5 Ways to Make Your Own GOOD LUCK - #BelieveLife

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're going to talk about 5 ways that you can create your own luck. Number 3 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around to the end for my opinion on how to do it.

You have to have a healthy dose of luck to become successful. That's just the way it is. You can't prepare for it, but you can be ready for it if it does come to you. I was very lucky to get that role on X-Files simply because I was physically in the city where it was casting, and I was out of the city for 3 weeks prior, and I very could have easily not been in town and they just go on, and someone else would have got the role, and who knows where I would have been. I certainly— odds are very high that I wouldn't have gotten Breaking Bad had I not met Vince Gilligan before. So it's one of those things where you, you have to just do your work, do the best you can, and hope for the lucky breaks here and there.

So at 30, I started Wine Library TV. YouTube blows up. At 31, I'm on Conan O'Brien, Ellen. There's articles being written about me. Now they're writing that the business grew from $3 to $60 million in sales. I'm becoming this guy. I got so many goddamn emails from friends in high school during that period when I was showing up in all these magazines and TV shows, and every single one of them was like, hey Gary, you remember me from high school? Oh my God, you're so lucky. I wrote back every single one of them and said, let me just clarify one thing. I'm not lucky. I worked. I worked every goddamn weekend and every holiday since I was 14 years old. So you can keep that luck shit in your pocket.

Luck.

I heard people say I'm the luckiest man on the planet. I like to think I stay ready. A wise man once told me luck isn't some mystical energy that dances around the universe randomly bestowing people with satisfaction and joy. You create your own luck. Gotta get in my zone now. There'll be no talking. I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna think. And I'm going to vision myself tearing this down. That's how you do it. You got to vision it first.

When I was in high school, I must have been maybe 16 or 17 years old. And I went rock climbing in Eldorado Canyon, near where I grew up in Boulder. I'd been climbing about 3 or 4 years. And I went to do a climb called T2. Now at the time, T2 was a relatively difficult climb. And I went at it with a kind of an arrogant lack of preparation. And I hadn't prepared for being able to do certain kinds of finger cracks. I figured, I'll figure it out when I get there. And I also didn't pause— this is that thing about boldness and discipline— I didn't pause to really double-check all my systems. OK. So I'm on the fourth pitch. I'm about 400 feet above the ground. I'm going across this slanting crack system that I'd had trouble— that I started to have trouble with. My forearms started to engorge with blood and lactic acid, which means at some point, even if you're on a big hold, your hands are gonna melt off, okay? And I'm about to fall. I'm 400 feet above the ground. But it should be okay because there's protection. I'm tied into the rope. I may take a fall, but I'll get caught. For some reason, and to this day I still don't know why, my brain triggered that I should look at my knot. And I looked down at my knot. My knot had come untied. I had made the mistake of never really thinking about the best knot for certain types of situations. And I tied in with what's a bowline. Now, the advantage of a bowline is it's easy to untie, right? The disadvantage of a bowline is it's easy to untie. It had come untied as I kept moving across. And it is just hanging in my harness. I'm seconds away from falling. Only now I will die. I will die if I fall off. My forearms are melting. And the knot had come untied. And so I called down to my partner. I said, my knot came untied. What is he going to do? He can't do anything. He'll just watch me fall to my death. And there was an old fixed piton in the rock that we put there from the first ascent, an old soft iron piton. And I looked at it. And I probably had 15, 20 seconds before my hands would unwrap, if that, maybe 10. I took a runner and I clipped it into the piton. I clipped the piton into my harness— that runner into my harness and just went, "Please hold." And I let go. And it held. I put in a backup. I grabbed the knot, retied it, went to the ledge. I didn't convulse. I was very calm at that moment. I got to the ledge, I went into convulsive shaking. I was sick to my stomach for days because of the— whatever happened chemically. What I learned from that is two things. The first is that when you're in an unforgiving world, when gravity is unforgiving, it doesn't care. It never takes a day off, ever. And if you make one mistake, it can kill you, if it's the wrong kind of mistake. And what I learned is that sense of, yeah, I want to do adventurous things. I want to climb rocks. I want to be in Yosemite. I want to do things that get my adrenaline going. But I need the discipline to always do all the right preparation, to always think about the right nots, to always be cross-checking my system so that I can do those bold things and stay alive in an unforgiving environment. And as you and I spoke about earlier today, I think that's the rest of— I think we're all heading into an unforgiving environment where we're going to have to be both bold and disciplined. The second thing I learned. What if that piton had not been there? We might not be here together. It was just by chance that that piton was right there. And what you realize when you rewind the tape of your own life is that there are these crucial moments where if the luck had gone the other way, you might have gotten killed. And so what you have to do is to always be putting those extra disciplines in place because I was lucky to live. And what I took from that is I never want to have to be lucky to live again. I want to live because of my discipline, not because of my luck.

