The Simple and Timeless Guide to Creating Your Own Good Luck

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“I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck.”
Henry Ward Beacher

“We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?”
Jean Cocteau

“Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers.”
Unknown

Luck. Some hope for more of it. Some don’t believe in it. Some think that everyone but themselves are lucky.

But can you create more of your own good luck in life? Here are a few timeless thoughts on that topic.

Work hard. Be proactive.

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more luck I have.”
Thomas Jefferson

“To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
Bruce Lee

This is in my experience very true. The more I work, the more I take chances and am proactive in life the more times I tend to be lucky.

Just sitting around and waiting for some good luck to land in your lap tends to be a pretty bad strategy. Creating your own opportunities and taking massive action simply gives you more of most things. Even luck.

Also, the more you practice the more you improve a deciding factor like your intuition. A better gut feeling can result in more good decisions that may seem lucky from an outside perspective.

Be prepared.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Seneca

“One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.”
Carl Zuckmeyer

Now you that you have spotted an opportunity, what to do? Exactly.

It’s a great idea to have an idea about how you can use an opportunity in a way benefits you. If you are unprepared both then it’s easy to fumble away half of your lucky moments.

So, read. Talk about what you want with others that have more experience and knowledge than you. Ask them a lot of questions. Practice, educate yourself and form effective habits so that you are ready to make good and useful decisions and put in the hard and focused work when the opportunity arises.

Luck may often just be the golden rule.

“Your luck is how you treat people.”
Unknown

As you treat someone else she or he will feel like treating you. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But over time these things have a way of evening out.

So what looks like someone being lucky a lot from an outside perspective may just be he or she using the golden rule in a helpful way.

Being unlucky can be a sort of luck for you too.

“Luck never made a man wise.”
Seneca

“All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck – who keeps right on going – is the man who is there when the good luck comes – and is ready to receive it.”
Robert Collier

“Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.”
Og Mandino

Having some bad luck can in many ways be a good thing too.

When things are rough but you somehow get through them you tend to gain strength and perhaps a bit of wisdom and perspective on life. It may not have been fun. But those gains can be very helpful in the future.

I think that things do often balance out over time. You have a bad meeting, date, day or even week. But, in my experience at least, then you often have something good happen or you get a lucky break the next day or week. Of course, in that situation it is important to be attentive and not still be focusing on that negative situation in the past.

The important thing is to keep going through ups and downs. The worst thing is when you just go passive and don’t do anything. Because then nothing seems to happen in a good long while.

I also find it useful to ask helpful questions when having a “negative situation”. Question like these:

• What is the good thing about this?
• What can I learn from this?
• What hidden opportunity can I find within this situation?

At first it might seem stupid to ask such a thing when having a bad day/meeting/test in school or date. But after a while you get used to it and your mind even starts to do it automatically from time to time.

Another important benefit of having some bad luck is what Robert Collier mentions above. When the good luck comes you are ready to recieve it.

You feel that after that bad luck you actually deserve your lucky break. This ties into hard work too. When you feel you have deserved your lucky break then you will have no or less problem with taking it.

There will be less self sabotage. There will be less situations where you start telling yourself that you can’t handle it or don’t deserve it.

You just go for it. And by having kept on going through the rough times you have gained strength and wisdom that will enable you to make the best out of this new and lucky situation.