Summary

Luck isn't random – it's the product of specific mindsets and behaviors. Based on studies of lucky vs unlucky people, four principles emerge: maximize chance opportunities through extroversion and openness, trust your intuition, expect good fortune (self-fulfilling prophecies), and reframe bad luck constructively. Standard self-help repackaged through the "luck" lens with research backing.

Quick Take

• Basically just your average self help book but everything is shoehorned into “luck”
• For me, this more just adds credibility and a new lens to exiting self help guides

Key Takeaways

Notes

1: Initial research

1: The power of luck

• Serendipity is ubiquitous
• Feeling of control is largely an illusion

2: Lucky and unlucky lives

• “Lucy people” (+4 on self-assessed luckiness scale) are consistently most satisfied with life

2: The 4 principles of luck

1: Maximize your chance opportunities

• Mindset: you’ve got to be in to win
  • Apply to more things

1. Extroverted: build + maintain a strong network of luck
   • Social magnetism: inviting body language + facial expressions
2. Low neuroticism: have a relaxed attitude toward life
   • Eg. study of reading newspaper looking for images with “tell the proctor and win $100” that no one found
   • Wide beam of attention, creativity
3. Openness: are open to new experiences
   • Introduce variety + change into life

2: Listen to your lucky hunches

• Almost 90% of lucky people trust intuition for personal relationships, 80% for career choices
• We’re often driven by our unconscious (confabulation)

1. Listen to your gut feelings and hunches
   • Use as alert, not decision
2. Take steps to boost your intuition
   • Meditation, clearing one’s mind

• Exercises:
  • Old man in the cave: how do you feel (not others’ opinions, not facts)
  • Write the resignation letter and sit with it
  • Make meditation matter

3: Expect good fortune

1. Optimistic: expect their good luck to continue
   • Self-fulfilling prophecy
2. Attempt even with slim odds, persevere in face of failure
   • Agency, not just risk taking
3. Expect interactions with others to be lucky and successful
   • Managers with high, positive expectations drive better results

• Suggested exercises
  • Positive affirmations
  • Goals
  • Be ready to try again and again
  • Cost benefit analysis

4: Turn your bad luck into good

1. See the positive side of your bad luck
   • Counterfactual: how it could’ve been even worse
2. Convinced that any ill fortune will - in the long - run work out for the best
   • Focus on the positive
3. Don’t dwell on bad fortune
   • Let go
   • Mood ↔ memory
   • Distract yourself (with happy things)
4. Take constructive steps to prevent more bad luck in the future

3: Creating luckier lives

7: Luck school

• Curriculum to increase luck

8: Learning to be lucky

• Repeat of ↑ exercises*

9: Graduation day

• Stories about newly lucky people*

Appendix

Exercise 1

1. 1
2. 3
3. 4
4. 2
5. 2
6. 5
7. 5
8. 5
9. 5
10. 4
11. 4
12. 4

Exercise 2

• 6

Exercise 3

1. 6
2. 2 (+4)

Exercise 4

• 6
• 7
• 6
• 6
• 6
• 6 = 37

Exercise 7

• Times I was glad for following intuition
• Times when I failed my intution

Exercise 8

1. 100
2. 90
3. 100
4. 100
5. 100
6. 90
7. 100
8. 100