You should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky

To paraphrase pop princess Kylie!

Does everything you do have to be meticulously planned out or do you leave something to chance or luck? We are encouraged from an early age to make grand plans “what do you want to be when you grow up?”, develop strategies and check in to make sure we’re still on track and everything is under control. But how much do we put down to sheer luck? Can luck be harnessed or manifested? Surely we’d all have won the lottery by now if we were that lucky.

When you consider events that have truly shaped your life, random encounters that introduce you to the love of your life, coming up with a new business venture whilst stirring your latte in the coffee shop, or bumping into an old acquaintance who ends up offering you the job of your dreams, sometimes these aren’t just passively passing luck stopping by for a visit. According to Dr Christian Busch in Psychologies Magazine, there is an active element that prompted you to seize an opportunity that presented itself, and you did something with it.

It’s a different kind of luck at play here. Not the blind luck such as you happened to have been born into a wealthy family, but the smart luck we create for ourselves when we turn random and unexpected into something positive by our own actions. Its about joining the dots and making the most of what you are presented with.

According to some research the greatest opportunities and improvements, good and bad, are often down to serendipity. Good luck resulting from unplanned moments in which a proactive decision leads to a positive outcome. Suddenly the most mundane of encounters can have the potential to change your life for ever.

There are some who seem to be luckier than others, and they may have somehow developed an intuitive muscle for the unexpected. We can underestimate how predictable the unexpected really is. True learning and success isn’t about having a linear process and controlling the exact outcome. Instead of having an exact plan, we need to learn to join the dots.

Successful people tend to have a combination of planned direction but with some freedom to accept the unknown. Its not about letting go of control but gaining influence over uncertainty to be able to use it to your advantage.

Accepting unexpected changes, limitations and imperfections allows you to reframe situations to see an opportunity where others may just see a problem. Busch offers five ways to cultivate serendipity into your everyday life:

Set hooks – whenever you communicate with someone, case a few hooks: concrete examples of your current interests, hobbies and vocation. This maximised the change you and the other person coincidentally latching onto common grounds and shared passions.
Change the way you ask questions – imagine meeting someone new at a dinner party. You might go into autopilot and ask what they do. This limits the other persons response but positioning yourself for smart luck means asking more open-ended questions that open up conversations that might lead to something more intriguing.
Nurture and expand your network – technology fosters serendipitous networking from home but setting “serendipity bombs”. Write honest, speculate message to people you admire to share you they have already shaped your trajectory, and open up a dialogue about how they can be part of your future journey. Follow people your respect and make a point of providing thoughtful, relevant commentary on what they have posted.
Reflect on incidences when serendipity could have happened but didn’t – perhaps you bumped into someone but didn’t start a conversation with them. Perhaps you had an idea in a meeting but didn’t share it. Identify what held you back and tackle it.
Write down three thing you would do if you had no constraints and you couldn’t fail – write down the reasons why you think you cannot reframe the situation. Then the reasons why or how you can. Then act on them and make it happen.

Serendipity can be a profound source of moments that make life meaningful and turn unexpected potential threats into a source of opportunity. Every chance encounter is an opportunity to find love, make new friends, forge a new interest, get that career started.

Go out and grab it by the horns.

Is #bellringing the pursuit of aimless joy?

I was reading an article about how a woman and her child walked round and round in circles in the deep snow like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. It had no purpose, barely counted as exercise and once more snow fell they’d do it all again. Sometimes for over an hour. #bellringing can be a bit like that. We can go ringing, be it practice night, a quarter peal or peal attempt, a training day or service ringing. Sometimes #bellringing can have no real purpose but we do it anyway. When the child was asked why she was trudging in circles in the snow for ages, seemingly pointlessly, her simple answer was because it’s fun. #bellringing can be like that too!

Ask people who make sand sculptures, or balance stones, why they do that when they know their efforts will be lost to the elements, and they’ll tell you that it helps them shed stress, entertain others and in some cases “mess with people’s heads”. #bellringing can be like that too! Once we’ve rung our bells, the sound is lost for ever (unless you’ve recorded it and uploaded it to YouTube). It was transitory; there and now gone. But we do it for the fleeting joy of the activity itself.

