No one is lucky

“You married the love of your life? You’re so lucky! ” “I lost my job. I’m so unlucky!” “You got a promotion so early in your career? You’re so lucky!” “I’ll never be as happy as she is. I’m so unlucky!”

None of the above is because of luck. They happened because of a lot of other aspects. What does being lucky even mean? There are so many definitions but it all boils down to something good or bad happening by chance rather than intentional actions. I don’t believe anyone is truly “lucky” or “unlucky”. They are just people with either a positive or negative outlook on life in general. As Churchill said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”

Psychologist Richard Wiseman conducted an experiment on hundreds of people to understand luck and their perception of it. At the end of it, he realised that people who considered themselves lucky were so much more open to opportunities and more prone to succeed at the tasks given than those who considered themselves unlucky. He proposed that lucky people are so because of four principles.

“They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”

His experiments revealed a few principles that proved to “make” people luckier. Not fairy dust or spells or potions, but solid positive reinforcements.

• Pay heed to your gut instincts. They are usually correct. You are the best judge of who you are and what you need. What others may think of you is irrelevant.
• Be open to new experiences. Getting too comfortable in your habits can make you “unlucky”. By breaking your normal routine you may make more mistakes, but you will discover so much more.
• Be grateful for what you have. Remember things that went well every day. Gratitude turns what you have into enough. These small moments make up happiness.
• Consider yourself lucky. Visualizing yourself as being lucky can highly improve the results of anything that you set out to do.

Social media can provide the illusion of other people living a happy, fulfilling life when you feel burdened with so many issues. Many times we refer to others as “lucky” because they seem to have everything and want for nothing. What we are missing out here is that everyone is fighting their own battles — battles we know nothing about.

If you have ever felt unlucky, take a step back and recognise that it is just your biased perception and not the irrefutable truth. No one is lucky and no one is unlucky.