Luck Isn’t Real
“LUCKY” PEOPLE ARE EARNING IT. AND YOU CAN, TOO.
Lottery winners, a first-time game player for whom the dice consistently falls the right way, that always-smiling friend with the great job and perfect family. We all know people who seem to catch all the breaks. We call them lucky. Or glücklich (German), şanslı (Turkish), khush qismat (Pakistani/ Urdu), Kōun’na (Japanese), nasiib leh (Somali), afortunado (Spanish). But are they really lucky?
Just an Illusion
An important caveat: I am writing exclusively about luck relating to circumstances, to events that are frequent and subject to change. There is another kind of luck, called constitutional luck, relating to things that can’t be changed - for example, genetics, location of birth, family of origin. Constitutional luck, unlike circumstantial luck, is absolutely a “thing.” I am genuinely lucky to have been born into a healthy, light-skinned body in the US to a caring, safe, middle class family. That I have never had to worry about not eating, being abused, experiencing racism, significant civil or political turmoil, etc. has benefited me every day of my life. And I did absolutely nothing to earn it.
Circumstances outside of our control happen to all of us. Sometimes those circumstances are positive, sometimes they are negative. Over short periods, they can string together in ways that make us feel like life is out to get us: “bad things come in threes,” we say.
Last winter I was in two car accidents, neither my fault, both impacting my front driver’s-side bumper. The first was a slow-motion, is-this-really-happening incident at a red light. The giant white truck in front of me decided to back up (why???) and put a cartoonishly-perfect, hitch-shaped hole in my car. The second, just a few weeks later, involved a giant red truck sliding into the median wall on the freeway and spinning out across all three lanes of traffic, spewing debris everywhere and taking me into the snow bank with it.
At the same time, I was buried with multiple struggling consulting teams at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School, a long-time colleague with whom I’d always had a good relationship seemed to undergo an abrupt personality change, and endless, consecutive bouts of sickness struck me and my kids.
I was emotionally exhausted, barely holding myself – and the people depending on me – up. I was cowering against the ropes, taking body blows and waiting for the bell to ring. Surely, a break would come! While I waited, it was easy to believe in my lack of luck - I’m cursed! - and question what it is I’d done to deserve such bad fortune. An explanation would have been welcome, ameliorating even, to my battered psyche. But it wouldn’t have changed anything.
And a short time later, everything shifted. The spring semester drew to a close, my kids wrapped up another successful year of school and I was cruising the streets of Minneapolis in a shiny, reliable EV just as gas prices skyrocketed. It seemed my luck had changed, but had it?
In hindsight, it was actually pretty lucky that I’d had two accidents in succession; it meant two insurance claims (I’d been two days out from starting the repairs from the first accident when my car was totaled by the second) to subsidize the purchase of a new vehicle. And in neither accident had anyone been hurt, even the one that involved flying metal on an icy highway. The reality is that I experienced positive and negative circumstances in both the time I felt lucky and the time I felt unlucky. There may have been a modest imbalance between the two and, certainly, some of the circumstances felt more meaningful to me, occupying a more prominent position in my brain. I felt lucky/ unlucky, but I wasn’t actually either.
Luck isn’t a “thing” that happens to us, but a story we tell ourselves to explain our situation, to quiet our brains. We tell ourselves we’re unlucky to absolve ourselves of guilt, to hold hope that the difficulties will pass. We say others are lucky so we don’t have to feel inferior, to contain our envy, to believe that we, too, might be so fortunate someday. Such mental gymnastics aren’t inherently bad; they are probably even helpful given the prevalence of the concept across all cultures. But sometimes, we speak of luck in order to pass on responsibility. That last bit is the problem.
Habits of the Lucky
Lucky people, we’ve determined, aren’t really lucky; their circumstances, over the long run, aren’t inherently more favorable than anyone else’s. And yet, it really does seem like some people are able to consistently and sustainably fall on the right side of fortune. I contend to you that these people are making their own luck. If they can do it, so can you, by adopting their habits.
Habit #1: Believe you are in control
Lucky people believe they have more control than they do. They know better, of course. They know that their sphere of influence has limitations, but by adopting this mindset, lucky people stretch that sphere of influence to its limit. As a result, their reach far exceeds that of most – they steer their own lives more aggressively – and that makes them look lucky. It also makes a friend of that pervasive human flaw: confirmation bias. People who look for opportunities to influence the outcomes of their lives will inevitably find them.
Habit #2: Maintain peripheral vision
Lucky people set goals just like the rest of us, but they don’t fixate on them; they don’t develop tunnel vision. Lucky people manage to both look forward toward a destination and stay abreast of the happenings around themselves. This allows them to notice opportunities that others miss. Simply put, lucky people are aware of more of their circumstances, both negative and positive, which gives them a greater probability of identifying lucky-appearing opportunities.
Habit #3: Default to “yes”
Lucky people don’t wait for perfectly-aligned circumstances, but are willing to take advantage of any that will propel them in a satisfying direction. Maybe that direction is just 15 degrees off from where they thought they were heading - maybe it’s a whole new direction they’re only taking because circumstances brought it to their attention. It’s like sailing a boat; any wind that helps you move is better than sitting still. When you are willing to say “yes” to more positive circumstances than the rest of us, it makes you look lucky.
Habit #4: Move nimbly
If luck involves actively aligning yourself with positive circumstances, you can only be successful if you allow the circumstances to set the timeline and pace. Sometimes that means dropping what you’re doing today in order to capture a fleeting opportunity.
“Lucky” people aren’t lucky in the way that we tend to mean; good things aren’t just happening to them at an unusual rate. Rather, lucky people believe they have the power and responsibility to steer their lives. They are seeing their circumstances more clearly than others. And, they are moving quickly to align themselves with positive circumstances even when those circumstances aren’t pointing in the perfect direction. There’s no fairy tale magic here. Anyone can be (circumstantially) lucky. Yes, you, too.
