How Do You Respond To Your Luck?

Return on luck.

Stuff happens all the time. Things which feel good or bad. Things we might miss. Things we act on. Things we don’t. Stuff is always happening. Opportunities come. Or go.

How we respond to the stuff, good or bad, is important.

Jim Collins calls it return on luck; your ability to respond to the stuff of your time in a positive and constructive way.

It’s a core concept in his pantheon of deep research.

Take the last year.

Bad times for many.

But not all.

I’m part of a little team which provides meditation courses and teachings. It’s called Sangha.Live

We’d provided online meditation courses for years, but far bigger, better resourced others were doing more than eating our lunch. They’d taken over the restaurant. Big organisations, selling hard. For us, numbers were at best static, whilst we ran ever harder. A tough place to be.

And then Covid.

People stuck at home.

Wanting calm. Stability. Reassurance.

And the support of a trusted friend.

And overnight weaknesses became strengths.

We’d only ever existed online.

We only had a small tribe of followers but they knew us, liked and trusted us.

We were only a small team but able to act quickly.

As lockdown was turned on, we turned up a morning meditation. Somewhere to meet, sit, meditate and connect with great teachers each and every day at 7am.

It was exactly what the small but trusting tribe wanted. So they came. And told their friends. Who told their friends.

Just about a year later, over 10,000 people have joined these sessions. From 100+ countries.

Luck comes in many shapes and sizes, in many forms. Sometimes in huge covid shaped form, other times fleetingly. Sometimes wearing what looks like good luck coloured clothes. Other times not. Sometimes in the form of good luck. Sometimes in the form of bad.

But these moments are always coming, always passing.

Are you awake to them?

We’re still a little organisation. But just as well trusted. And by far more people. And that means more donations. And more donations means more money. And more money means more resilience, more new courses and teachings and the opportunity to offer more useful things to more people. And so it goes on.

Return on luck.

Responding to the good and bad luck stuff of our work requires a few things:

- An open mind.

- Being small. Being large is a burden.

- Being motivated by a genuine and positive intent.

- Practising over and over responding to what’s in front of you.

And then hoping and trusting that shit will work out well in the end.