Say yes more
I have been thinking this week about luck.
A Harvard professor I came across on a podcast made the case that luck is less random than we like to think. You create the conditions for it by saying yes to things, by being in the room, and by not letting the back-to-back meetings in your calendar have the final word on how you spend your time. I have been testing this theory, so here are three things I said yes to this week.
A spontaneous flight
A friend messaged me one evening, asking if I want to go flying with him the next afternoon? I had a full day planned. So I cancelled it all, and said yes to the flying instead!
I got my pilot's licence when I was 17 and spent years flying when I lived in Germany, often going up with one of the other instructors at ESA. But since moving back to the UK, having children and starting the business, unsurprisingly I’ve had very little time to enjoy it. It must have been ten or fifteen years since I'd been in a cockpit.
I won't pretend I wasn't a little nervous. Having not been for so long, I was afraid I might have forgotten what to do. But it was a beautiful sunshiny day, and Dan made me feel totally at ease. It all came back to me and I remembered how much I loved it (although I did let him take control to land!).
An extraordinary exhibition
The photographer Max Alexander got in touch with me this week. He has an exhibition at Burlington House in London, extraordinary images of space and space debris, and wanted to know if I'd like to come and see it. I happened to be in London on Tuesday, it was ten minutes from where I was heading that evening. So I said yes.
What I didn't realise was that Max would be giving a private tour to the New Scientist team while I was there, and that I'd get to meet them and hear about their work. Max is the photographer who taught Tim Peake how to take photographs from space, so we all shared some great stories as well as taking in the incredible photos. I highly recommend a visit if you’re nearby.
A speakers evening
And then there was an evening with the speakers community I'm part of, MicDrop, run by Alex Merry. I went to hear the other members give their 3 minute talks. They hooked us in, made us laugh, nearly made me cry, and educated and entertained, all within the time limit. I was so glad I said yes to that too.
That Harvard professor is definitely onto something... You cannot manufacture luck, but you can make yourself available to opportunities, and hey presto… look how ‘lucky’ you get ;-)
Wishing you all lots of luck,
Susan
P.S. If you're curious, Max Alexander's exhibition is on at Burlington House in London but be quick!
‘Our Fragile Space’ Exhibition – Burlington House, Piccadilly, London | March 19 – May 10
P.P.S. If you're looking for a speaker on human performance, resilience, or what extreme environments teach us about the way we work, I'd love to hear from you. Reply to this email and we can have a conversation.
