If your luck is mostly what you make it, how can you make it better?

 
I don’t believe in luck. Before you start pointing out all the times things happen entirely by luck, let me add that I definitely understand that chances — pure randomness — plays a major part in events, often the greatest part. We live in a world dominated by chance. Unfortunately, few people recognize this and substitute the false notion of luck instead ¹.

Chance is random. That means it occurs with no fixed pattern. Luck is assumed not to be random. Some people are supposed to be luckier than others; others suffer life-long bad luck. Luck is even assumed to be affected by simple actions like crossing your fingers, carrying a lucky charm, or avoiding black cats.

I am certain that what we call luck is no more than an observation that some people seem to find more opportunities, and suffer fewer setbacks, than others do. Events come along more or less randomly, but some people have a pattern of dealing with them more effectively. You make your own luck by what you do in response to what life throws at you. Suffering from instances of “bad luck” isn’t anyone’s fault; but that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to improve the situations.

There are ways you can influence your luck for the better — not by superstitions, but by clear choices of action. Here are those I believe are most useful.

Don’t outsource your choices.

Many people allow their choices in life to be made for them by fashion, other peoples’ expectations, friends, or family members. Never do this. You can’t improve your luck by expecting others to do it for you.

Allow yourself enough time to see how events are going to turn out. Many bad choices are made in haste, long before it has become clear what impact events are really going to have. Slow down. Don’t allow fear, anxiety, or foolish pride to push you into action before you are ready.

Don’t allow yourself to become too attached to specific plans or hopes.

I don’t mean that you shouldn’t be passionate about your future; non-attachment doesn’t mean some kind of spacey disinterest in what is going on around you. Be as passionate as you like about what you want to achieve (this will help your motivation to stay firm), but don’t get too attached to any particular way to get to your goals.

Life may block your ideal road and, at the same time, open up some wholly unexpected alternative. If you’re stuck on one route only, you’ll waste time and energy cursing your “bad luck” while completely missing the new option.

Manage your commitments, especially financial ones.

If you’re completely spent out every week, or — much worse — living on credit, you’ll never be able to take the risks needed to pick up the opportunities that life continually offers you. Instead, you’ll have to limit yourself to whatever can make you enough money to keep going, even if that means doing a job you hate.

It’s easy to overspend, given all the marketers who devote their lives to making that happen. If you’re in a tight financial situation, one of the best ways to improve your luck is to slow down your spending and work steadily to move into the realms of greater financial freedom. If you routinely take on more than you can handle, your “luck” will suffer as a result.

Ignore fashion.

The surest thing about fashion is that it will soon change. It’s like basing your choices on the way the wind is blowing.

In fashion, timing is everything. Get too far ahead of the crowd and you’ll have the “bad luck” to find your ideas are ignored. Get too far behind, and you’ll also find “bad luck” — the bad luck of being dismissed as a sad sack who jumps on the bandwagon when everyone “in the know” is already moving on to the next big thing.

Be realistic about relationships.

Good relationships are an enduring source of “good luck” in life; bad ones produce exactly the opposite. Sadly, nearly all of us vastly over-estimate our own value to others and their interest in our well-being. As a result, we set expectations for many relationships that were never going to be met. We set ourself up to experience “bad luck” in our dealings with others.

Being realistic doesn’t mean shying away from relationships, or being negative. It means allowing relationships time to reveal what they can bear, then staying within those bounds. Those who have constant “good luck” with others are always careful to keep each relationship at a level where it’s beneficial for both parties. They don’t demand more than others are willing to give; and they don’t push more onto others that they are willing to handle.

Put yourself first.

This isn’t being selfish: that’s demanding others conform to your wishes, regardless of their own needs. Putting yourself first means recognizing that no one is more interested in your well-being than you are — so if you don’t look out for yourself, how can you expect others to do better?

Learn more. Practice more.

When you experience the “bad luck” of finding you can’t get where you want to go because you lack some knowledge, skill, qualification, or experience, recognize that all of these are things you can change. Just about anything you lack can be learned or worked around. All it takes is a little sustained effort. Ask just about any professional sports player. the more they train and practice, the better the luck they have during competition.

Don’t over-dramatize or get caught in short-term thinking.

These are the biggest sources of “bad luck.” When something goes wrong — as something nearly always will — you focus on the immediate hit, over-dramatize the result, and instantly conclude that your world is coming to an end.

“Lucky” people often suffer just as many reverses, but they look beyond them and don’t let them get out of proportion. Instead of becoming depressed, they begin at once to think about how to get past the blockage. That way, they don’t give up and they often notice the other opportunities chance has brought their way. What seems to be a reverse may be a nice piece of “good luck” in disguise.

Open your mind.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure where you’re headed is right for you. Go along until you find out. Don’t be rigid. When things change — as they will — rational people change their minds. Only irrational, inflexible people cling to the past, marching on into the mire and suffering more and more “bad luck” as a result.

Listen, learn, think, and never rule out what you don’t yet understand. The more you learn, the luckier you’ll become as you begin to see chances and choices hidden from your by your previous ignorance.

Learn to laugh a lot.

Good humor is a wonderful remedy for the blues. If you can laugh at events — and at yourself — they’ll lose their power over you. The world is a crazy place, full of people grimly determined to do wonderfully stupid things. Many of the things we get wrong are truly funny — if only we didn’t get so serious about ourselves.

When you mess up, have a good laugh, learn what you can and start again. If you do that, you’ll end up being one of the luckiest people around.

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1. If you want to understand more about the ways human minds are fooled by entirely chance events, I strongly recommend Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb [↩]