This was but one piece of the conversation that my husband and I had over dinner tonight, “why do some people seem to have all the luck?”  Really we were dissecting the how and why of success and what we believe makes some people more successful than others.

The usual recipe applies such as tenacity, focus, endurance and David believes a good piece of it is just pure dumb luck. Being ever the antagonist, I had to counter with the question as to whether it was dumb luck or divine intervention.  Then I got a little bit freaked out on my own counter question because then I had to go deeper into what I really believe.

So what do I really believe about success? What do you really believe about success?

I remember years ago taking some shamanic master love courses through the Natale Institute that were led by Will Alix.  One thing that Will said that I have never forgotten is “if you’re going to quote me, date me” (1992).  So, what I’m about to blog about how I feel today about success may be very different from what I evolve to in understanding down the road—-and you can quote me on that!

Before I talk about my beliefs about success though, I have to distinguish what kind of success I’m talking about because there are all kinds of different levels and flavors.  If I was to look at how I’ve survived some things that I’ve met along the way in life, I’d say that I successfully survived them with all my body parts (well, except for a few disposable innards) and more awareness and understanding about cause and effect.  I believe I’m successful in my marriage because my husband and I share a mutual respect, love and enjoyment of each other still after 20 years.  There are quite a few things I feel successful about.

The success that my hubby and I were talking about tonight, though, is monetary success.  Career success.  Income success.  Being in that position where we can see that in many eyes we would be viewed as quite successful but in our own eyes in some ways we’re not quite as successful as we believe we could be.  I remembered hearing from people I have known that if you’ve ever earned a million dollars even if you lose a million dollars that you will always be able to earn another million dollars because you have done it before.  I’ve always seen my husband as being very competent, intelligent and extremely capable in my eyes but it is an inside job for him to see it for himself and allow for the redirection of his beliefs to take him beyond the horizon of what he ever believed was possible.  What allows some people to stretch their horizon of what they believe is possible for themselves way beyond what anyone else might believe they could do?

David talked about listening to a podcast on RadioLab (http://www.radiolab.org/2008/mar/10/) about the strange power of deception and lies. Evidently people who lie are much more successful than people who don’t lie.  I haven’t listened to the podcast yet but what is revealed is that the “lying” that leads to success when we tell ourselves that we can do something or succeed at something even if we believe or think we know that what we want to do is impossible or that the odds are greatly in our disfavor.  So then we talked about catching ourselves in mid-negative-think and redirecting our thinking to more positive perspectives.

I choose to think of it as re-programming my thought patterns rather than lying to myself.

This week alone I’ve had the opportunity to redirect my thought patterns several times.  There have been a couple of times that I could feel myself edging towards that slippery slope of despair and depression because of not having a steady source of income through a job that I enjoy.  Pretty much as soon as I felt my engine gears revving up to get into major pity party mode, I redirected my thoughts to more positive aspects by asking myself if having a pity party would help the situation.

Tonight I have clothes tumbling in the dryer, kitty-cats curled up asleep in their posts in the garage, a loving husband tucked up under the down comforter reading his Ipad and a little black dog laying about as close to my desk chair as is safe.  I’m feeling pretty successful right about now.

How about you?  How do you define success and just pure dumb luck?