Advanced Praise
“I’ve seen her speak, I’ve read her work, I’ve been in a hot tub with her. Hyatt is the real deal. What she teaches is grounded in her own experience -- practical actions and high-minded thought forms. Every chapter in Create Your Own Luck had me nodding, ‘yep, yes, right on!’ I adore how Susan approaches life. Take notes.”
- Danielle
LaPorte, creator of WhiteHotTruth.com and
The Fire Starter
Sessions
“During my own career as a self-help author, I’ve learned that we come in two varieties: the authors who write about the way they should be living, and the ones who write about the way they actually live. Many of the most glowing promises are made by the former group, but the truly useful strategies are delivered by the latter. I’m here to tell you that Susan is a walking embodiment of her own recommendations, a glowing, joyful, whip-smart, soft-hearted, hard-assed luckmeister.”
- Martha Beck, Best Selling Author of Finding Your Own North Star and Steering By Starlight, www.marthabeck.com
“If you are serious about creating luck in your life, this mind-blowing book is about taking control of your life and your destiny - not leaving it to chance or circumstance. Susan explains that luck is not something that just happens nor is it sporadic but rather it’s a way of setting up your life that invites luck in - permanently. if you want to be one of “those” people who you deem to be “lucky in life”, this book will provide you with real-life examples and transformative step-by-step instructions on how to re-wire and electrify your brain to create oodles of long-lasting luck.”
- Jackie Gartman, www.jackiegartman.com
Advanced Praise
“Susan Hyatt has a way of looking the impossible in the face and smiling it into submission. She helps you turn destructive thoughts into positive fuel, and will absolutely help your dreams come true. This book will change the trajectory of your life, guaranteed.”
- Pamela Slim, author, Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur, www.pamslim.com
“Do not read this book. It’s dangerous. You cannot get the ideas and exercises out of your mind - and heart. Which means you’ll actually take action to change your life - no more excuses. No more saying “Tomorrow” or “When I lose the weight.” You about to become very, very lucky. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
- Jennifer Louden, best-selling author of The Woman’s Comfort Book and The Life Organizer , www.jenniferlouden.com
“There’s no one better than Susan Hyatt to help teach you how to get your lucky on. She showed me how to intentionally create the kind of day I want by Dialing It Up rather than ping-ponging through whatever life tosses at me. Susan is a force of nature and I always wondered how she creates all the “awesomesauce” in her life--this book is her awesomesauce recipe. Grab a copy like I did and start creating your life and luck using her practical, concrete, and most importantly, fun tools. And then put your lucky boots on and hold on for the ride.”
-
Bridgette Boudreau, Master Life Coach and CEO, Martha Beck
Inc.,
www.weightshiftcoaching.com
A Little Lucky Note
Create Your Own Luck is about opening your mind and doing the work to bring more luck into your life. Because attorneys also like to get lucky, just understand that working through all of the Lucky Labs does not mean that you are going to win the lottery next week, find a bag of money lying in the street tomorrow, or be invited by Oprah to star on her new network, OWN. All kidding aside, this book was created as a reference tool. I am sharing my skills, knowledge and training with you with the intention that you will use the tools to bring more luck into your life. Along the way, I’d love for you to find your passion, have a clearer vision, work on your leadership, look for the WOW, dial up your creativity, and be 37 different kinds of awesome! If you can’t, won’t, or don’t accomplish these things, I cannot be held responsible for this, nor can my publisher. Let’s have some fun! Go whip up a smoothie and make yourself some MIND FUEL!
XO,
Susan Hyatt
Create Your Own Luck
7 Steps to Get You’re Lucky On
By Susan Hyatt
Copyright ©2011 Susan Hyatt
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher and author.
Published by Journey Grrrl Publishing, Washington DC
Journey Grrrl Publishing, and the road meets the horizon design are registered trademarks of Becoming Journey, LLC.
ISBN-13: 978-1-936984-08-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011940934
Cover Design by Drai Bearwomyn
Cover Design Collaboration Lautaro Cabrera
Create Your Own Luck logo by Chelsea Sanders, Blueline
Interior Design by Karen Leigh Burton/Poodles Doodles
How to get your Free Gifts!
As a way of saying thanks for buying Create Your Own Luck, we are pleased to offer you $292.07 worth of FREE Gifts to accompany the book. Throughout the book, author Susan Hyatt offers Lucky Lab worksheets to help you create your own luck. Susan has also made available companion videos for each chapter and songwriter McCall Erickson wrote a special song just for you!
