HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN LUCK

 

1. BE A SOCIAL BUTTERFLY

Psychologist Richard Wiseman is an authority on luck — or what is perceived as luck in our lives. In his book The Luck Factor, Wiseman found that the best predictor of how many “lucky breaks” a person has was how social and interconnected they were with those around them. Lucky people enjoy connecting and relating to other people and are comfortable doing so. When presented with new social situations, unlucky people talked to people they already knew or people who were most like themselves, whereas lucky people talked to a large array of people equally.

Most of life’s opportunities don’t land on us mysteriously. They come through our networks, our connections, people we stumble across at random.

My one-and-only attempt at a day job was landed through an acquaintance I had made when I was going out five nights-a-week in Boston back in 2007. I once landed an audition for a touring rock band by randomly meeting the singer at a Fourth of July party (he and I happened to be hitting on the same girl). A blogger recently wrote about sitting down in a coffee shop to work on his laptop and accidentally striking up a conversation with an old man who just happened to have invented the first ever programmable computer and spent the afternoon chatting with him.

Wiseman states in his book:

“I discovered that being in the right place at the right time is actually all about being in the right state of mind… Lucky people increase their odds of chance encounters or experiences by interacting with a large number of people. And that makes perfect sense: Chance opportunities are a numbers game. The more people and perspectives in your sphere of reference, the more likely good insights and opportunities will combine.”

As the old saying goes, it’s not what you know, but who you know.

2. PERIODICALLY DO SOMETHING STUPID

The perception of luck is more likely to fall on those who take a dumb risk or two. Again, it comes back to our perceptual biases. We notice the spectacular successes and quickly forget about the fizzled failures. If you’re on vacation with your buddy and he decides to go on to the strip club by himself at 5AM and next thing you know he’s showing up in your hotel room at noon with two women on his arm and stories about partying with Charlie Sheen all morning, chances are he’s not some divine purveyor of fortune, but rather he’s had a lot of meaningless, lackluster nights at strip clubs and this time he happened to wander into the right one at the right moment.

Spontaneity will open you up to more potential opportunities and adventures. Falling into the same drab fixed routine is going to yield less unexpected opportunities and fewer possible big gains.

There is a horizon to our ability to see opportunities when we pursue certain actions. For instance, we may see the one clear opportunity available if we quit our job or move to a new country or take up a new hobby. But we don’t see the other opportunities that job, that move, or that hobby will lead to.

For instance, when I started working online, I thought it was my internet business or bust. I either made it work or I’d be dutifully gulped back up by the 9-to-5 world. But over the years, I’ve met people and had opportunities for business ventures in places as odd as Thailand, Ukraine, and Brazil. I’ve made friends of different industries in the most random of ways and have developed connections that keep me confident that I’ll never have to work a day job again for the rest of my life.

And chances are if I had acted on any of those opportunities, they wouldn’t have completely worked out, but would have opened me up to a whole new host of opportunities I can’t fathom at the moment. Such is success — a long, painful string of failed shots and course corrections. What is commonly perceived as luck is often merely someone who wasn’t afraid to screw up a few dozen times.

The point is this: be open-minded and spontaneous. The guy with the hideous shirt may actually be the perfect business partner for your new venture. The networking event your brother is dragging you to could actually score you court-side tickets to a playoff basketball game. That guy who sold you cocaine might introduce you to your future spouse. You never know.

(OK, probably not.)