How to catch and keep luck?

It is difficult to imagine two people more different than the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher and our contemporary American TV presenter, nevertheless, their thoughts about luck are similar. “It’s a willingness to take advantage,” said Oprah Winfrey. “This is when preparation meets opportunity,” said Lucius Anneus Seneca almost two thousand years earlier. We can see with the naked eye that some people are more lucky than others: does it mean that they have better training?

Wheel of Fortune

We often talk about luck as an external force that does not depend on us, but we ourselves depend on it. This relationship has a long history: in ancient Greece, this force was called Tyche – this goddess was in charge of chance and fate. Her attribute was the wheel – a symbol of variability. We know it as the wheel of Fortune – the Romans gave this new name to the same goddess.

Sometimes it seems that she is especially favorable to us, sometimes – that she is angry with us. We may also think that luck is a limited resource: where one is lucky, another is unlucky. Following this belief, we ourselves turn it into reality. “It makes no sense to look for a place for a car near the office, anyway, everything is packed there,” someone will think, and thereby free up space for a more confident motorist. Maybe luck is some kind of special character trait? Looks like no.

“There is no such thing as luck in psychology,” says psychodramatist and ethnopsychologist Igor Lyubitov, “there is our idea of ​​ourselves, of how lucky we are, or vice versa.” Not only does it affect our behavior, we can draw completely different conclusions from the same events. Igor Lyubitov tells an anecdote taken from life: “In Israel, a woman was bombed twice in a month in a bus. “Either I’m very unlucky, or, on the contrary, I’m lucky, I can’t understand what it is,” she said to the doctor who examined her.

Indeed, a bomb is not a very happy accident, but being alive twice – isn’t it lucky? “The choice of interpretation depends on us,” the psychologist emphasizes.

The Secret of the Lucky

What is the difference between those who consider themselves lucky? “Among the entrepreneurs and executives that I advise, there are many who have experienced difficult moments: losses, ruin, imprisonment, but each time they find an opportunity to rise and start anew,” says business coach and cognitive psychotherapist Tatyana Soldatova.

“There is a property common to all of them: they consider any case as an opportunity for development, and not just the one that the majority would consider happy.” Do not give up, do not give up – they are characterized by firmness of spirit, but at the same time softness, sensitivity to circumstances.

Our self-image influences what we see around us. “An interesting experiment was conducted: students were asked if they were lucky or not, and then they were asked to count the number of illustrations in the newspaper,” says Igor Lyubitov. “At the same time, on the third page there was an inscription: “There are 43 illustrations here, you don’t have to count further,” and on the seventh page there was a large inscription: “If you show me to the professor, he will give you $ 250.”

It turned out that there is a clear relationship: students who considered themselves unlucky counted the illustrations, not paying attention to the inscriptions. Subjectively lucky ones noticed the first inscription and immediately reported the answer. But the most fortunate saw the second inscription and received their 250 dollars. Hence the conclusion: luck depends on the distribution of attention.

Those who, after noticing the first inscription, still continued to leaf through the newspaper, not only completed the task, but also did something optional, showed curiosity. Perhaps this is the secret. But when we do something out of the ordinary, we encounter anxiety. Therefore, sometimes a fortunate combination of circumstances in itself can be perceived as something disturbing.

“It would be nice to keep a balance: security – assessment of one’s strengths – an attempt to try new things,” suggests Igor Lyubitov. “Jumping without a parachute, hoping for luck, is too much, but another way to go home is available to everyone.”

Will you have to pay?

Cautious popular rumor tells us to be afraid of our desires, either because we will be disappointed, or because we will have to pay for it. Why don’t they say that about luck? “Since, in our imagination, this event is connected with external forces, we, as it were, are not responsible for this, and therefore we do not pay,” explains Igor Lyubitov.

And yet there are known—and not uncommonly numerous—cases in which luck, caused by purely external causes, such as winning the lottery, has led to dire consequences. For example, Albert Begrakyan won 2009 million rubles in 100, and two years later he squandered everything, went into debt and was under investigation.

Debts, divorces, resentments of friends and relatives – there are many such stories. Why does winning not only not guarantee happiness, but also jeopardize the good that the winner had before? A Ferrari is bought by someone who knows how to drive it, and someone who doesn’t know what to do with it can win it, Igor Lyubitov notes, the same with large sums: you need to be able to handle them. And the one who received them suddenly does not have time to learn how to “drive” a million, you have to proceed by trial and error.

He does not know how to save his money, recognize scammers, choose among the many incoming offers those that are useful to him. It’s not about paying for luck, but about the fact that he finds himself in a new situation without preparation and experiences severe stress that prevents him from thinking clearly. Hence the consequences.

Speaking of luck, how not to mention gambling? But one should not confuse faith in oneself and faith in luck, insists Tatyana Soldatova: “Most often those who do not really believe in themselves rely on the second in its purest form. Those who are truly lucky always know why they are in the world and what they are going to do here. Whereas gamblers rarely have an idea about their mission.”

From here, one step to addiction: the player has the illusion of a personal relationship with luck, “he tries to catch patterns like “the blonde passed, bet on red” – and as a result spends a lot of energy on events that cannot be controlled, and ceases to control what can ”, Igor Lyubitov notes. The player really pays, but not at all for luck, but for the loss of control over his actions.

Believe but don’t rely

There is a way not only to avoid negative consequences, but also to invite good luck into your life, says Tatyana Soldatova: “Make an advance payment. Start looking at everything that happens like this: since it happened, there is something in it for me, for my movement forward. Ask yourself the question: “Where am I going, where am I growing?” and listen honestly to the answers.

Do not discount joy, even the smallest one, and try to pass the baton by making joy for someone else. You will notice how circumstances are increasingly developing in a more favorable way for you. It’s nice to think of yourself as lucky. But believing in luck does not mean relying only on it.

Medieval Benedictine monks had a motto: “Pray and work.” It unfolds into more detailed instructions that we can use, the business coach continues: “Pray as if everything depends on God, and work as if everything depends on you.”

There are no guarantees of success, but I offer a strategy that my clients use: they prepare everything and insure what they can, and then the moment comes “I feel I’ll pass”, and courage is needed here, because it’s not in vain that luck and prowess are the same root words. The point here is not in a high position, but in doing what the soul lies in. Lucky is the one who believes in himself, in the power of his actions and in his destiny.