I spend a great deal of my life thinking about long term patterns of "what works". A recent observation of mine about "what works" is simply this: when you're into what you're doing, what you're doing works for you.
This may sound like a simple and obvious observation that most people may or may not have observed themselves. Here are few examples of what I mean;
Back in the day when I was taking courses in college related to philosophy and fine art I was taking an experimental painting class and trying to think of a great idea for my final piece of the semester. That week in my art history class we were reviewing the work of abstract expressionist Wassily Kandinsky. The thing I took great value from his work was the notion of "inner necessesity". The basic premise of inner necessity is basically the more intense the energy, emotion, thought, passion that you put into your creative medium, the more intense the viewer will pick up on and feel that energy.
So after I started thinking about this notion and how I could apply it to my final project I came up with the idea that I would do something that was a fun process for me that I would enjoy tremendously while working on it. I took a 4 foot by 3 foot piece of plywood, smeared joint compound, acrylic paint and spray paint all over it and then took a blow torch to areas of the piece. It was a completely uncontrolled process and went against everything I had learned in my class. I can't tell you how fun and liberating it was to make this "painting".
When I brought it in and displayed my final painting for my class, it stood out from everyone else's and I was shure it was going to get an "F". Not only did I get a "A" for the class, but the piece went on to win a blue ribbon in the year end college wide competition.
This was my first real experience of doing something that liberated me and in turn liberated others as well. I remember my friends roommate standing in front of this thing that was bigger than he was and exclaiming "It's Crap!" He was so angry that it went against what his idea of good painting was but it still got a strong reaction never the less.
Another thing I've noticed in my life is that when I'm in a casino and stand near a craps table that is losing, the people at the table are barely talking or looking at each other. However, the craps tables that are "on a roll" and are winning are the ones where everyone at it are drunk and laughing and talking and rooting for each other. I've heard that craps has the best odds of any casino game and I don't believe that it's solely because of the numbers. When you're doing what works or that is fun for you, that thing works and benefits you. I believe it has to be genuine joy though. If someone were to do a study where a control group acted like they were having a great time playing craps the winning results wouldn't be as good as people who were genuinely having a great time.
What made me think of writing this blog today was that I had a half day at work today and was thinking that i wouldn't get much done. I do both customer servicing as well as sales. I DON'T like customer servicing but I love the sales because it's always exciting to get a new sale since it makes me MONEY. So I decided to follow up on some leads. By chance a guy in new york that i've had a hard time getting a hold of picked up the phone and said his email was down and he'd been planning to get ahold of me to put his new policy in force. Excited after getting off the phone with him I received a call that minute from another pending prospect giving me the go ahead to put her auto policy in place! I believe that the energy and excitement of what I was doing literally drew the next sale to me.
We make our own luck pockets. Pockets of luck are created when we are thouroughly enjoying whatever it is we're doing and that energy draws more like energy to feed and benefit us.
Now take that information and get a lotto ticket, but make sure that you are completely in love and totally desire winning the lottery. You can try to fake it, you can pretend you really want to win, but there are only a select few with that genuine power of desire for that particular thing and they have created a luck pocket for the lotto.
Do what works and it will work for you.
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