and confidently control the outcomes of everything from speeches to sales figures.
What are some other ways Lachance recommends becoming a master over what goes through your mind and body? He endorses regularly jettisoning negative thoughts and only embracing positive ones like self-affirmations. The result isn’t just that you’ll have a more optimistic mindset, but that you’ll have far more room in your brain to exercise creativity and curiosity.
2. Master yourself externally.
The roadmap to luck doesn’t just require you to purge all the bad stuff from your internal world. Lachance wants you to control 10 of your external conditions, too, starting with your personal development.
As defined in The Lucky Formula, personal development necessitates that you commit to getting a little better every day. Maybe it’s 1% or 5%. You get to choose. No matter what personal development means to you, make it an everyday priority. By baking it into your routine, you’ll be able to “set it and forget it” to a certain degree—but check in occasionally to make sure you’re getting the job done!
What are some of the other external conditions you can expect to master along the way to courting luck? An important one is choosing your words and language carefully, opting for “healing” phrases that elicit good feelings from listeners. Another is learning to come at wealth-building from a financial abundance rather than financial dearth perspective. Again, the more consciously you handle yourself, the luckier you’re apt to become according to Lachance’s experiences.
3. Take the right action.
You’ve mastered your internal and external reactions. Does that mean that fortune will smile upon you from dawn until dusk? Not until you incorporate some momentum into this luck-by-design formula.
Lachance taps into the wit of Roy Rogers to explain why action is so intertwined with luck. During one of his quips, Rogers averred that “even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Accordingly, if you do nothing with your internal and external mastery, you’ll never get anywhere. Yet you can’t take just any action—it has to be the right action.
So how do you know whether to zig or zag in any situation? Ask yourself what a true leader would do, construct a plan, leverage all your advantages and experiences, and push forward with fortitude and excitement.
You’ve probably had many moments during your career that you’ve chalked up to luck. After reading The Lucky Formula, you may see those “flukes” in a new light. If you’re tired of waiting for luck to knock, turn to Lachance’s recipe for a little assistance. You never know… luck might be waiting for you to make the first move.
