Is luck real, and can you change yours?
Sometimes, everything seems to go wrong. You’re passed over for a job. Your back aches. Your zipper breaks. Your cat keeps throwing up. Faced with setbacks large and small, you feel like your life is always taking a turn for the worse. You aren’t superstitious, but you begin to wonder — could you just be an unlucky person? Why does it seem like you can never catch a break?
I myself have been feeling this way lately. In hopes of improving my outlook, I turned to three experts who helped me understand why we believe in luck and how we can harness that belief to make real changes in our attitude toward life that may help us feel less “unlucky.”
What is luck?
People define luck in three ways, according to Jacqueline Woolley, professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. First, we often use the term luck as synonymous with “chance”; we may call it lucky to win at a slot machine, although it’s actually a random event. Another way to frame luck is “as a supernatural force that exists in the universe,” she said. This force may touch on different people at different times, and some people believe (or hope) it also can be harnessed, with a ritual or charm. Third, it can be thought of as a personal trait: “It’s just something that you’re born with.”
But does it exist? Richard Wiseman, author of “The Luck Factor” and professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, doesn’t believe there’s anything magical or superstitious about luck — it won’t help you out or hurt you at the casino. On the other hand, considering yourself lucky or unlucky is “a way of seeing yourself which then has impact on how you behave and how you think and becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, in a sense, it absolutely does exist.”
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And it has “existed” for ages. “Pretty much, in every culture throughout recorded history, people talk about superstitious rituals or chance — as indeed we do now, even with our amount of science and technology,” Wiseman said. “It’s something deep within us that realizes our lives are ruled by chance, and we’re trying to do something to get control over that.”
Woolley agrees. “We as humans are very uncomfortable with uncertainty,” she said. “When people feel less in control of their lives — like when they feel that things are random and they’re not directing their lives — then people often search for supernatural explanations.”
Luck’s role in real life
Vik Loveday conducted a small study of United Kingdom academic employees that illustrates that point. Between 2014 and 2015, the senior lecturer of sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, interviewed 44 academic employees who were on temporary contracts, a precarious employment situation that caused anxiety and financial instability and an overwhelming sense of lack of control.
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In general, when one of these academics learned about good news concerning their careers, such as getting a permanent job or having a grant accepted, they would attribute it to luck. Because they felt they had so little control, a move in a positive direction had to have happened almost by accident, rather than as the result of hard work.
Of course, academics aren’t the only people who attribute events to luck. Through his years of research, Wiseman has found that, in the United Kingdom, “You get roughly 12 percent of the population saying they’re extremely lucky and about 8 percent saying they’re unlucky.”
In a 2021 study and ongoing research, Woolley has looked at this idea in children. Between about ages 4 and 8, they are exposed to the concept of luck through sources like family, school, books and the Internet. By age 10, however, they start to get skeptical. They’ve begun to notice that, “when they wish for something, it doesn’t happen,” Woolley said. “They’re starting to realize that, if a kid forgets her lucky charm and loses a race, it’s not because this supernatural force was missing in her life that day — it was because she forgot her lucky object and that made her stressed and anxious, and that’s why she lost the race.”
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Still, this doesn’t stop the belief from persisting into adulthood — and even our reliance on charms and rituals. For example, former president Barack Obama would play basketball to improve his electoral chances. Basketball player Michael Jordan had to wear his college practice shorts under his NBA uniform.
Woolley notes a 2010 study — which she wasn’t involved in and which other researchers haven’t been able to replicate — that found that being told a golf ball was lucky improved participants’ chances of making the putt. “Obviously it’s not luck that’s causing this. It’s that these superstitious rituals give you confidence and then you do better,” Woolley said. “If you think it’s going to make you play better, then chances are you’re going to play better.”
How to think about luck
Is it possible to change your outlook on luck, and, if so, could that lead to better outcomes?
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The first thing to understand is that a person’s position in society contributes to their concept of luck. “The circumstances you’re born into, the society you’re born into, the genetic makeup you’re handed — all these things are outside of your control,” Wiseman said.
Aside from these constraints, however, he believes there are steps you can take to improve your luck. After studying people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky, he has found that the “lucky” ones maximize chance opportunities and dare to follow their intuition to grasp those moments.
“If you are relaxed and happy, your world view becomes bigger and you see more opportunities,” he said. “If you’re a flexible person, when those opportunities come in, you’ll make the most of them. Lucky people know where they’re heading, but often they change the course depending on how the wind is going.”
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Lucky people also expect good fortune and turn lousy experiences to good. “They tend to be — surprise surprise — optimists, and they’re also very resilient to bad things that happen,” Wiseman said. “If bad things happen, it’s thinking, ‘Okay, it could have been worse,’ rather than ‘It could have been better.’ ”
This may affect your future luck, Woolley explained. “If you feel better about an event, then maybe you’ll have better expectations about future events and maybe your luck, quote unquote, will change.”
As for specific activities, you can shift your focus toward the positive by keeping a “luck diary,” Wiseman said. “Each night before you go to bed, you spend about 30 seconds writing down a positive thing that’s happened that day, or a sense of gratitude for friends or family or health, or a negative thing that’s no longer happening.”
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You also need to take the long view; breaking your leg could be considered a setback now, but if you meet your future spouse in the hospital, it could end up being a very fortuitous one.
Plus, don’t be a creature of habit. Take a different route when walking, watch a different TV program, speak to different people — even small changes can be effective. And then keep your eyes open and be prepared to snatch whatever opportunities might arise.
People who are “lucky” have “a broader focus and they’re more likely to encounter chance opportunities and then good things can happen,” Woolley said. “People who think of themselves as unlucky are just really sort of stuck in their narrow focus.”
What you can’t expect is for good fortune to magically come your way without effort. “Luck is a very big part of our self-identity,” Wiseman said, “and isn’t very malleable until you do something quite concrete about it.”
Galadriel Watson is a freelance writer and author of many children’s books. Find her at galadrielwatson.com and on Instagram at @galadrielwatson.
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