#46: 3 Not-So-Simple Rules For Attracting Luck

"The more I do, the happier and luckier I feel."

Aug 29, 2022

If you want to read the first part of this, please do check out #45: Creating Luck In An Unknowable World. This is a continuation post.

1. Invest in yourself. There’s NO-ONE better.

Permission-less venture is becoming such a theme now, a pattern that can actually be harnessed for good, especially if you have the talent and skill. Now more than ever, we are in the best position to actually DO things should we want to. It’s a powerful concept that is slowly becoming a reality. There’s no better time to bet on yourself than today. With the middleman going more and more obsolete, it really pays to start learning how to take control and ownership over what you do and how you do it. The Profile founder Polina Pompliano talked about this extensively in this post. “You are most powerful when your identity is tied to your name.” Really good stuff.

2. “Be interesting. Avoid boring people.”

This is going to sound dumb but it is effective and necessary. NYC-based Venture Capitalist Josh Wolfe of Lux Capital said it best here on this tweet: “Be interesting. Avoid boring people.” At first, I thought it’s a bit harsh, I was raised in an environment where it’s impolite to even think this way about people. Then I realized, he’s exactly right. It’s a hard truth about growing up that no one will tell you, except maybe the exceptional people who care about living quality lives. To me, this goes beyond personal relationships. It very much applies to media and culture personalities as well. In a world where there’s infinite choices with who we allow into our heads, filter and sort voices carefully.

Don’t listen to garbage, life is too short to pollute our minds with such nonsense.

3. Make it your mission to cultivate your flow state.

I’ve written about this topic countless times, and I could never get enough. In my post, Chasing the Flow State Through Writing and More, I said, “Flow state is a fleeting moment, a little congested bubble of tremendous energy, a temporary state of mind. It is difficult to describe for people who don’t chase it, don’t want it or worse, do not care for it. In a nutshell, flow is a force that makes anything and everything possible. It is both internal and externally-driven…”. I would like to think luck and flow are completely connected. One cannot exist without the other. The latter is a fuel for the former. Arguably, one can assume luck is nothing more than flow personified. Momentum is great but flow is more sustainable. Best of all, it is totally a skill anyone can develop and design for.

I’m convinced that cultivating flow is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. Everything depends on how good we can be at maintaining and growing the necessary energy needed to DO things. This is not just for our professional lives. It is applicable to all the other aspects as well.

A word on luck and its essence:

Nothing really beats doing the work, producing a body of it and getting it out into the world as often as possible. It all comes down to risk and the willingness to put yourself out there, even with the possibilities of failure, humiliation, doubt for other people.

It is incredibly easy to stay in the sidelines, it’s safe. It’s comfortable. No-one’s boat is rocked, no-one’s capabilities are tested out in the open. No-one is subjected to vulnerability and shame.

Everything remains the same.

But guess what, no-one ever grows and succeeds meaningfully by following the status quo all the time. Someone recently asked me about this, a question that definitely made me think for days: “At what point is it all enough? Where do you draw the line between chasing this and fulfillment and/or happiness?”

My short answer is this: It is not about money. It is not even about the fancy job titles that come with a certain level of success. It is completely about the journey. It’ll never end because that is the point. One should never put a ceiling to what they can do, it would be a shame not just to themselves but also to the people who would reap the rewards of it. The more I do, the happier and luckier I feel. It is as simple as that.

And I’m not alone in this, apparently.

“The answer to “Why?” is “because why the fuck else would you even want to be alive but to do things as well as you can?” - Stewart Butterfield, from the article We Don’t Sell Saddles Here.

The more I do, the happier and luckier I feel. It really is as simple as that. (A realization so good, I had to repeat it twice, I hope it is okay with you.)

Thank you for reading,

Nikki Espartinez

Random picture of me in the streets of London, 2019. I do miss traveling.

Quote I can’t stop thinking about:

“Conversely, prestige isn’t zero-sum; there is no limit to the amount of respect and admiration that we can dole out. This means that prestige usually has more lasting value, and it’s worth examining how people earn it.” - From the book, Give and Take by Adam Grant

THANK YOU for reading Working Title. I am here because of you. I’d love to hear more about what you think or why you signed up. Please send me a note if you have any feedback at all: nikkiespartinez@gmail.com

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