I had a delightful conversation with a math professor the other day. We talked about lucky and unlucky people. I believe luck is the non-religious equivalent of God. Either God wanted it that way, or we were lucky/unlucky. But in reality, it is a probability. Someone is going to win the lottery, someone is going to get hit by lightning, and someone is going to get the job. If something good happens when the odds were in your favor if something bad happens they weren’t. At the same time, I believe I have a certain control over my “luck”.
This professor explained it to me how he studies “luck” in numbers and experiments. He said they tested 2 groups of people. Group L - who considers themselves lucky, and group U - the unlucky ones. Then they hired actors and assigned them roles to play and they watched the social interaction between the groups and the actors. He gave me an example. One actor had to pretend that his family is considering building a new home and they are looking for architects. He said that because they knew they had 2 architects in the groups. One lucky, and one unlucky.
The observes saw how the lucky architect jumped at the opportunity and told the actor he, in fact, is what the actor is looking for. The unlucky guy just lets that information slip without taking action. So when people call me lucky, I always say I don’t let luck take credit for the reality I created. Some luck might have played a role, I just happen to hitchhike with the good people, just happened to be at the right time at the right place, but also if these people were in my shoes would they have been lucky too? Would they project the same confidence so they are less likely to get robbed, would they watch people as carefully as I do, would they be aware of their surroundings and hidden opportunities?
There are so many factors play a role in my luck which is as far away from luck as they can possibly be. Obviously, there is more to it than what the eyes see. So no, I don’t consider myself lucky, I consider myself an action taker, a do-er, an advantage seeker. It wouldn’t be unlucky to get robbed at night in Latin America, I have a very high chance of that happening so I try decreasing that risk by not walking alone at night and avoiding risky neighborhoods. It’s a numbers game. Someone is going to get robbed, someone is going to win, someone is going to get the job. I choose to be lucky, it’s not a given. On some level, it’s a choice.