We can spend a lot of time obsessing over personal goals and problems, feeling the weight of expectation and the fears that go with them. #bellringing can trick us into take a break from all of that. I often consider it therapy after a bad day at the office. To be able to do something physical, that requires my full attention, and stretches my brain. It can become a meditation, a moment to be in the present. When we ring with others we can feel that we are part of something bigger but it’s equally as transient as our few moments or hours of #bellringing itself.

When we think of #bellringing vanishing into the larger scheme of space and time, along with any method mistakes we may make, we needn’t be afraid to try a new bell, a new method, have a go at conducting something for the first time. In the few moments that follow, it becomes ephemeral and consigned to history.

Do you have a word of the year?

Most people start a new year with resolutions and intend to join the gym, eat healthily, get a better/different job, improve relationships etc. I am not one for subscribing to such notions as I think they are all too easy to fall foul of.

I have resolved to join the gym, paid my ££s and after a few months decided that I can’t fit it in, or I’m not really enjoying it, or I don’t see any benefits, so I give up. I have intended to eat more healthily and give up or intake less cake, crisps and sweet treats, right up until I see a bakery shop window, or am out for dinner and the luxurious chocolate cake is too irresistible, or the idea of “second pudding”, a concept brought home by our daughter during the first lockdown, is still ritualistically maintained.

Rather than a New Year’s Resolution, I had more of a “Turning 50 epiphany”. That was when I decided to make some changes to my life. I decided to eat more healthily, but not give up the pleasures of cake and chocolate, to make sensible food choices and introduce new food items into my diet. I decided to upgrade my wardrobe and outward appearance. To wear skirts and dresses more often, (I used to wear them to work all the time), to spritz that perfume I’ve had sitting on my dressing table for years, to wear that beautiful bracelet I was given on a holiday in Gibraltar, to wear those beautiful Pandora charms my husband and daughter have bought me over the years, to splosh on the nail varnish and keep my nails trimmed and neat, to invest in a good quality pair of heels to accentuate my calves. To be a bit more daring in what I where to remind myself that I am a woman and what I used to be like. I decided to invest time and effort in to learning more about myself and my failings in order to be a better person, wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, colleague. I’m still working on building relationships and sometimes have to take a deep breath to get through them but hopefully I have become more tolerant of others and understanding of others’ perspectives.

I am not doing any of this for anyone else’s benefit other than my own, and through working on each of these areas I am ultimately making myself happier. I have no intention of wistfully hankering after some super chic lifestyle of the rich and famous, but there are things I can do in everyday life that will make my life easier and happier, which will impact on those around me.

So rather than having resolutions, I adopted a word for the year. It sounds a bit pretentious and pompous but I think it encapsulates everything I have mentioned above. My word of the year is “Elegance”.

I want to be more elegant in my interactions with others, in the way I respect and treat people by having a deeper understanding of my own responses to others and their perspective. I want to be more elegant in my appearance. Over the years I have become more comfortable (nothing wrong with that) and a bit grungy. I used to wear skirts and dresses to work and occasionally at leisure. I remember the types of clothes that I wore when I first started dating my husband and the things that attracted him. I have become lazy in my appearance. I have some good assets, so why not accentuate them a little, without getting cringey. I have nice things that other people have bought me over the years that I don’t use regularly. Nice jewelry that sits in the box, gorgeous perfumes that are still in their cellophane wrappings. I know that I swear a lot and sometimes in inappropriate settings and once I start I find it hard to stop, so I am really being conscious of the amount of speaking more elegantly, swearing less and being more aware of when, where and what words I use. I want parts of my home to be more elegant and will be looking to make areas of sanctuary amongst all the clutter, that are beautiful, restful places to be. I want to re-engage my femininity.

So, my word of the year is “Elegance” and I am doing my best to incorporate it into everything I do. What would be your word of the year and are you living it?