When you register at www.CreateYourOwnLuckBook.com, you’ll receive all the following Lucky Items:
• Lucky Song Get Your Lucky On by Songwriter McCall Erickson
• Lucky Lab#1 Scientist in Your Life
• Lucky Lab #2 Track the Triggers
• Lucky Lab #3 Got Babemba?
• Lucky Lab #4 The Talent Ferret
• Lucky Lab #5 Envy Buster
• Lucky Lab #6 The Happy Basket
• Lucky Lab #7 Passion Formula
• Lucky Lab #8 Be Your Own Fun Coordinator
• Lucky Lab #9 Dial it Up
• Lucky Lab #10 Texts from God
• Lucky Lab #11 The Anti-Leotard Exercise Program
• Lucky Lab #12 What’s Your End Game?
• Lucky Lab #13 Play to Your Edge
• Lucky Lab #14 Line Up Key Areas
• Lucky Lab #15 Line Up with Your Brilliance
• Lucky Lab #16 Inspiration Junction for Creativity
• Lucky Lab #17 What’s Your Flavor of Fun?
• Lucky Video 1 How to Rock Your Day Using the Dial It Up Method!
• Lucky Video 2 Interview on Passion with Jessica Steward
• Lucky Video 3 Interview on Energy with Kimberly Kingsley
• Lucky Video 4 Luck, Leadership and Wealth, Interview with Kirsten Marion
• Lucky Video 5 Creativity and Luck Interview with Lisa Sonora Beam
• Lucky Video 6 Have more Fun and get Luckier, Interview with Ingrid Arna
• Lucky Bonus The Lucky 7 Manifesto
Go to
www.CreateYourOwnLuckBook.com
to download your free gifts today!
- For Scott -
Who embodies the best kind of Luck
Table of Contents
Lucky Quiz How Ready Are You to Get Your Lucky On?
Lucky Lab#1 Scientist in Your Life
Lucky Lab #2 Track the Triggers
Lucky Lab #4 The Talent Ferret
Lucky Lab #8 Be Your Own Fun Coordinator
Lucky Lab #11 The Anti-Leotard Exercise Program
Lucky Lab #12 What’s Your End Game?
Lucky Lab #13 Play to Your Edge
Lucky Lab #14 Line Up Key Areas
Lucky Lab #15 Line Up with Your Brilliance
Lucky Lab #16 Inspiration Junction for Creativity
Lucky Lab #17 What’s Your Flavor of Fun?
Conclusion: It’s Just the Beginning
Foreword
I’ve always known it was one of my lucky days when Susan Hyatt decided to sign up for my life coach training course. Another one came along when Susan decided to push her training to the level of Master Coach, and another when she agreed to work with me training other coaches.
Here’s what I didn’t know about all that luck: I did it! That’s right—by writing this book, Susan has now convinced me that her very arrival in my life was luck I made my very own self (read on to find out how). At the time, of course, I didn’t know how I was creating so much luck. I did it the same way I once made a rented Plymouth cruise gently down a hill in a sleepy neighborhood and park itself on a neighbor’s lawn, with a combination of grim, sweaty effort and total bewilderment. But now, having read Create Your Own Luck, I can see the patterns. I can skip the grimness and replace bewilderment with understanding. And I believe I can begin replicating the luckiest things in my life with more precision and predictability.
During my own career as a self-help author, I’ve learned that we come in two varieties: the authors who write about the way they should be living, and the ones who write about the way they actually live. Many of the most glowing promises are made by the former group, but the truly useful strategies are delivered by the latter. I’m here to tell you that Susan is a walking embodiment of her own recommendations, a glowing, joyful, whip-smart, soft-hearted, hard-assed luckmeister. I’ve watched Susan encounter huge challenges in her personal and professional life, devising responses that always allowed her to ride the wildest waves of fortune like a ping-pong ball. I’ve watched luck come to her in ways others saw as random—and I’ve seen that actually, the strategies she teaches in this book were the driving force behind her success. My academic background always makes me demand real-world evidence for any self-help claim. Susan’s life is her evidence.
Because she operates within a sort of coaching “tribe,” Susan is also able to immediately test and refine her ideas with other savvy people. Their experiences, and those of clients who’ve used Susan’s techniques under guidance from many different coaches, create an impressively sizeable pool of real evidence that Susan’s “get your luck on” strategies yield results. Many, many people have already achieved impressive results using each tool she offers, and her clear, memorable instructions make it easy for her readers to benefit in the same way.
This is also just a fun read. When Susan says that to have fun you have to BE fun, she’s speaking from a lifetime of experience. Just being near Susan is so much fun I’m sure there must be laws against it in many states. Her buoyant spirit shines through everything she does, and this book is no exception. So if you just now picked up Create Your Own Luck, prepare for a jolly, limit-smashing, thought-provoking, fascinating ride. Take it from me: having Susan Hyatt walk into your life, in person or in print, makes you one lucky reader. And about to get a whole lot luckier.
