In past generations, success was synonymous with hard work. In today’s consumer and glamour society, faith in luck has replaced faith in hard work and religion. One function has both luck and religion share is both give hope. Nevertheless, empowering one’s self and being more active so as to generate one’s own “luck” is better than just waiting to get lucky.
Firstly, what is luck? And why do some people consider themselves as lucky while others feel unlucky?
Luck can seem synonymous with chance. To call someone lucky is usually to deny the relevance of their hard work or talent. “Lucky people appear to have an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time and enjoy more than their fair share of lucky breaks.”
Many attribute the outcome of an event to themselves or external factors like luck. But Bernard Weiner, an American social psychologist, defined luck as external, unstable and having uncontrollable causes. Meeting the Director of company seeking someone, with your profile, at a dinner and getting a job of your dreams could be defined as a lucky event.
But not necessarily so, because students getting results from their exams often attribute their success to luck, while others attribute it to the fact that they studied well and therefore empower themselves by taking credit for their work.
Confident people tend to attribute success to themselves and failure to bad luck themselves. This is empowering and builds self-esteem. Others who attribute success to luck and failure to themselves will wait for luck to guide them and will eventually become insecure as they rarely take credit for their successes.
Being “lucky” or “unlucky” is also a question of perspective, someone having experienced serious car accident can see the situation as “unlucky” after breaking an arm, completely destroying their brand new car they bought with a loss the week before. On the other hand, this same person could say, “I’m very lucky to be here,”
A Psychologist Richard Wiseman and author of “The Luck Factor” demonstrated through a series of elegant experiments that “lucky” people do have more good things happening to them than the “unlucky” ones and its not because of chances or luck.
The “lucky” subjects were people who were significantly more extrovert and open than the others. They were twice more lucky to smile and engage in eye contact then the “unlucky” people. They believed to be twice as likely to win the lottery when compared to the “unlucky” group. They appeared being significantly more satisfied with their lives than the “Unlucky” subjects. These translate into maximizing the probability of positive opportunities.
The “unlucky” subjects would meet and speak to less people, consequently reducing the probability of positive outcomes from occurring. Hence, meeting the director of the company seeking someone with your profile at a dinner would not be due to luck. Instead, by being social and interacting with people you maximize the probability of such events occurring.
Should you have been in this situation without being social and interactive, you might have not spoken to this person and you you would not have been “lucky” to get the job. Another characteristic the “lucky” subjects had was that they were half an anxious as the “unlucky” subjects. Wiseman demonstrates through a series of experiments that being relaxed allows you to notice opportunities more than when anxious.
“If you are anxious that you won’t find a parking place, then literally your vision narrows. You lose your peripheral vision.”
The more observant you are of your surroundings; then more likely you are to capture available resources or avoid tragedy. Lucky people don’t magically attract new opportunities and good fortune.
They stroll along with their eyes wide open, fully present in the moment (a problem for people glued to phone screens). This also means that anything that affects our physical or emotional ability to take in our environment also affects our so-called “luckiness “anxiety, for one. Anxiety physically and emotionally closes us off to chance opportunities.
Therefore, in addition to being open and interactive, being able to direct opportunities is also a competitive advantage.
What do these people have that the rest of us don’t? It turns out “ability” is the key word here. Beyond their level of privilege or the circumstances they ever born into, the luckiest people may have a specific set of skills that brings opportunities their way.
Somehow, they’ve learned ways to turn life’s odds in their favor. Thus, one can say that being “Lucky” is determined by your mindset and the way you engage the world_ to attribute to your success.
