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Welcome to The Break, a weekly (video) newsletter where I provide stories and actionable insights on breaking work and building the future you want.
If you like what you’ve been reading follow along on Twitter (@mngardon) and Linkedin for more community and conversations about breaking work.
Today At A Glance
Luck is a spectrum and can be influenced
Some luck is out of our influence
But some luck is within our influence
Activities to get lucky
Influencing The Odds of Luck
We tend to think of luck as completely random and out of our control. This leads to two problems:
We believe others who have success to be “lucky” and we are not (victim mentality)
If we have success, we tend to minimize it as due to luck, which eats at our self confidence
However, every action you take has uncertainty in it, so there is an element of “luck” in everything we do. You can do everything “right” and still feel behind. You can do everything “wrong” and become an overnight success.
Some people are paralyzed by this, and some figure out how to influence the odds of luck. Luck is a spectrum.
You can skew the odds of you getting lucky when you understand the types of luck you can influence. When you’ve optimized your luck influence, success is just a matter of time.
The Luck Factors Out Of Your Influence
Anything we can not influence is simply Blind Luck. It makes no sense to give these factors any mental energy at all.
Blind Luck includes:
Your family
Acts of God
Where you were born
Your life’s starting point
The end result of any single act you take
That last one you have to come to grips with. Not everything will work out, even if you plan perfectly. So, the question is “what is your next move?”
Answering that starts with understanding what is within your influence.
Luck Factors You Can Influence
How many actions you take
Hustle is a factor you can control. Are you taking enough shots on goal. Do you really believe in your actions, or are you going through the motions?
In my experience, we drastically underestimate the number of attempts we need to make before we find something unique that works.
This is the great omission when we see success stories.
How you spot opportunity (Defining your Circle of Competence)
You can position yourself for lucky breaks by understanding an area very well. You can see emerging trends and subtle changes better than others.
Remember what Warren Buffett says: the size of the circle isn’t very important, but understanding the edges is what matters.
Deeply understanding one field (even if it’s not your “passion”) can be used as a major advantage when you find a unique way to use your perspective.
How you stand out so luck finds you
Embracing your uniqueness is how you differentiate from other people, and attract a certain type of opportunity unique to your intersection.
And there has never been a better time to run with your unique eccentricities than now. social media and culture generally are more accepting and even promotional of us just being who we are.
This is why we go far beyond knowledge in my Advantage Mapping Program, and look at hidden attributes that you can use to your advantage to get where you want to go.
Ideas On How To Influence Luck
There are lots of simple ways to influence your luck:
Talk to more new people
Send more cold emails and DMs
Participate in conversation and community
Spend more time talking to people ahead of you
But to go deeper, I suggest creating a Map of your advantages, and think about how you can use those to influence your luck.
If you respond to this email with the word “Advantage” I’ll send you my Advantage Mapping Template for free.
Here’s to investing in ourselves.
Mike
mike@careercloud.com
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P.S. My Advantage Mapping Program is all about betting on yourself and using signal to guide your decisions - giving you tools to evaluate what progress and success looks like so you can have confidence in your path. We aim to deal well with uncertainty and create a systematic, high odds approach to aligning who you are with what you do. I'd love you to check it out Join the waitlist
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The Break Job Board
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The Latest Conversation on THE BREAK Pod
So I made a new friend. We’re kindred spirits. My new friend is called the fairy godmother of career breaks and sabbaticals.
Katrina McGhee is a Career Break and Sabbatical Expert, creator of the Break Blueprint and the author of the upcoming book, Taking a Career Break for Dummies. As a certified master coach with an MBA, Katrina helps mid-career professionals create happier, more fulfilling lives by designing bold and transformational breaks. Her clients return from their breaks recharged, inspired, happily-employed and forever changed. On their time off, her 60+ clients have traveled the world, launched a business, changed careers and more.
Katrina's work was inspired by her own 20-month career break where she saved $40,000 in just 18 months to quit her corporate job to travel the world. She's now an enthusiastic world traveler and digital nomad. Her advice on career breaks, money, and travel has been shared across various outlets including Forbes, Smarter Travel, Thrive Global, and Yahoo.
We obviously jammed on this idea of a career break and how we both come at that word from different points of view. Katrina has an amazing life story spanning heartache and triumph, and she shares it all. I look forward to having her on again when her book comes out, but for now, I hope you enjoy this episode with Katrina McGhee.
You made it to the end! Hopefully you learned something about breaking your career today! If so, please share this with someone you care about. P.S. What did you think of today's email? Click one of the ratings below to send us your feedback. We'd love to know what you think! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was super helpful! ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Could be better. ⭐️ This one needs work!