Can you create your own luck? YES!

Serendipity is everywhere, omnipresent in our lives every day.

Serendipity is when something unexpected happens, what could easily be interpreted as a failure, misfortune or accident, and we are able to harvest a positive benefit from this experience. By keeping our minds open and creative.

What a tragedy that many, including myself do not train this learnable skill. Yes Making the best of a setback or failure is one way to define serendipity. And yest this is a learnable skill and yes it can increase positivity in our lives.

Example yesterday. Driving to a coaching session, I encountered a significant traffic delay. Arriving 15 minutes be late. My reptile brain kicking in and freaking out..... Now what?

It would be great to always hold a serendipity mindset. I have much work ahead to do so better. And yesterday was one of these special moments when I could step into this challenge and ask myself, "What is good about being late?"

Recognizing that several of the activities in the planned session would involve reflection and action from the Champion* who I was accompanying, I invited this successful leader to "start the coaching session without me," engaging in a few exercises which I briefly described.

The result? The leader stepped into this invitation and our session was much more powerful and more fun! than originally imagined.

Upon arriving late, I shared, "Thank you for being all in on the invitation to start our session without me. This may just be a best practice to use more in the future!" Some laughter is generally a good thing and we shared an abundant laugh.

When have you faced a problem or challenge and stepped up to flip the difficulty into a benefit?

What is not going as planned in your life wand how are you leveraging this?

Please share your examples to inspire the community!

* The word "coachee" is one I strongly dislike, since the champions I accompany always do the heavy lifting and deserve the credit for growth; as a coach I am not "doing" something to enable personal growth and change. The champion must want to pass through the door which opens during a coaching session.

In other words, no one needs coaching, everyone deserves to be accompanied by a coach to facilitate their process of personal growth.

Please leave a comment below. A special thanks to Christian Busch for his book Connect the Dots. And to Felix B. for another great book recommendation.

Bill Zeeb is an ICF PCC certified executive coach and founder of Stakeholder Centered Partners. A member of?100 Coaches?and Stakeholder Centered Coaching? Master Coach, Bill and his team focus on helping technical Founders and their leadership teams to measurably improve their individual and collective leadership effectiveness. The infinitas team specializes in accompanying highly motivated technical leaders (think PhD.'s) who frequently have little or no experience working with a coach and seek to significantly grow their business. The infinitas approach to coaching is highly data-driven, extremely time efficient and delivers guaranteed measurable leadership growth.