I never understood when people would say to me, “Carmen, you’re so adventurous. I could never have done…[this or that].”  It was said to me more often when I was a young adult, but I always pushed back on it secretly knowing that out of desperation, of course, anyone would take a leap of faith if that was the only choice you had.

But today, as I write this, I’m starting to understand something different about human nature.  A lot of people wouldn’t take the leap. Not because they feared it, but because they couldn’t even see it. 

In the past month, I’ve watched people, with opportunity at their fingertips, blow it because they couldn’t see easily what was right in front of them.  It doesn’t matter what anyone told them, they couldn’t grasp the opportunity because they were oblivious to the moment! 

I have never been this shocked by watching people fail and fail miserably because they can’t see the opened door. And even, if by some fluke, they do see the door, they can’t seem to push it open.  It’s both incredible and deeply troubling to watch.

What am I talking about exactly? 

In the past, Oprah would say, “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” A similar saying, attributed to the Roman philosopher Seneca is, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”  I’ve hated both of those lines the day I heard them. I remember screaming back at the TV when I first heard Oprah say it. I knew she was wrong, but I didn’t know how to express it correctly.

“Opportunity itself IS the luck I’d always say.” 

But today I understand more fully why Oprah and Seneca were wrong. Because the luck we all so desperately want to see in our lives is simply the act of being able to see opportunity!  If you can’t SEE the opportunity, it doesn’t matter how prepared you are. And sometimes opportunity shows up and you’re not prepared at all but you leap anyway and it works out. LUCK is not magical. Luck is not selective.  Luck is seeing what is in front of you as it is and creating that opportunity anyway, or seeing opportunity presented purely and leaping into it! Courage is the absence of fear when you see opportunity. But that’s a different blog post for sure…

In the first instance, luck is seeing easily that you are a musician so you take guitar lessons, force yourself to write a song, meet up with other musicians and play a gig. Luck is SEEING who you are, and making choices to fit that template that is YOU.

In the second circumstance, we might say, “right place, right time“. You’re at a wedding, the band gets stuck in traffic, you take your guitar out of your car and start playing and there just happens to be an music producer/agent at the wedding who wants to sign you after hearing you play a version of a cover. 

And, I love this part:

You can learn to SEE opportunities. And the better you get at it, the easier it is to seize the moment.

This past week, I watched two people cave in the face of possibility. And, the interesting part is, neither of them realized they did this to themselves. They have no clue. I watched it from a distance because I was part of their world, and did I try to give them a perspective to see it? Yes!  But, as we all know, there are times in life when no matter what people tell you, and no matter how many people tell you, you just can’t hear it because you’re not ready.  I watched these two separate individuals, in totally different circumstances, fizzle out their moment, their opportunity. Bummed me out. But they just weren’t able to see beyond themselves and see something bigger! 

Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t know how many times we get to opportunity to see opportunity. But I do know that practicing these things, have led me to “luck” – opportunities – that I’ve then chosen to leap and make a go of it! 

• No matter the circumstance you are in, always try and see the bright side. The light. The positive. When you practice this regularly and authentically, you will start to see opportunities that you didn’t see before. Because for whatever reason the soul/heart/brain loves possibility and positivity. And we can work from that place easier to move on through than from a place of burden, sadness and desperation. 
• Practice a sense of humility.  If you constantly have to tell people how great you are, then it is most likely the opposite. When you live in a place of humility, you realize that your work will speak for itself and that others will champion your brilliance.  If you are so self-absorbed that you need to continuously express how great you are, people will turn off and most will never believe you.
• Nothing comes from just thinking about opportunity, aka luck. But something will always come from doing. It’s “in the doing.” Even failure from doing is something to learn and grow from. The problem is never in falling over and over again and failing from trying to make it…the sadness – the true failure will be if you never try at all. That is a true definition of failure.   

I love how this universe works and even though I’m quite aware that I don’t know Jack about how it actually functions, I do know that when it comes to some things, for me it’s been pretty clear. I believe we all get shots at all of it all the time…luck/opportunity are not just for the privileged few… the only logical answer is that some of us, just can’t see it!

Stay beautiful.

Carmen