Luck?! …of course I believe in luck. How else can we explain the success of the people we don’t like?” said Jean Cocteau the 19th Century French Dramatist.
And he’s right, isn’t he?
I mean, look at all those scoundrels, liars, and rogues who get all the breaks! Typical. As for me I work hard and do all the upright things but I always lose out. Why me? Why me?
What about some luck for me?
OK …if you’re serious, I am enrolling you in my private “School of Good Fortune.”
Your enrollment is Free and the whole course lasts for just 30 days.
If you do what I tell you in this article I can practically guarantee a change of circumstances for the better in less than a month. In fact, I’ll go further than that; I guarantee it without reservation of any kind.
Are you ready?
This is serious stuff by the way, and based on several years of academic research and psychological tests, No Kidding! I have studied and tried everything myself and read most of the books. “The Cosmic Ordering Service”, “The Secret”, “The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches”, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, the list goes on (and on). Some material goes back to the 19th century and there are also some very recent findings. Everywhere there are techniques that are effective and some that are not. I have personally tried, tested, and logged every technique in this article and I have now refined it all into this definitive, quick way to get you wherever you want to go.
In my work life, I have been a salesman, sales manager, and Main Board Sales Director for a large international company. I’m also a pilot and an engineer. Now I lead serious grey-suited business people through the techniques that will bring them just the life they want. So right here and now I can tell you -as I tell them- that this approach works for everybody who uses it. Not for a special few, but for everyone who puts the techniques into action and does what I say for just 30 days.
So, once again, are you ready?
First of all, I want you to get yourself a cheap school exercise book with at least 30 pages and a pen or a pencil; these are the only pieces of equipment you will need. I’d now like you to mark each double-page spread with a number starting at 1 and going up to 30.
The first exercise in “The School of Good Fortune” is designed to make you feel genuinely happier and happier each day. Would you like that?
This is all you have to do: Open your book and on the left-hand page write down everything in your life you are grateful for. Anything and everything you can think of from the roof over your head, your health, your talents, your family…everything. Start the page with the words, Today is the ….of …and I am grateful for….. (write your list).
And while you’re doing it, whether you FEEL like it or not,….put a smile on your face. All the available research proves conclusively that people who do this simple exercise each day actually become happier people. Tomorrow and every day up to the 30th day I want to write down the most exhaustive list you can. Each morning turn the page and on the left-hand side write your daily Gratitude List.
The next step on your 30-day journey is to decide what it is that you want. Most people haven’t a clue. They think they have but when questioned they say: “Well I’d like more money in the bank, a better car, a nicer partner, to have a holiday home, more time off.”
These people don’t seem to realise that, to get somewhere on a journey, you have to have a definite destination in mind.
If you want to get to ‘the top’ you have to know what “the top” is to you. You can’t just wander around hoping you’ll find it. The people who conquered Mount Everest in the 1950s didn’t just go out for a stroll one day and suddenly find themselves at the peak!
So on the right-hand side of the first double-page spread in your book (Page 1) I want you to list out the precise things you want in your life.
And I want you to do it like this:
1) Write out each goal or objective very precisely and in detail – If it is money precisely how much do you seriously want? If it is spiritual exactly how do you want to feel? If it is a house precisely what does it look like?…Colour? size? garden? garage? and so on
2) Write each goal as if you already have it – The human brain cannot distinguish between reality and imagination when recalling things (that’s a fact) and if you keep telling it “It is January 1st 20xx (date in the future) and I have just taken delivery of my Ferrari…..”, it will start to work on ways to get it….You will be amazed at the coincidences that start to happen – weird. (Give this method time to work by the way…make your future date 3, 6, or 12 months ahead at least…this is the science, not magic! )
3) Make it challenging- Don’t make your goal something that breaks the laws of physics because if you – for example- say, ‘I am going to jump off a tall building and fly’, I can assure you that what will happen is that you WILL die in the attempt. Nevertheless don’t make your goals too modest because once you start this program you will discover the speed at which you achieve your goals and the heights you can reach will totally amaze you.
5) Every morning when you wake up, open the exercise book on page 1, speak each goal out loud as you have written it. Then close your eyes and visualise the goal that you have just spoken for just a few seconds -Why? because, as mentioned before, your mind cannot distinguish between imagination and reality. When you regularly, for these 30 days, practice daily visualisation, your brain will build a vivid set of memories. It will become convinced that you have already achieved the goal once and can therefore easily do it again. Just do it…it’s only 30 days!
6) Don’t tell anybody else you are doing this if you think they will laugh. Tell people you respect and admire if you wish and tell people who are sharing the goals with you. But tell nobody who you know will scorn the method or laugh at you because it will put you off and destroy the psychological effect. These people will not like it when you do succeed and they will call you ‘lucky’. But what can you do? Of course, they believe in luck …how else can they account for the success of people they envy?
