4 (Science-Backed) Tips on Being More Lucky
In episode 465, we learned how to make your own luck. It turns out that science also wants to make luck. Professor Richard Wiseman’s book The Luck Factor lays out four essential principles (all supported by science) in how to make more luck.
How fortunate that I stumbled across this book in the bookstore…
4 Tips on How to Be More Lucky
- Make the most of opportunity.
- Use your intuition.
- Expect to be lucky.
- Turn bad luck into good.
Let’s break down these concepts and some related ideas.
Make the Most of Chance
By definition, luck isn’t planned. When you go to a casino and play craps, it’s lucky if the first roll is seven. But if you make sure it’s seven by exercising your psychokinetic powers to levitate and rotate the dice, that’s not luck, it’s magic, and you’ll be escorted out of the casino by two guys named “Bubba.”
Luck is the opportunity you aren’t expecting. If you want lots of chance opportunities, you have to plan to make them happen.
As we saw in episode 465, luck comes in the form of people. So the more, varied people you bring into your life, the more luck will come your way.
Luck comes in the form of people.
Wiseman recommends meeting a new person each week. Go out somewhere there are people. Find someone you don’t already know who looks friendly and strike up a conversation. Anyone wearing a T-shirt that says “Shy multibillionaire in search of friends” should be first on your list to approach.
If you don’t know how to strike up a conversation, just say “Excuse me. I was listening to this podcast that told me to meet a new person. You look like someone who’s fun to know. Would you object to making a new friend?”
Keep In Touch With People
Once you’ve met someone, they’re now a friend. Friendships must be maintained. So also once a week, reach out to a friend you haven’t spoken with in a while. Set up a phone or in-person meeting and renew your relationship.
This isn’t networking in the traditional sense. You have no goal here. You’re simply expanding your social reach and making new friends. The more friends you have, the greater the chances that you’ll bring luck into your life.
Be Open to New Experiences
It’s really easy to get into a routine, day after day. The good news of routines is that they don’t take much thought. The bad news is that the same things happen day after day after day. They’re…routine.
Attract luck by being open to new experiences. If someone walks up to you and offers to take you on a scavenger hunt dressed as a sheep, say “Yes!” You never know who’s wearing that wolf costume next to you, as you pose for a selfie at the foam party. It could be someone who you’ll go on to co-found a new company with, revolutionize an industry, and disrupt the status quo! Woo hoo!
Just being open to new experiences isn’t enough, however. You need to look around enough to notice those opportunities. This morning, a service person arrived to test the fire alarms in our building. Their eyes were glued to their cell phone the entire time—they never even looked up to say hello or pay attention to anything except their task.
So when they stepped over the hundred dollar bill that the wind had blown beneath their feet, they didn’t even notice. They passed by the pile of gold bars labeled “24 karat! Take one for free!” without looking twice. And the vial of water from the Fountain of Youth that someone left on the counter? Not even a glance.
If you’re stuck in your cell phone like the poor serviceperson, train yourself to look around. Before you go to bed, spend a few minutes each day reviewing your day. Think about the people you encountered. Were there any opportunities that came up? If you use a daily accountabilibuddy as described in episode 11—which is also a cornerstone of Get-it Done Groups—add “Did you look for new opportunities?” to your daily checkin.
Use Your Intuition
Modern schools love our analytical brain! They really do. We’re graded on how well we do math. When they give us a writing assignment, we usually have to analyze something. We compare. We contrast. We calculate. It’s hugely effective. Without that kind of thinking, we wouldn’t have podcasts, and you wouldn’t be listening to me, and that would be sad. But we also have other ways of coping with the world: intuition.
Your intuitive brain—also known as your unconscious mind—doesn’t work by logic, it works by recognizing patterns. And it communicates not in language, but in hunches and gut feelings.
When you have a hunch that something may be an opportunity, follow it up. You can’t get that paisley lycra jumpsuit out of your mind? Maybe that’s because your unconscious mind thinks it’s going to be the fashion trend of the century. Jump right in and do some exploration to find out if it’s an opportunity or a red herring.
(Hmm…red herring? Red Herring. Red…Herring…BONE. HERRINGBONE! Paisley is so 1970s. But herringbone just might be the fashion statement of the 2000s. Consider this a free tip from me to you!)
Boost Your Intuition
We know we can boost our analytical minds. That’s why we practice things like fractions (if you don’t practice fractions, zip over to Math Dude right now and get started). You can also boost your intuition so it gets even better at helping you spot intuition.
Calm your mind. Meditate. And reflect on past intuitions to help make your future intuitions even better.
My intuition used to go wild when I met a certain kind of charismatic businessperson. After having bad experiences with several of those people, I sat down to reflect. It became obvious that my attraction to that certain charisma had never steered me right, and always steered me wrong. Now, my intuition when encountering that charisma is to run, very quickly, in the opposite direction.
Expect Luck!
If you expect to be lucky, you’ll be much more apt to discover opportunity knocking at your door. Expect luck. Even if it’s unrealistic, expect it anyway. It’s unrealistic to expect a personal productivity podcast to reveal the little-known fact that Medusa secretly loved chocolate-covered gummy bears. But…well, it just happened. So there you go. Expect to be lucky.
Also, expect things to work out. Then, when things go wrong, you’ll keep pushing through. Because when you expect things to work out, you’ll surely think any setbacks are just temporary.
Pucker Up
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. So when you have bad luck, try to find the positive side. If there is no positive side, force it. And remember that sometimes, lemonade takes more than lemons. It also needs water and sugar. If turning your bad luck to good means rustling up extra resources, get hopping and turn that cloud into a silver lining. Then take steps to prevent more bad luck in the future.
“But Stever,” I hear you cry, “mixing cloud and lemonade metaphors is a horrible idea.” In prose, that’s true. But I can use this as the basis for epic free verse poetry and make millions.
It’s better to be lucky than skillful. And the skillful Dr. Wiseman has helped us understand how we can increase our skill at being lucky.
- Make the most of opportunity.
- Use your intuition.
- Expect to be lucky.
- Turn bad luck into good.
I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. Join me to beat procrastination and get yourself moving with a “Get-it-Done Group.” Learn more at quickanddirtytips mighty mommy.
About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