The plan for both good and bad luck. And part of what it is, is people say, what do you mean plan for good luck? You know, I have this idea, you know, it works out and then I, and then things keep going. Well, good luck actually comes in opportunities that you don't normally see. So for example, PayPal started as an encryption on mobile phones company. Because it was two close friends of mine, I joined the board when they founded it, even though I thought encryption technology and mobile phones back in December '98 was a was not a good idea, which I told them, but it was kind of like, you also back people. And then they were like, well, okay, not encryption on mobile phones, maybe cash on mobile phones, or maybe not just cash on mobile phones, maybe cash on PalmPilots, maybe cash on PalmPilots and payment service to the web. And then they launched with that. And for the first week they said, well, all this growth is coming through eBay, But that's not really what we planned. We planned on people bringing their PalmPilot around with them, exchanging money. These aren't our customers. We should figure out how to get them off. And then, of course, part of PayPal's great strength was being able to pivot fast. And they went, oh, no, these are our customers. All the rest of that stuff doesn't work. This is the thing that we need to go to. And that's an instance of what I think of as planning for good luck. Which is you basically, you go, okay, sometimes what happens when you start the journey of going down a company is you're looking for an opportunity that you may not have thought of it when you started it, but then suddenly you kind of, you know, like the pioneering parallel, you come around the corner and all of a sudden there's new opportunities available to you and that you head very strongly to that. And so good luck is not just, oh look, my plan worked, It's you will encounter opportunities that you will need to move quickly and grow into and exploit by having been on the journey. Now, planning for bad luck is unfortunately a little bit more straightforward, which is sometimes you find yourself, you know, pioneering, going through, you can't find a way through the mountains. How, what are your, what's your plan B, right? And one of the ways that I frequently think about this is I kind of have a plan A, a plan B, and a Plan Z. The Plan A is, OK, this is what we're thinking of doing. Plan B is, well, if that's not working, what are my parameters of flexibility? I'm still trying to get to the same— build the same product, the same product market fit. I'm still trying to get there, but maybe if I try this rather than that. And so for example, when we launched LinkedIn, our hope was that people would just invite each other and the invitations would work and it would grow into a big network and that would be all we need to do in order to grow the network. Well, as it turned out, we launched the network and a couple weeks later we're growing at 2,000 people a week and it was like, well, that's not fast enough. So what were the other ideas we had in mind, the kind of plan B? And the plan B was, well, actually, one of the questions that people most have when they come to LinkedIn is, who else do I know who's here? So why don't we build an address book utility that allows the people to say, okay, how do I quickly find out who else do I know who's here? I upload my address book, I see who's here. We invented that whole pattern and that caused our growth rate to go from like 2,000 a week to like, I think it was about like 20,000 a week, right? So, and that's, you know, without that, I don't know if we would've succeeded. Maybe other plan Bs would've worked. And then plan Z is what happens when it's just not working at all. Right? It's kind of the lifeboat plan. And that's part of how you plan for both good and bad luck.

