I read an interesting article by Richard Wiseman on luck, which I would highly encourage everyone to read. The gist of the article is that people make their own luck and being lucky is something that can be learned.
An excerpt from the article:
Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic 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.
Patrick O’Shaughnessy, in his podcast “Invest like the best“, talks to interesting people. He mainly concentrates on investors who have made it big, but once in a while he also chats with people from other walks of life. A common theme that keeps repeating in his interviews is how these people jumped at opportunities which others had shunned, their optimism and an attitude that stresses on continuous learning and development. These qualities eerily match with what Richard Wiseman says makes one lucky.
In the recent Farnam Street podcast, behavioral economist Dan Ariely says the following – “I gamble with my time. I take risks, I do things that do not seem like the right things to do”.
Two of the most successful and rich people of our times, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are gung-ho about the future. Bill Gates actively champions positive thinking and wants all of us to cultivate this.
Probably luck is not luck after all. I am sure it is more nuanced than this, but something to ponder about.
Abhirama's Blog 