In the story of anyone who is successful, there is often that pivotal moment that can be regarded as their “lucky break.”
The role of luck often shows its head, and so in this post I want to show you how to be a lucky musician.
I can hear the skeptics start to scoff already, and with some justification. How can a person become lucky? Surely we are all just as lucky as each other?
It’s a fair question, especially as there have been scientific studies conducted around that very question – are some people luckier than others?
The Luck Factor
Dr Richard Wiseman conducted a 10 year study on it. The results are in his book The Luck Factor.
He found that nobody is luckier than anyone else. So that’s that put to bed. How to be a lucky musician? Forget it. There’s no such thing. Or is there?
You see, that wasn’t the only thing he discovered on his ten year quest. He discovered something really important about luck and its link to a person’s outlook.
He found that while nobody is inherently any luckier than anybody else – people are differently skilled at finding luck.
People who consider themselves lucky will find luck much more than people who view themselves as unlucky.
Expectations And Reality
Why? Because they are more expectant of it being there, and so they look for possibilities that “unlucky” people don’t look for at all.
After all, if you’re only expecting everything to be awful, why look for the good stuff when you don’t believe it will be there?
The self proclaimed “lucky” people seek it out and so they find it more.
It’s the same with spiders. I hate spiders. Because of that, my curse is that I see far more spiders than the average person. Why? Because I look for them. I’m alert to the crawly blighters. I look in corners, behind my headboard, I scan the room for them.
When I’m alert to the possible existence of something – whether that be spiders, luck or anything else – then I am much more likely to find it.
So Wiseman’s studies told him that there is no such thing as inherently lucky people, but there are certainly people who are more prone to having good things happen to them.
My Quest For An Agent
I’ll give you an example from my music life. It shows how the belief in possibility increases the likelihood of getting what we want.
I don’t have an agent these days by choice. I prefer to manage my own gigs and events. But there was a time when I really wanted an agent.
I didn’t have one and it was a real bugbear for me. It was my number one moan.
Yet I also had the belief that no agent would be interested in me. So guess what I did to get an agent?
That’s right. Nothing at all.
I told myself that they wouldn’t want me, so I didn’t even ask.
Then I had a conversation with a friend who gave me a bit of pep talk, and made me believe that the opposite was true – that agents would indeed be interested in me.
Simply changing that belief resulted in one key transformation. I started taking action.
I began contacting agents and putting my case, and seeking their representation. A week later, I had an agent.
It was a powerful lesson of how our limiting beliefs can be self fulfilling. My saleability hadn’t altered in that week. All that had changed was my belief system.
Rejection Therapy
This is the key difference between the people who feel lucky, and the people who don’t. The lucky ones simply act as if there is good stuff out there. They seek it out and so they find it. Those who feel we are unlucky don’t go looking. We give ourselves the answer “no” before even exploring the possibilities.
A great example of the power of self delivered rejection is seen in the players of Rejection Therapy.
Rejection Therapy is a game with just one rule – you must be rejected by at least one person every day.
The idea is that by asking for things you would expect someone to say no to, you become desensitised to rejection and so become more resilient and more comfortable asking for things that really matter to you.
But the wonderful side effect is that those playing the game of Rejection Therapy have discovered that getting rejected is really hard. Because people keep saying yes!!
Take Jia Jiang, who has documented his own experience of playing Rejection Therapy.
Every day, he would conjure up new requests that he imagined would certainly be rejected. But instead, people said “sure.”
Like the time he asked a police officer if he could sit in the driver’s seat of his squad car. “Sure” said the officer.
Or the time he knocked on a stranger’s door dressed head to toe in a full soccer strip and asked if he could play soccer in their back yard. “Sure” they said.
Or the time he was in a restaurant and asked his waitress for a dance. “Sure” she said, and they danced.
Rejection Therapy is proof that we aim too low. What we think of as a certain no is often an easy “sure.”
Think Lucky, Be Lucky
It proves that when we think of ourselves as unlucky, or we think that something is not possible, we certainly won’t get it, because we won’t even look for it and definitely won’t ask for it.
Even when opportunities drop into our laps, we miss them.
Yet the ones who describe themselves as lucky – they become lucky. Because they seek out possibility.
In the words of the Dilbert cartoon creator Scott Adams, “they put themselves in luck’s way.”
So if you want to be lucky, switch your outlook to one of possibility. Expect that there is good stuff waiting for you. There is. It’s yours to find, and you have to believe it in order to start even looking. Switch on your “good stuff” radar and hunt out the opportunities right under your nose.
Become a believer. Remember that even people who are trying to get rejected still get their fair share of Yes’s. Get out there and start putting yourself in luck’s way, and grab every opportunity you find.
Oh, and good luck!!
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