People often talk about luck as an essential part of success in life. Those who know me know that I don’t believe in good luck, but I do believe in bad luck. In other words, if you don’t make an effort to be the best at something, if you don’t prepare properly and develop certain skills, good luck is unlikely to come looking for you on your sofa while you’re playing video games. On the other hand, it’s also true that you can work hard and prepare and still be a victim of bad luck.
Even so, in the end it’s a matter of statistics and probability. Effort and preparation, always being ready, will put the odds in your favour, defining good luck as the absence of bad luck.
We’ve already talked about Richard Wiseman’s theory. He was absolutely convinced that luck was a skill in itself that anyone can acquire and learn, and he demonstrated it through an experiment.
Ultimately, there are ways to tip the scales of good luck in our favour, and they would have absolutely nothing to do with chance.
1. Always be prepared
Some mothers tell their daughters: “Always wear clean underwear, dear, because you never know what might happen.” It’s great advice, in the same way that a professional salesperson tends to be a better salesperson when they’re clear that they’re always selling, even when they’re not at work.
First of all, we need to keep our eyes and ears open at all times. Just as in relationships, where special people turn up when you’re not looking for them, in your professional life big opportunities can arrive unexpectedly. If one catches you off guard, you won’t have made the most of that “stroke of luck”, and later on we’ll say that “we were unlucky”.
2. Behave properly at all times
I know the line we’re sold is that what people do in their free time has nothing to do with their professionalism. But that’s not true, because most of the people I know in the professional world think the way I do.
If you behave like a jerk at a nightclub, you’re most likely a jerk at the office and in your everyday life. If I see you doing cocaine in a pub bathroom, I’m sorry, but you’re not going to work with me or anywhere near me, as long as I can avoid it. And if you publicly lose it because you’ve had too much to drink, you’re not the kind of person I would trust with responsibility. In other words, as far as I’m concerned, on Monday you are what you were at the weekend, only trying to hide what you really are [insert adjective here…].
Today we could carry all this over to the world of social media: what you say and do on social networks shows your digital image and therefore, nowadays, your personal image.
Let’s say that step zero in making more luck is not losing “points” before you’ve earned them. You never know who’s watching you, or at what other time or place you’ll run into someone you didn’t treat properly. You don’t know whose relative the person you were rude to might be.
Never give anyone a reason to speak badly of you. Wherever you go, leave a positive impression on people. That doesn’t guarantee you good luck, but it doesn’t put you in bad luck’s sights either.
3. Always ask
Many people are so obsessed with talking about themselves that they forget to take an interest in others. A lot of opportunities are lost simply because we don’t ask questions of the people we meet, wherever we meet them.
You might meet a stranger who could give you excellent ideas for your project, or who could become an important piece of your business, or even a potential customer. But if you don’t know what that person does for a living, what they’re working on or what their aspirations are, you’ll never find out.
Likewise, in any field we always start from a NO, whether it’s about getting a discount on a price or asking a company to collaborate with you. If you don’t ask, you won’t know whether you could have got a yes.
Remember that whether we’re talking about sales, negotiation or success in general, it usually comes more from listening than from talking. And when your interest in what people do is genuine, that’s when it gets really great.
4. Be thankful and show gratitude
It’s amazing how many doors you can open just by saying “thank you”. And I’m not talking about the cosmos, the universe or quantum energy, but about how people see someone who is grateful for the time they’ve given, for the conversation, for the moment shared…
If I stop to think about it, I’m aware of how much some people have given me at particular moments, and they probably aren’t aware of that contribution. They won’t be aware of it unless I tell them and thank them.
From someone you met when you were feeling low to an old mentor whose advice, applied ten years later, has improved your career: don’t send a WhatsApp message, don’t thank them on Facebook… pick up the phone or, better still, go and see those people face to face to say thank you.
5. Finally, developing social skills is the best way to make luck
Social skills are probably the greatest ingredient for success there is, and for some reason they’re being underrated. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. And this isn’t about the usual string-pulling. It’s simply about social skills.
In a previous article we looked at the 50-30-20 rule, where hard work would account for only 20% of success, while social skills would make up 50%.
But social skills don’t mean being the usual bore who talks to everyone, or the office suck-up who pressures the bosses into going for a drink. Rather, it’s about winning people over, and, as in other areas, some people have cultivated this so well that it has become their signature.
These people will clearly always be luckier than the rest, because they’ll have more support from a wider range of people. Luck is also about surrounding yourself with other “lucky” people.
Beyond these points, you can imagine the rest: working harder and smarter than everyone else, not giving up when the blows start coming, insisting, persisting, insisting and insisting again, until a positive result becomes inevitable.
Further reading
- How your physical appearance can outweigh your skills and talent
- Seven psychological traps that can hold back your success
- How to become an expert in anything
Featured image: Olga Aleksandra, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
