The Science of Luck - Happy St. Patrick’s Day! by Marnie Pehrson
by cdromcscIn honor of St. Patrick’s day, I thought it would be fun to take a look at luck and where it comes from. Back in the early 90’s one of my friends frequently observed, “You’re so lucky. Everything just falls into place for you.” I sort of resented her comment because my first thought was, “I do a lot of work to get this lucky!” Not that I resent working. I love my work. As Warren Beaty said, “You’ve achieved success in your field when you don’t know whether what you’re doing is work or play.”
While loving what you do and working consistently over time at it can make you appear “lucky” there’s a whole lot more to luck than that. There are lots of hard working people who aren’t lucky with money, relationships or their health. For example, one wouldn’t consider my financial challenges of the late 90’s and early 2000 “lucky.” Yet even those challenges brought me priceless information about the science of luck!
When I met Leslie Householder in 2000, she taught me her definition of luck. In “The Jackrabbit Factor Ecourse: Why You Can!” she says, “Forget about LUCK. Think of L.U.C.K. as Living Under Correct Knowledge. Live by law, and you are lucky. People will start to say about you, ‘Everything just seems to come her way.’ Or, ‘He is always so lucky.’ LUCK is Living Under Correct Knowledge.”
People are unlucky because they lack correct knowledge. What kind of knowledge? An understanding of universal law!
There are 9 laws that, once you learn and understand them, will activate Leslie’s definition of L.U.C.K. in your life. They all fall under the Law of the Harvest. I talk about them in depth in my book, “You’re Here for a Reason: Discover and Live Your Purpose,” as well as in my DVD program, “Faith Precedes the Miracle,” but I’ll outline them here:
1. Sowing and Reaping (aka The Law of Cause and Effect or karma) - what you sow is what you reap. Put out good, and you’ll reap good results. Do bad things and you’ll reap bad results. If you plant a cucumber seed, you’ll get a cucumber. Be aware that people aren’t soil, though. If you help one person it doesn’t mean that person will turn around and help you. They might, but many times the kindness or service you send toward one person will come back to you from a completely different person. You control what goes out, but not how it comes back to you.
2. Pruning - (aka The Law of Polarity). Fruit trees have to be pruned in order to bear more and better fruit. What appears to be a harsh thing (cutting off a limb) is actually merciful. Within everything “bad” is an equal and opposite “good.” Things just are. We make them bad or good by the way we perceive them. Some perceive death as a bad thing. Others consider it “graduation” from mortality into a heavenly sphere. Look for the good and you’ll find it. Look for the bad, and you’ll find that too.
3. Growth and Decay (aka The Law of Creation) - everything is either growing or dying. It’s either coming into form or going out of form. We bring things into form with the thoughts, words and actions we give our energy and faith to. We send things away from us by doubt, fear and negativity.
4. The Law of Attraction - Does an acorn worry about where it’s going to get bark and leaves or how it’s going to grow so tall? No, it just pulls everything out of its surroundings and trusts that what it needs next will be brought to it. By faith what we need is brought to us and by action we receive it.
5. The Law of Sacrifice - abundance only comes through sacrifice. You can either eat your seed corn or you can sacrifice it to the earth by planting it. If you plant it, you’ll reap many times over. Want more time? Sacrifice your time serving others. Want more money? Sacrifice your money to assist others. Want people to come into your life and teach you what you need to know next? Reach out and teach people what you know.
6. Seasons (aka The Law of Rhythm) - there is a season for everything. You rarely reap in the sowing season. Spring always follows winter. If you’re having a bad day, know that a better tomorrow awaits.
7. The Law of Gestation - every seed has a set germination period. A bean takes a few months to grow. An oak takes a hundred years to mature. A baby takes 9 months in her mother’s womb. Ideas are seeds and they take time to gestate and mature. Be patient and nourish them with time, energy and faith.
8. The Law of Relativity - nothing is big or small, hard or difficult, bad or good until we compare it to something else. Most of us use this law against ourselves. As relationship expert, Nancy Gerber says, “We compare our insides against another person’s outsides.” We compare our marriage to what we perceive another couple’s marriage is like. Theirs may seem blissful, but do we really know that? Everything is relative, but God is bigger than it all. There is no problem so big He can’t solve it.
9. The Law of Diminishing & Increasing Returns - there are early harvest crops and late harvest crops. With early harvest crops like beans or tomatoes you see results fairly quickly and any additional effort past the harvest will reap diminishing returns. No matter how hard you work or pray, you’re not going to get more beans off your bean plants after their bearing season is over. If you go to your job and you get paid every two weeks, you’ve just received an early harvest crop.
Then there are late harvest crops. These take time and their results are slow to appear, but when they do, they increase exponentially. Late harvest crops require time and consistent effort. If you give them that, you’ll receive increasing returns. Marriages, families, and businesses are all late harvest crops. You often see very little return in the short run, but their payoff is tremendous in the long run if you’ve faithfully worked and waited.
There you have them … the 9 laws of the harvest that comprise “The Science of Luck.” Understand them, study them, and work in harmony with them; and soon people will be raving about how lucky you are.
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This was borrowed from Marnie Pehrson’s blog which is located here