If you’ve been tricked into this post because you were looking for help with your sex life, I apologize for the overly clever headline.
For the rest of you, let’s talk about luck.
One of my favorite quotes is E.B. White: “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.”
Willing to be lucky. How do you accept your luckiness? Are there times you could have had a great stroke of luck but somehow missed it?
Louis Pasteur said, “Chance favors the prepared mind.”
I love this recent piece on Open Forum headlined How To Create Luck In Business And In Life. It doesn’t describe magic amulets and how to pick the best lottery numbers. It’s about the practical ways you can prepare your mind for luck and good fortune.
Here’s an excerpt of some of the excellent pointers:

How do you increase your luckiness quotient in both your own business and life?
First, create a completely different relationship to your goals. Typically, when we construct goals, we become myopically focused on the attainment of that particular outcome at the exclusion of all else. This significantly limits other opportunities from emerging. Limiting opportunities diminishes luckiness. Instead of focusing on specific short-term revenue targets, build a platform for future growth and expansion. Not everything that matters can be measured. I recall hearing Oprah once say, “The best things happened in my life when I wasn’t focused on my goals.”
Secondly, just like with a specific outcome, if we cling too rigidly to a prescribed plan, we will shut off new and potentially better avenues for achievement. Former President and Five-Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Figure out the general direction you want to go, but then adapt as you gather new information. Most likely, your greatest opportunities and successes will come from unforeseen places and unexpected people. Don’t fall prey to believing that there is one right way to do things. Lucky people create strategies that fit their own style. As it is said, there is more than one way to skin a cat.
Finally, take action. Visualizing what you want is not enough. Get out from behind your computer and meet people. Luck is created through connections. And although social media is making it easier than ever to connect, these online networks do not have nearly the impact as meeting face-to-face. And make every conversation count. Determine what you wish to create in your life and share that possibility with everyone you meet. You never know whom you will be speaking with. I have heard countless stories of people having a casual conversation only to find out that the individual was only one degree of separation away from someone truly influential in their space.

You can read the rest of this article here.
In the last few months, I’ve been trying to strike a balance between executing on a career plan and opening myself up to serendipity. I’ve always been a type A girl who loves to check to-dos off my list, and one of my commitments to myself upon turning 40 is to occasionally step away from the list and let some magic happen.
More on luck from Forbes — an excerpt from Life Is What You Make It, by Peter Buffett.