There is a way, believe it or not, that you can actually be luckier. And it's far simpler than you realize, especially when you understand some of the science and the biochemistry and neurochemistry as to what's really going on. And, you know, when I say lucky, I'm talking about things just fall falling into place, seemingly so. Or, you know, you meet the right person, or the right deal lands on your plate. And a lot of this is actually able to— you're able to set this up in a way where the odds are more in your favor. Just like if you're in a casino, life for some people is where you put enough quarters in the machine and you may get 3 cherries in a row. Because there's so much going on in life, so many plates spinning simultaneously, that occasionally, yes, you'll just be lucky and get 3 cherries in a row. That happens. But more often than not, how do we stack the odds in our favor? You know, if you go to the roulette table and you're betting black and red, the house will always win over time. Why? Because it's not 50/50. There's also a little green option called zero, which stacks the odds in the house's favor, yeah, a little bit more than 50%. So mathematically, the house will always win. You may get lucky, but the house will always win over time. So how do you go from being a person spinning the wheel in life, hoping that it's going to land on your color, versus becoming the house whereby every single time over time, you know ultimately things are going to work out in your favor? Well, let me share with you an incredible part of the human anatomy that allows that to happen. It's called the reticular activating system, and it's a part of the brain that has a very specific job to do, and it's usually misunderstood. But the reticular activating system is really the gatekeeper between the conscious and the unconscious mind, and it has a sway over what information it allows in from the sensory input. Now, how do we make the reticular activating system work work for us when we want to be quote-unquote lucky? Well, we need to understand that it does one job and one job only, primarily for the purposes of this video, and that is it allows in to our conscious information that falls under two categories. One is information that can be harmful to us, and the other is information that we vote on it being relevant. So for example, let's, let's talk about the first yeah, type of information, stuff that can be harmful. So we're driving along and we're somewhat unconscious, as most people are, what I call sleeping awake, which is why you tend to drive to work on your day off, because you've done it so many times you're unconscious, you're moving forward just out of habit. But we tend to have, you know, wake up just as the car in front of us brakes that little earlier, snaps us out. That's because the reticular activating system is constantly scanning for something that could be danger, and it works in conjunction with another part of the brain called the amygdala, whose job is to really notice things that are negative or dangerous before positive. So the amygdala will notice that, flag it up to the reticular activating system, bring it into your conscious awareness, while everything else meanwhile is swept under the carpet. So, you know, and the amygdala is a fascinating part of the brain. As I say, if you're walking past a tree 10,000 years ago and you miss an apple no big deal. But if you miss a snake, it could be a big deal. So it's always scanning in conjunction with the reticular activating system to see if there's anything in our awareness that could be dangerous, harmful, or threaten us physically. So in terms of the other information, what we tell it is important. Now here's where we start getting interesting when we talk about getting lucky. See, the reticular activating system will, as a faithful servant, irrespective of the nature of the input, do its job. So if you, for example, our name, we know our name is important to us. So if we're at a party and we're having a conversation with somebody and there's lots of background conversations going on, but somebody the other side of the room happens to mention our name in mid-conversation, we will be pulled out and look over to see who mentioned our name across the room in the middle of another conversation. Why is that? It's because the reticular activating system is constantly scanning all of this information, and it's deleting, distorting, and generalizing 99% of it. Let's say otherwise we'd be completely overwhelmed, and it's sweeping that under the carpet of our awareness, our conscious awareness, and just flagging up what's important. That's why we didn't hear somebody else's name, but we would hear our name. So if we tell the reticular activating system what is important, it will go and find it in the millions of bytes and bits of information a second that is being processed. So you could walk down the street and completely miss an opportunity because you haven't told the reticular activating system, or your brain, that it is relevant or important, even though it's looking at millions of pieces of information every second. Give another example: if you had a 6-year-old daughter and she turns around and says, Daddy, Daddy, please, I would love a bike for my birthday, please, that's all I want is a bike. And you're like, okay honey. And you say to your wife, you know, I've got to get our daughter a bike. And you're driving to work the next day and all of a sudden you drive past a bike shop and you notice a bike shop on the way to work. Now it's been there for the last 5 years, every day you've driven to work. You noticed it in your reticular activating system, but because you hadn't told your brain it was important, it swept it under the carpet of awareness. Awareness and you didn't notice it in your conscious. But now you've said it's relevant, so it pulls it out of all of the information, says, "Hey, guess what?" Wow! Just the same as if you buy a car and you start seeing that car everywhere on the road. Of course it was there before, only there wasn't a half-price sale on and everybody's bought the same car. No, you've now told your reticular activating system, "This particular car, make, model, color, what have you, is now more relevant to me in my life." and then out of the hundreds or thousands of cars on the road, whenever it spots one, as it always did, it will flag it up. Yeah, basic neuroscience. So how do we make that work for us? Well, if it's going to constantly, 24/7, look for all of the information that is out there that's beyond our conscious comprehension or ability to process consciously and start scanning, what a great opportunity that is. See, if I turn around and say, yeah, right now I'm looking for a business partner, I'm looking for a store in— to a premises, a vacant premises, I'm looking for a certain kind of property, and you say it's relevant, you're going to start noticing things like that while you're driving along in the process of normal conversations. When you're standing in a lineup at Starbucks overhearing somebody talk about a business that's relevant to you, because you're telling it it's important.

