Australians Double Their Luck

Posted on 19. Sep, 2011 by Susan in Blog, Luck, Video

I was “lucky” enough to appear on Australia’s #1 morning show, Weekend Sunrise. We talked about the concepts from my book, Create your Own Luck, 7 Steps to Get Your Lucky On.

Creating Your Own Luck: A Personal Tale of Hope

Posted on 25. Jun, 2010 by Susan in Blog, Luck

As coaches we strive to be “TAO” (transparent, authentic, and open) in all that we do. So let’s just lay it all out on the table.  I am here to admit that when I heard about Susan Hyatt’s forthcoming book on “Creating Your Own Luck”, I thought the idea was romantic.  I thought it was sweet. Create your own luck?  I thought it wasn’t possible.

I adore Susan. She is one of the luckiest people I know. The authenticity oozes from her every pore.  She has a naturally great life. She is the girl I wanted to be best friends with in high school but was too filled with angst, self-doubt, and longing to ever conceive of becoming a part of her circle.  And yet, here I am. I consider Susan a friend and a mentor. I now even consider myself part of her circle. How did a girl like me ever manage to make that happen? This thought truly gave me pause.

Let’s examine:

I was born in a shack down by the river. OK. Not really. I was born to a middle-class family in Western Pennsylvania. My family adored me. I was the youngest by several years, and while my parents were separated when I was born, I never wavered in the belief I was totally awesome. I had a lot of confidence.  I want to be clear (without making this a novella) that I didn’t have what may be considered a “normal” upbringing, but honestly I thought it was cool that I had such an unusual family dynamic. I thought I was lucky.

On the other hand, my mother was restless. She wanted more for herself. She wanted to travel and live a life she felt she deserved but that society had told her wasn’t acceptable for a responsible mother. She wanted to move to Maine, to travel to Europe, to feel free and able to experience her life. With her two oldest out of the house, she sold our home, booked us flights to Europe, and we were off. She made it happen. All by herself. Boy did she feel lucky during that time.

So we lived her dream. But then things started going wrong. She had no friends in Maine. She wasn’t able to get a job, even though she had a Master’s degree in Human Resource Management. The checks bounced. The dream died. We fled from Maine quite literally in the middle of the night 4 years later.

How could following your dream turn out so badly? She was running out of money and was scared. She had lived a life up to that point filled with judgments against frivolous, spendthrift women who make foolish decisions to get pregnant at 17, spend too much money on books, irresponsibly sell their perfectly-adequate homes and embark on a foolish journey. As she got desperate, she began to dip back into those old stories and believe them. She began manifesting what she felt. She lost her mojo.

When we first moved to Maine, I was my usual confident self. But as my mother lost hope in her new life, I compulsively overate. I fed off my mother’s new, grasping energy and it scared me. I had never seen her like this, crying and weak. I was terrified. I truly began to believe we were unlucky.

In the interest of space and time, let’s just that I became so fixated on needing external circumstances to create my happiness that I gained a lot of weight, became very isolated from my peers emotionally, fell into a deep depression, and had my worst fear realized at 17 when my mother died from breast cancer.

I sleepwalked through the next several years of my existence, unsure of how I got to such a deep place of disconnection from that confident little girl.  While lots of good things happened during this time, I could only focus on the negative (I called myself a “realist”, which is really just a polite word for “pessimist”). My life was just moving along, happening to me.  I was hollow.

Gentle reader – remember this is a tale of hope because sixteen years later I am happier and more connected with my essential self than ever before. I am on my path towards my right life after years of believing I would never, ever, ever, ever find it. I am in the process of building my own coaching practice. My own business. I am leveraging my years of toiling away at the “wrong career” to help people find their own best life. I am more confident, excited and hopeful than ever before. I feel lucky again!

At this point I imagine you wish I’d just tell you how I got to this place and  reconnected with my luck.

I asked myself this very question as I was e-mailing with two Master Coaches who were working me through lingering fears from old belief systems. I felt so fortunate to have access to such talented minds and to have them speak so frankly and warmly with me. I practically had to pinch myself. How was this happening to ME?

And then it hit me. Susan Hyatt was right. I created this luck. All by myself.

You can guess now what happened, right? I began happening to my life. I showed up for myself for the first time in a long time. I took a few smart, calculated risks and flew in the face of all the things my dad had taught me. I listened to what I wanted for myself not what he wanted for me. And I refused to believe that I deserved anything “less than”, in spite of what Sweet Petunia, my Inner Lizard, had to say.

I did all my work and figured out what I really wanted my life to feel like. Once I started coming from such a real place, magic started happening.  I found my tribe. I gained access to people as smart, intuitive, and energized as I am. And if I live my life backwards for a moment, none of this would have happened if my mom hadn’t taken that first leap towards her dreams. She modeled what it would take to have both a good outcome and a bad outcome in life.

So now I not only feel lucky to count Susan as a friend, I know that she is lucky to have me. And for the first time in a very long time, I actually believe it. I still have a ways to go, but I can’t tell you how incredible it feels to know you are finally pointed in the right direction.

That’s right. I can’t tell you. You have to go figure it out for yourself.

Just know that we’re here to help you create your own luck.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jessica Steward is a Personal and Professional Life Coach and owner of Steward Coaching. With 15 years of experience in the corporate world, Jessica combines her practical, business experience with a passion for helping people to begin happening to their own lives. With a direct and intuitive approach, she helps her clients reconnect with their authentic selves, banish painful beliefs, turn their seed of an idea into an actionable plan, and everything in between. She lives in Boston with her husband, her dog, two cats, and two ukuleles. The cats cannot play the ukuleles. Yet. Contact: jessica@stewardcoaching.com

Change Your Luck (Part 4)

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by Susan in Luck

Click on the image above to view Part 4 of Susan’s series “Create Your Own Luck”.

