When we think about lucky people it’s hard not to think about those who win the lottery, those who inherit large amounts of money and those who are so lucky they’re born into super rich families and don’t even have to wait for an inheritance.
If you don’t fall into any of the above categories does this mean that you’re just unlucky and there’s nothing you can do?
What makes people lucky and can you really make your own luck? That’s what I’m about to discuss and you’re only a few moments away from some interesting news.
A Word About Overnight Success
Let me make this short and sweet. If your plan to achieving wealth and freedom involves waiting for any kind of big hit, overnight success or lottery win, it’s not going to happen.
How can I be so sure? Because the odds are so tiny, that’s how.
Lets be honest, although I make my best efforts to make sure everything I write about is factually correct there’s a possibility that sometimes I’m wrong. That applies to anyone.
However, I do know that the chances of a jackpot lottery win are tiny. In the UK it’s currently 1 in 13,983,815 according to Wikipedia. So I’m more confident in saying that a lottery win isn’t going to happen for us than I am in saying anything else, about anything.
When I talk about luck I’m more interested in reality, something that is likely to happen and better still, something which we can potentially influence.
Lets not mention lottery wins again, unless we’re also talking about unicorns and fairies. None of which should feature in your business mindset unless something has gone very wrong.
What Makes People Lucky?
Getting back to reality, some people do appear luckier than others. But are they really just born lucky or are they secretly manufacturing their luck?
Luck is all about probabilities and you’ll often find that lucky people are indeed manufacturing their own luck and influencing the probability of good things happening to them.
If at this point you have visions of someone buying multiple lottery tickets then stop. I know, I said I wouldn’t mention it again.
Let me give you an example and let you decide for yourself what makes someone lucky.
- Person A spends his evenings and weekends playing video games, watching TV, eating donuts and walking the dog.
- Person B spends his evenings and weekends learning about business, thinking up new ideas, trying a few things out and learning from his mistakes.
Which one is going to be the most lucky and which one (if any) is manufacturing his own luck?
I think you know the answer but just incase, it’s person B, because by developing himself and trying out new ideas he’s dramatically influencing the probabilities of being lucky.
Person A on the other hand isn’t even giving luck a chance.
Make Your Own Luck Inevitable
So, you can manufacture your own luck and if you consistently take the right actions you’re pretty much making luck inevitable.
Luck is a result of the actions and opportunities you take. If you start five businesses and one turns out to be a success then you might consider this one lucky, after all you didn’t know for sure any of them would work.
However, you still manufactured this luck by influencing the odds and making luck inevitable. The more you try, the more you learn and the more you fail, the more you increase the chances of success.
Life changing luck rarely just falls out of the sky into your lap, you have to encourage it and give it every chance to happen.
It’s the process of thinking up ideas and taking action to try them out that gives luck a fighting chance of happening to you.
The frustrating thing is that when your actions finally pay off, others will usually see this as pure lottery type luck.
Unless they witnessed your years of learning, trying and failing then they’ll never appreciate that you actually manufactured this luck for yourself, with hard work, Persistence, dedication and sacrifice.
The more you throw the dice the more chance you have of hitting a six, but keep throwing it and Don’t Give Up if you don’t hit a six on the first throw.
I’d like to end with one of my favourite quotes from Michael Jordan.
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed”
Please feel free to comment…