So my quick take on it is I think you need to put yourself in position to receive the luck. So I get a lot of business through my YouTube channel as an example, and I've gotten deals with Microsoft and Sage and big companies through my YouTube channel. I've gotten speaking gigs, I've gotten a book deal, mostly through my YouTube channel. Is it lucky that people happen to search something on YouTube and one of my videos comes up or it shows up in the side and then they click on it and they like it and they contact me? Sure, I mean, think about your experience. You found me somehow, somebody told you about it, or maybe you're just doing a Google or YouTube search and one of my videos showed up and you watched it and you liked it and you subscribed. So there's a bit of luck to it, but I give myself the best chance at it. It's because I'm producing 3 to 4 videos a day, it's because I love the content that I'm creating, it's because I'm proud of what I'm doing, it's because I'm pouring my heart into making stuff that I want to show my grandkids and I hope hopefully you guys are enjoying and finding value in too. So is it a little bit of luck that people find my stuff? Sure, but I'm giving myself the best chance possible and not just chilling back and blaming the fact that I don't have any good luck. And I almost didn't make this video. I saw this topic come up and I, I almost didn't make the video because I think people use luck as a crutch too often. I think people blame bad luck on their circumstances, and then that's the story that they tell themselves for the their life. I'm from a poor country, so, you know, I have bad luck and I won't be successful. Or my parents, you know, I don't have the right parents, so that's my bad luck. Or I didn't go to the right school, and so that's my bad luck. And that's the story that you tell yourself for the rest of your life, and then you never break free. Like, as long as you believe that, if you believe you have bad luck, then you're never going to break free. You're never going to be able to do something amazing. And too many people use that as a crutch instead of going out and chasing their dreams. I look at where I'm from. Sure, I'm lucky to live in Canada. I'm lucky to go and have the parents that I did. I'm lucky to have gone to university, and I'm lucky to have the upbringing environment that I've had. But I created a lot of that for myself. And if, you know, a nuclear bomb dropped on Toronto— please don't do that— and I somehow managed to survive, no matter how, you know, badly beaten and bruised I was, I would still go and get mine. It doesn't matter who wins the next presidential election. If it's Trump or Hillary, I'm still gonna go and get mine. It doesn't matter if they raise taxes 100%, I'm still gonna go and get mine. The things that you blame stuff on, the outside environment that you call bad luck, I'm still gonna go and get mine. And if you look at people who've had massive success, they don't blame their circumstances, they don't blame, like you can look at somebody and say, wow, that person's had so much bad luck. You look at Abe Lincoln, who, ran for office like 7 times and failed, whose first love of his life died, whose 3 of his 4 kids died before they hit adulthood, whose second wife had depression and had to go to a mental asylum, who Abe Lincoln himself had depression, like all this bad luck that happened to him. He could have easily believed that and then that's it, give up. And no, then he decided, I'm going to run for president and by some accounts the greatest president of all time, or at least in the top 5 because of all that bad luck. You look at John Paul DeJoria, who was homeless, who, you know, his parents gave up on him, who had to go to shelters, who joined the gang, who did drugs, who had crappy jobs, and now he's a billionaire. You look at Oprah, who was made fun of as a kid, who was so poor that she wore potato sacks as a dress to school. Can you imagine wearing potato sacks as a dress to go to school, how much she'd been made fun of by the other kids, got molested and abused by her family and their friends, had, you know, ran away from home, had a teenage pregnancy that didn't work out. Like, all of this bad luck that happens to these people, and yet they still turn it around because that's not their story. They refuse to believe that they're just unlucky and they're not going to do anything about it. So what if you come from a poor country? So what if you feel like you're disadvantaged? Like, you're gonna get beat down so many times as an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, you're going to get punched in the stomach hard. And then as you're like wobbling around and trying to shake off that first punch, boom, you get hit with an uppercut and you're down on the mat. Like, that's entrepreneurship. That's life for a lot of times. And so what do you do? Do you just stay down on the mat? Do you get up? You have to get up. If you have the big dream that you want to chase, you want to go after, you have to get up and stop blaming bad luck. You look at people who've made it, who've had success, most of the time it's— they started as nothing. They were self-made. And if you look at businesses where the founder spent decades building something, pour everything they had into it, start from nothing and built this amazing enterprise, and then they hand it off to their kids, what happens most of the time? The kids run it into the ground. The kids who had all the luck in the world, had parents who cared about them, grew up in a business environment, had mentors to learn from, had all the luck on their side, and they run the business into the ground. It happens so often. So it's not about bad luck. And if you believe that you just have bad luck and blame it on that all the time, you're never gonna go out and reach your goals. Your mindset should be, no matter what happens in my external environment, I am going to go get mine. That's my take. So I got a little bit excited for a Sunday morning. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the rant. I'd love to know what clip you enjoyed the most. I'd love to know what you you think about luck? Leave it in the comments below and I will join in the discussion. I made this video because Anna Young asked me to, so if there's a topic that you want me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life, leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Marisha Rodriguez, RishicupTV. Thank you so much for ordering my book, it means a lot to me. For those of you who want your shot at a shout out in a future video, make sure you buy the book and send in your receipt so we can keep track of you. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.