The whole objective of this home-work I’ve set you on Day 1, is to start a process of, ‘expectation of good fortune’. This is necessary because one of the key drivers of fortunate people is that they simply expect to be fortunate every day…and curiously enough, because of that expectation, it appears that they are.
On Day 2 -and right through to Day 30- you are going to do both the attitude exercise and goal visualisation exercise at least once a day. But in addition from Day 2 onwards you are also, on the right-hand side of the page, going to keep a daily log of all the fortunate things that happen to you. This regular ‘writing down’ of your experiences is known to have a much stronger psychological effect than just talking or thinking about what is happening.
Staying with Day 2 now, today’s additional task is to ‘get out there.’
Why? because “lucky” people know more people. In the courses, I run for salespeople I am always amazed how many of them sit around in the office all day ‘praying’ for the phone to ring with incoming order. My first sales manager used to tell us to: ‘Get out…do anything…speak to people about anything…but GET OUT…there are no customers in the office!”
Repeating this story to a conference in Chicago last year, a lady at the back put her hand up and said, “You’re right there sir………..just like I discovered..there are no boyfriends in the apartment!’
She’s right. Over and over again I have discovered that for some mysterious reason (and I’m not a mysterious person) whenever I have been bereft of ‘luck’ for a few days all I have to do is get out and start mixing. I talk to everybody…people in line at the Post Office…at the Supermarket…in the security line at the airport…fellow passengers on the train. I always ask them about themselves…or mention the weather…or anything….and it is AMAZING who you’ll meet.
Some people don’t want to talk…maybe they think I’m crazy. But that’s OK; there are another 6 billion humans out there, so somebody always talks to me.
As the sixties, folk singer Joan Bayez says, ‘The best antidote for despair is action’
So here’s your task: starting on Day 2 and for every one of the 29 remaining days, you are to talk to at least 5 strangers a day about anything. Your overall objective is to get to know one new person, by their first name, every six days. You don’t have to become close friends maybe they’ll become just a ‘nodding acquaintance’. If you are REALLY shy of doing this..then pick up your old phone book and call somebody you haven’t called for years. They will be SO pleased. Your whole objective is to expand your network of human contacts. Quite simply: Fortunate People KNOW more people.
On Day 3 you are going to start talking to yourself.
You are still going to keep up the Day 1 and 2 tasks but today’s new thing is really what most of us do all the time anyway but with a little twist.
Each day, unplanned things happen to all of us. We all make our own decisions about whether they are ‘good things’ -which are beneficial to us- or bad things -which are harmful to us.
Fortunate people are not immune to these daily events. But like William Shakespeare, they have discovered, unlike most of the human race, that they are only ‘events’. The process of classing them ‘good’ or ‘bad’ is something we do ourselves. (“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”)
So, for fortunate people, any apparently ‘bad’ event is immediately analyzed in a different way. Instead of sinking into the typical self-talk, “Why me, why me?” “Why do I always miss the bus?”….”Why do I always get in the slow line at the supermarket?”…..”Why did I cross the road at the wrong moment and collide with a cyclist….why ?” The fortunate person will actively have a conversation in their head: “What have I learned from this?”… “Why is this also a good thing?”….”Phew….lucky I wasn’t killed!”
By doing this -at first, by making themselves do it- until it develops into a habit, fortunate people rapidly start to see the world full of opportunities to learn rather than holes to fall into.
Look…I’m only asking you to do this for 30 days…you can do this, can’t you? Judge it by results.
Finally from Day 4 (This is the final new task) I want you to set aside 30 minutes each day to be awake but by yourself. Fortunate people find time daily to let their brain freewheel and this is what you will be doing. As we each use only 10% of our full brainpower (I’m sure you know that already) allowing your brain once a day to focus down on anything except the daily worries of work and family and money and relationships -and all that- is a very powerful therapy.
You can do it by lying in bed ‘awake’ for 30 minutes ….or sitting in a church….or sitting in a park…but you must be awake and consciously slow your brain down. It takes practice but 30 days every day will do it! Try to focus on any one thing, preferably a single object placed in front of you: an egg….an apple…an acorn…a wooden block. Anytime a thought or worry from your ‘normal’ world intrudes, push it away and get back to your object. When I have no object I simply concentrate for 30 minutes on nothing but my breathing in…out …in…out…and you can do the same.
Once a day make yourself slow down and FEEL the difference.
You will start to notice something strange happening when you begin this process: your intuition and gut feelings about situations become sharper and more accurate. One interesting discovery is that you will start to find money all over the place…it will begin small with coins and rapidly build to you seeing notes and bills dropped in the street. I can’t explain it but it always happens. Once again judge by results.
From now on and for the next 26 days I want you to repeat daily all the exercises given here and record all the fortunate things that occur in your book.
This “30 Day School of Good Fortune” is offered to you free because I have been so fortunate using it myself for over 20 years.
Good Luck….(and that’s not a wish, it’s a guarantee)
Bob Etherington
