the morning shakeout | issue 563

Good morning! Instead of my usual collection of insightful and interesting snippets and links, I’m going to riff on one topic this week because I spent most of yesterday’s run chewing on an idea that I want to attempt to work out here. Let’s get right to it.

As I was running through the trails near my house, I kept thinking about a quote whose source I couldn’t recall that had to do with creating your own luck. Often we think of luck as being in the right place at the right time, or fortuitous things occurring without any real explanation, and while sometimes that ends up being the case, I don’t think coincidence or chance has as much to do with good things happening to us as we might want to admit.

So how do you create your own luck? I keep coming back to four things, none of which are quick fixes or will lead to instant success: leading with curiosity, staying committed to something (even, and especially, when it might feel hopeless), consistently doing high-quality work, and treating people well along the way. Whether it’s looking back at whatever “luck” I’ve had in my own life, or observing people I admire, I’ve found these traits popping up time and time again.

When I think about curiosity, I can’t help but make the connection to opening yourself up to possibility. If you’re curious about something it means you’re interested in it versus apathetic or indifferent. You aren’t sure how something is going to shake out, and while that uncertainty can be scary, it can also be exciting and liberating, and encourage you to see what might happen. When you lead with curiosity, you’re free to explore, experiment, and adjust, which is a process that you can iterate on indefinitely if you so choose. This applies to running as much as it does professional pursuits, relationships, or a creative practice. If you’re close-minded, couldn’t care less, or just don’t give a shit, whatever it is you’re trying to do isn’t going to be any good, and it certainly won’t last. It might still stand up for some time, sure, but without curiosity to sustain it, eventually it’s going to crumble. The newsletter you’re reading is a good example. It was, and still is, a creative itch I needed to scratch. And by staying curious about it over the past ten-plus years, which doesn’t mean it hasn’t caused me frustrations from time to time, it’s created opportunities and connections I never could’ve imagined. On the flipside, I’ve seen a lot of people start newsletters to grow a following and/or make money, and when those things do or don’t happen, and/or they just get bored with it, they lose interest and move on to something else. That’s all well and good, and while there’s nothing wrong with setting goals or trying to live up to a set of expectations, if curiosity isn’t leading the way they’ll never know what it might have been or where it could have taken them. You’ll never get lucky if you’re dead set on what the thing is going to be.

Curiosity alone won’t cut it, though. If you don’t stay committed to your cause, pursuit, partner, project, or whatever it is you deemed worth caring about, luck isn’t likely to find you. There are plenty of good reasons to walk away from any of those, of course, but in my experience sticking with something when it gets hard, seems impossible, or stops giving you anything back is the best way I know how to create your own luck. This is top of mind right now as a good chunk of the athletes I coach are in the deep end of fall marathon training. The warm weather messes with both their heads and their bodies. Goal race pace feels hard. The volume feels intimidating. They’re tired all the time and not recovering well. Oftentimes it doesn’t feel like any progress is being made. They tell me they want to drop the volume. Do more speedwork. Find a backup race. And sometimes we need to do those things, but more often than not we just need to stay committed to the cause and see it through.

What I often tell these athletes is that commitment is like pounding a stone. Sometimes you create a little dust. Every once in a while a small piece of rock falls off. But most days nothing noticeable happens. It can be frustrating, all that work seemingly making no difference, but you stay committed to showing up every day and taking a solid swing at it, even if you need to make some adjustments from time to time. Commitment isn’t the same as being stubborn. Eventually, the stone cracks, or you hit the PR, and you feel an incredible sense of accomplishment. Some might even call it a lucky day. But it only happened because you stayed committed and trusted that it would eventually arrive.

Of course, leading with curiosity and staying committed don’t count for much if the work you’re doing isn’t any good. My good buddy Shane embodies this better than anyone I know. He’s something of a modern-day Renaissance man: solid athlete, respected custom-home superintendent, he can build or fix just about anything himself, and is pretty talented with a guitar to boot. He’s intensely curious about, and committed to, the things that matter to him. What I respect most about Shane is that he doesn’t half-ass anything he does. When I coached him to his marathon PR in 2019 he didn’t have much time to train because of a long commute and busy days on the job site. He ran 2:23 on 35 to 40 miles a week. Not one of those miles was wasted. A few years ago he helped me remodel our primary bathroom. He framed out the shower niche one afternoon only to come back the next morning and redo it because he thought it could be done a little better. At work, clients request that he lead their projects because he’s developed a reputation for delivering a finished product that’s nothing short of perfect. Shane’s gotten to do some pretty cool shit and he’s one of the luckiest guys I know. None of that is by chance. It’s because he’s the kind of guy who’d redo his own work over a detail nobody was ever going to see.

And finally, the easiest way to create your own luck is the one many people tend to miss: Don’t be an asshole. That’s just the right way to be, of course, but it never ceases to amaze me how much tends to come back to people who treat others well with no expectation of anything in return. I’ve seen this play out over and over again, both for myself and people I know: unexpected close friendships, such as the ones I now have with Phil Shin and Brendan Leonard, that started as friendly conversations for my podcast; getting to work with some incredible athletes I had relationships with for years before I ever wrote them a workout; my wife, Christine, having professional opportunities open up because of how well she treats her clients; coaches like Joe Vigil and Don Swartz, who will forever be remembered and celebrated not for what they achieved, but for how freely they gave their time to anyone who asked for it (myself included); and the list goes on. As I wrote a few years ago in my annual list of life lessons: “Be kind. A simple act of kindness can make someone else’s day and it will help you feel better while you’re at it. Everybody wins (i.e. gets lucky) when you’re kind.”

The luckiest people I know got that way by being curious enough to start, committed enough to stick with it, good enough to stand out, and decent enough that people wanted to be around them. None of this stuff is complicated. But much like how training for a race doesn’t guarantee you the result you want, creating your own luck doesn’t mean you get to pick how it shows up, or when. Most people quit long before they find out. And then they call the ones who stayed lucky.

That’s it for Issue 563. If you’d like to see more one-off riffs like this one (or not!), just hit reply or leave a comment below this post and let me know.

Thanks for reading,

Mario

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