Feeling Lucky? Check Out These 5 Tricks to Be a Luck Magnet

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. -Thomas Jefferson

Luck is a… strange concept.

It is either good or bad.

It is never always good, nor is it always bad.

It happens to good people, it happens to bad people.

And it is entirely unpredictable.

I have always believed that luck was just pure randomness: randomness occurs to everyone:

• If the randomness benefited someone, it was lucky.
• If the randomness harmed someone, it was unlucky.

As a corollary, if someone was successful, it wasn’t because of luck- it was because they worked hard.

However, after finishing up Tina Seelig’s What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World (especially Chapter 7), I have slightly revised my thoughts on being lucky.

Luck may be completely random, but Richard Wiseman, who has studied luck scientifically, identified a few levers we can pull (certain traits and mindsets) that can help us “attract” luck and take advantage of luck when it does swing our way.

To put it another way, the levers can help us attract good randomness our way, as well help us take advantage of good randomness when it comes around.

Lever #1: Hard Work

Even if we think we’re lucky, we’ve usually worked pretty hard to put ourselves in that position.

For example, suppose you strike up a conversation with a stranger who turns out to be a hedge fund manager on a the subway. You engage in a really interesting conversation (because you spend a lot of time managing your own account and doing a lot of research and reading), manage to land an interview, and finally a job at the hedge fund.

You were able to strike up an impressive conversation because you had spent so much time on your own researching investments for your own personal account. You had already put in the hours and hard work. When the opportunity arose, thanks to a random occurrence on public transportation, you were able to take advantage of it.

Of course, this is an extreme example- but this could be applied to nearly any other area: sports, jobs, business ventures, etc…

In short, by working hard, we can maximize our chances by being well prepared mentally, physically, and emotionally for when an opportunity does arise.

Lever #2: Paying Attention to Our Surroundings

Paying attention to our surroundings can help us identify potential opportunities that others may have missed.

We spend so much of our life now immersed in our phones and computers, in social media and Netflix and YouTube- Friend A tweeted this, Friend B storied that, Netflix just released a new show- that we don’t take the time to pay attention to the world around us.

We have become a generation of consumers, mindlessly jumping around and consuming attention-grabbing content engineered to trap our attention. We never have the chance to engage our mental capacities and think for ourselves.

When we do take a peek at the world around us, such as reading about global events, we just acknowledge it and store it somewhere. We never analyze the information.

But what if we took that information one step further? For example, instead of just stashing away the fact that protests are happening in Hong Kong, we decide to ponder on the following questions:

• What are the consequences of the protests in Hong Kong?
• How will this impact the world in a few years? Decades?
• If the Chinese government does A, who benefits? What if the Chinese government does B, who benefits?

Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital calls this second-level thinking.

• First-level thinkers are simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone does it. They see what’s on the surface and react to it simplistically (there are protests in Hong Kong again, the stock market is tanking because democracy is threatened; sell).
• Second-level thinking is deep, complex, and convoluted. It takes into account like: the range of outcomes and respective probabilities, what do I think the most probable outcome is, what other people think, what is the popular consensus, etc. (there are protests in Hong Kong, the future is uncertain, and everyone else is selling; buy).

By paying attention and observing what is happening around us, we can spot opportunities that are just up for the taking. Thus, increasing our “luck”.

Lever #3: Open-Mindedness

The mentality of being open-minded leads us to try things outside our comfort zone. We’re more likely to travel to new destinations, eager to engage with new ideas and people, and stretch the boundaries of our current skills and abilities.

From a problem-solving perspective, we’re more likely to try out new and unconventional solutions, thereby increasing our odds of solving the problem at hand.

By expanding our hard drive of unique experiences, we can draw on them and recombine them in unique ways- whether it be to solve a problem, come up with a new idea, or tell a hilarious story.

New ideas are often a product of idea sex, or the combination of two different ideas to form a child idea. The more ideas and experiences we have, the number of potential child ideas grows exponentially, increasing the chances that we stumble across a “lucky” idea.

Lever #4: Extraversion

Lucky people tend to be more extraverted. They make more eye contact, smile more frequently, which leads to more positive and extended encounters.

Simply by meeting more people and making positive impressions, we can open the door to more opportunities.

This reminds of Jim Rohn’s quote:

To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here’s what’s exciting — there are lots of people!”

To attract luck, like sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. Who knows who you might meet- but as the number of people you meet increases, the chance that you’ll meet someone “lucky” also increases.

Lever #5: Optimistism

The last lever we can pull is optimism.

Winston Churchill once said,

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

By being more optimistic, we not only see the opportunity in every difficulty, we expect experiences to be positive. This can be a tremendous asset when things don’t go our way, since we are able to extract the positive from negative experiences.

Invert, always invert.

Even when terrible things happen to us, we are able to turn them on their heads and see them in a positive light.

Conclusion

In short, being observant, open-minded, friendly, and optimistic invites luck your way.

If we imagine that we all have a window that allows luck to filter in, each trait and mindset listed above expands the window just a little bit.

Good luck!

You might also like my other musings…

• 5 Mental Exercises to Help You Identify Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight
• The Essence of Compounding
• The 30th Richest Person in the World’s Advice on Allocating Time and Money in Your 20s

Interested in value investing?

• Mr. Market and Stoicism (I)
• Why Value Investing Works (II)
• Intelligently Searching for Value Investing Opportunities (III)
• Crisis Investing (IV)
• A Mean-Reverting Walk Down Wall Street (V)

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