Martha Beck
Introduction
My nine-year-old daughter Emily loves to paint. She paints several times a week, sketches ideas, asks for gift certificates to the art shop over toys. It’s her thing. Last year she entered a school-wide art contest. Students could enter any creative medium they wanted, including pottery, photography, video, paint, etc. The biggest criterion was that whatever they enter, it must incorporate the theme, “WOW.”
Emily won a big blue first place ribbon, and her painting was entered into the state competition. One of her cousins came over and saw the giant ribbon on the refrigerator and commented, “Lucky!”
But was she lucky? Was it luck that she bought the canvases and materials? Was it luck that prompted her to ask that we take her to a local art studio so that she could consult with her favorite art teacher about how best to paint her idea? Was it luck that she spent hours sketching an idea and then painting it? Was it luck that created a zany painting idea of the Mona Lisa holding her cat Mango, surrounded by lightning bolts and fire flies? (WOW.) Let’s back it up a bit.
Emily had a good attitude about entering the contest. She had a clear vision of what WOW meant to her and what she would paint. She sought out the supplies and help that she needed to get the work completed. So, when she won, it was nice recognition for something far greater than luck. It was a wonderful blend of clarity in belief, action, and the overall vision.
We are here on this planet to go deep within ourselves and experience our truest selves. If you agree to go within, you will experience joy on so many levels that people around you will wonder, “How did she get so lucky?!” And, with the tools and simple formulas in this book, you will be able to tell them and help them get lucky, too.”
Chapter 1: Clarity
“I want to see how lucky, Lucky can be I want to ride with my Angel and live shockingly I want to drive to the edge and into the sea I want to see how lucky, Lucky can be.”
Melissa Etheridge
So, what is luck then? If we ditch the notion that fortune is random and we embrace our own responsibility for creating it, luck is defined like this:
Luck is where the consistency of a good attitude, diligent work, and clear vision collide. It is clarity in belief, action, and the overall vision for your life.
Notice the word CLARITY in my definition. I’ve never met a truly lucky person who was not also clear about what they want. And, as you might guess, people who live from a space of clarity often admired as lucky. This is because they are not weighed down by thoughts, excuses, and distractions for very long. They keep their eye on the ball.
What does luck actually FEEL like? The moment that the luck trifecta blends, it feels like deep validation, a release of a tremendous knowing, and very, very delicious. But it does not feel like candy. It feels like a richly nourishing meal. A meal that was not served to you by another, but a recipe created and cooked by yourself. The process is a reward in and of itself, and the meal is a terrific result.
Personally, I have gotten so used to creating what I want in my life, that when I get it, it feels like, “Of course.” But this wasn’t always the case. I spent many years having success in one area or another, but never an authentic and peaceful existence in all areas of my life. I might have had a rockin’ professional life some years, but my personal life was in jeopardy. Or, my spirituality was in question. And usually, my health was ignored.
I spent way too much time having adult temper tantrums, whining, using food as an escape, and looking outside of myself for my answers. I wasn’t very
good at playing the victim, but sisters and brothers I am here to say that I had the role of MARTYR down pat. It sucked. That crazy belief system included: “I have to do everything around here. No one works as hard as me. I sacrifice everything for my family. I can’t relax because I have to be the one to keep it all together. “ I was a rape survivor, my son was labeled with ADHD, I hated my job. Life wasn’t “fair” to me.
The biggest lessons in my life have taught me – and new challenges continue to provide evidence – that luck and peace and harmony do not pull into the driveway and honk three times. I go out and catch them.
TURNING INWARD:
My mom was visiting for Easter when everything culminated for me. I was overworked and undernourished, and emotionally on edge. She offered to keep the kids for the day so that I could go out and have some fun by myself. I stopped and cried. I had no idea what I would do for fun. I had become so disconnected from myself that I wasn’t sure what I would do with that time. In all honesty, grocery shopping and getting caught up on the laundry was about all I could think of.
It was in that moment that I decided. I knew deep down that there was a better way to live and love and contribute to the world. I had had enough experience with success in different areas of my life that I knew that I had it within me to discover a way to blend everything into a more satisfying and happy way of life. I decided to get to work on my inner life with the same gusto that I had applied to other successful areas of my life. And I was astounded by what I found.
I became a Scientist in my own life. I was fascinated with what worked and what didn’t. I made a list of what felt good in my life. What was working? What didn’t work? What could be better?