Luck is something that everyone will tell you plays a huge role in the difference between success and failure. Moreover, some of those people would shrug and say that luck is simply out of your hands. Sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t.
Dr. James Austin, a neurologist, and author of the book called Chase, Chance, and Creativity outlines his theory of the four kinds of luck—or, as he calls it, chance.
Chance… something fortuitous that happens unpredictably without discernable human intention. Chance is unintentional, it is capricious, but we needn’t conclude that chance is immune from human interventions. However, one must be careful not to read any unconsciously purposeful intent into “interventions”… [which] are to be viewed as accidental, unwilled, inadvertent, and unforeseeable.
Indeed, chance plays several distinct roles when humans react creatively with one another and with their environment…
The four kinds of chance each have a different kind of motor exploratory activity and a different kind of sensory receptivity.
In Chance I, the good luck that occurs is completely accidental. It is pure blind luck that comes with no effort on our part. Chance I is completely impersonal; you can’t influence it.
In Chance II, something else has been added—motion. One must distinguish between motion and progress. But it cannot always be made first. And it is not always made consciously. The true, waste motion should be avoided. A certain [basic] level of action “stirs up the pot”, brings in random ideas that will collide and stick together in fresh combinations lets chance operate. Motion yields a network of new experiences which, like a sieve, filter best when in constant up-and-down, side-to-side movement… Unluck runs out if you keep stirring up things so that random elements can combine, by virtue of you and their inherent affinities. Chance II springs from your energetic, generalized motor activities… the freer they are, the better. Chance II favors those who have a persistent curiosity about many things coupled with an energetic willingness to experiment and explore.
As we move on to Chance III, we see blind luck, but it tiptoes in softly, dressed in camouflage. Chance presents only a faint clue, the potential opportunity exists, but it will be overlooked except by that one person uniquely equipped to observe it, visualize it conceptually, and fully grasp its significance. Chance III involves a special receptivity, discernment, and intuitive grasp of significance unique to one particular recipient. Chance favors the prepared mind. Chance III favors those who have a sufficient background of sound knowledge plus special abilities in observing, remembering, recalling, and quickly forming significant new associations.
Chance IV favors individualized action. This is the fourth element in good luck—an active, but unintentional, subtle individualized prompting of it. Chance IV is the kind of luck that develops during a probing action that has a distinctive personal flavor. Chance IV comes to you, unsought, because of who you are and how you behave. In neurological terms, Chance III is concerned with personal sensory receptivity; its counterpart, Chance IV, is involved with personal motor behavior. Chance IV favors those with distinctive, if not eccentric hobbies, personal lifestyles, and motor behaviors.
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