Do You Believe in Luck?

“I’m a great believer in luck. I’ve found that the harder I work, the more I have of it.”  Thomas Jefferson.

Luck is one of those things most of us wish we had more of and the fact that some people seem to have more of it than others, often stirs up emotions of unfairness within us. But lucky people aren’t lucky by coincidence.  Lucky people understand that both good and bad luck exist and if they want to be on the better side of it, then hard work and a powerful mindset helps them get a little luckier.    

As Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology once wrote, “Optimists endure the same storms in life as pessimists. But they weather them better and emerge from them better off.” The same is true with luck. We may not be able to personally control financial downturns, natural disasters or other traumas in our lives, but we can endure them.  With every challenge we face, we have the potential to add valuable resources to our toolbox. Lucky people appreciate the value of this type of knowledge and experience. 

So How Do You Cultivate Your Own Luck?   

1. Learn to be Lucky

According to experts luck isn’t something that just happens, it’s something you can learn.

That’s the contention of a classic article in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper by University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman. The article lays out Wiseman’s research into the impact of luck on people’s lives. To conduct his experiments, he found and interviewed hundreds of people who either considered themselves very lucky or unlucky.

The difference between the two groups, he found, wasn’t left up to magical fairy dust, but rather their actions and attitudes. When it comes to the consistently unlucky, “thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their fortune,” Wiseman writes. The converse is also true–there are ways of thinking and acting that increase luck and these can be learned.

2. Luck Is A Mindset

In his book The Luck Factor, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, England, also describes why lucky people tend to share traits that make them luckier than others. This includes the impact of chance opportunities, lucky breaks, and being in the right place at the right time. He says: “My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.” On the flipside he says: “Those who think they’re unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune.” 

So, there you have it.  When we approach life with hard work and a positive, calm and relaxed mindset, it appears to have a big impact on how lucky we get.  And, the fact of the matter is most “overnight successes” or lucky breaks come at the end of years of hard work and an attitude of belief that good fortune is coming your way.

So, this month, remember that luck isn’t a random game of chance; it’s something that happens because of you. Luck is something you can create for yourself.  Enjoy the magical ride over the rainbow!

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