Create Your Own Luck (Part 3)

Posted on 17. Mar, 2010 by Susan in Luck

Click on the image above to view Part 3 of Susan’s series “Create Your Own Luck”.

Create Your Own Luck (Part 2)

Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by Susan in Luck

Click on the image above to view Part 2 of Susan’s series “Create Your Own Luck”.

Create Your Own Luck (Part 1)

Posted on 16. Mar, 2010 by Susan in Luck

Click on the image above to view Part 1 of Susan’s series “Create Your Own Luck”.

Make Your Own Luck Part 2

Posted on 15. Mar, 2009 by Susan in Luck

What do a recent concussion, losing power at the house for four days, a car accident, losing my voice, and many other minor happenings have in common?  A really lucky person.  I recently blogged about the research of luck, and how to get lucky yourself.  Soon after, I slipped and hit my head so hard on a car door mirror, that I had a concussion.  A client emailed me and asked when the locusts were coming.  I laughed.  This is no Book of Job.

What’s funny is that if you look at the past six months, I’ve had quite a few inconveniences.  But I am still lucky.  I feel lucky.  And, more interestingly, I realize that many people would use those same life circumstances to have a pity party, and claim that they are UNLUCKY.  Just take the concussion for example:  Did I love the fact that I had a goose egg on my head, was so exhausted that I had to clear my coaching schedule for a week, and was forced to actually rest?  No.

But I took that smack on the head very metaphorically.  I should rest more.  I move so fast that sometimes I don’t notice where I am going.  I got the message.  It was actually the best thing that could have happened for me to reconnect with myself and self-care.

Notice what I just did?  I retold my past in a way that was empowering for me, instead of wallowing in self-pity ick.  Self-care or self-pity?  Your choice.   And, now, your turn.

Here’s how to turn your ancient history into a good luck charm:

1.    Think about a life circumstance that was unwanted and painful.

2.    How was that circumstance PERFECT for you at the time?

3.    How does that experience and knowledge help you now?

4.    What did that eventually lead to that is good and right in your life?

From this place of empowerment in the present moment, you can let your past off the hook, and create a future filled with luck.  It’s not just for the Irish. Happy St. Patty’s Day.

Make Your Own Luck

Posted on 08. Feb, 2009 by Susan in Luck


If you feel that you are a
resident of Bad Fortune, there’s actually new research to back up what I’ve
been telling clients forever: Luck
has nothing to do with success.
That’s right. Some guys do NOT have all the luck. What they have instead, is the ability
to THINK and ACT in a way that gets them the results that they want in
life. So brush that chip off of
your shoulder and listen up. You
can make your own luck.

“He’s just lucky. He can come out
of a pile of manure smelling like a bed of roses. It’s been that way his whole
life,” a family member commented about my husband, Scott. Knowing what I know about his life, he
does seem to have “nine lives.”
But does successfully overcoming many serious traumas and situations
make someone lucky? What exactly
makes a former partier, terrible student, and chronic rule breaker (aka
mother’s worst nightmare) into an amazing partner, fun dad and wildly
successful professional? I’m not
about to hand his power over to a four-leaf clover or being born under a lucky
star.

According to my observations, and
psychologist and author of The Luck
Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life: The Four Essential Principles,
Richard Wiseman, it’s not dumb luck.
It’s the ability to see what is possible and being open to new
opportunities.

Of course, self-help has been
saying this for years. Positive thinking isn’t just squishy, woo woo concepts,
that only tree hugging, Birkenstock wearing, organic eating new age peeps can
do. Okay, I am fully embracing
that I love trees and eat organic…but I draw the line at ugly shoes. Seriously,
my conservative, Midwestern, four wheeling husband gets this stuff, and you can
too.

Here’s how to be lucky:

1. Be open for
opportunities. I believe that
we are presented with many opportunities every single day. If we start to notice, and become
scientists in our own lives, we begin to see the connections that exist for
us. Let your guard down. Talk to
people. Be the watcher. Notice all of the unexpected things that are happening
for you, and not against you.

2. Listen to your gut. Our society spends way too much time
relying on our cluttered, hyper minds.
What’s interesting is that our gut instincts are often way more accurate
than the pro/con lists that we create from our minds. Sure, the mind and body
have to work together. But often we ignore the body all together. While you are watching for opportunity,
also pay attention to your body’s signals. I’m sure you can remember a time when your gut said “This
isn’t a good idea,” and you did it anyway, only to regret it? Me too. You body is a great tool that is free and always with
you. Pay attention to what it has
to say.

3. Think lucky thoughts. I’m not suggesting ridiculous mantras
that you do not believe. Pick
something that you believe that also feels better than your current thought
patterns. For example, “The
company received 2000 applications for the same job. The economy stinks and
I’ll never find a job,” probably feels pretty crappy and will lead to some
crappy result. The “lucky” person
who landed the job was not thinking like this, I can promise you. Replacing that thought with something
like, “I am SO qualified for this job and I will rock the interview,” is bound
to get a different and better result.

4. Do what the lucky do. Based on better feeling thoughts, you
will FEEL better, and therefore ACT in a way that will lead to the result that
you want. Ask yourself what you
want, and then what you need to THINK and DO to get that result. This is how the
lucky get luckier, the rich get richer, the happy get happier, and my beagles
get more than their fair share of beef jerky.

Scott is a great example of what
is possible. He’s had plenty of life tragedy and heartache. He learned early on how to change his thoughts
and his actions to get results. He does not let life happen to him. He creates
his luck. And I am damn lucky to have him!