Guess who's lucky?

Yesterday I started listening to a book called Conscious Luck by Gay Hendricks and Carol Kline. When I read its subtitle, "Eight Secrets to Intentionally Change Your Fortune," I figured why not. It certainly couldn't hurt. I'm only a few chapters in, but the overarching message so far is about accountability and empowerment — about how changing our beliefs can lead to better outcomes. I dig it.

The book challenged me to write several sentences today:

I, Drew Dotson, make a sincere commitment to being lucky — now and forever.

I acknowledge that, through the power of commitments — both conscious and unconscious — I've created my life as it is now.

I now choose to use this power to create my life the way I consciously want it to be.

I started to think about the commitments I've made to myself, particularly the not-so-conscious ones.

At some point in the past, I labeled myself the person that rare, typically bad, stuff happens to. I don’t know what triggered it, but I imagine it was health related. From that point forward, I focused on the things that affirmed my belief: the kidney stones, the stalker, the blood clots, the cornhole injury, the twice-flooded condo, the debilitating allergic reaction, the pilot strike while in a foreign country, the whoops-the-guy-I'm-dating-is-in-jail incident, and the list goes on.

A part of me embraced that identity. In a way, it was a coping mechanism — something to lean on in an "I told you so" way.

Then, when I met Ramón, my mindset started to shift. I felt so darn lucky to have him by my side for 7+ healthy years. The belief was still there, but it was often in sleep mode. But when Ramón was diagnosed with cancer, I reverted to my old way of thinking. "Of course this would happen," I thought. In my heart I was optimistic, but with each setback, I couldn’t help but think I was the common denominator. Bad stuff happens to me.

Now my baseline is somewhere in the middle. I don’t think of myself as someone who attracts particularly good or bad things, but I’m ready to switch gears.

Today I’ve decided to become lucky. The book recommended that I go public with my commitment, so here it is.

I am lucky! Good things happen to me.

Boo. Yow.

P.S. In writing this, I remembered how my grandmother claims to be lucky. Maybe that's the secret!