Being Lucky Has Little to Do with Luck

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I had an interesting conversation in my head today. I was wrapping up some things I was working on and thought, “Wow, that’s really starting to fall into place… we’re pretty lucky.” Then I started thinking, “Ya know, the far majority of the time, things consistently do fall into place with what we’re doing.”

Then that really got my mind going – is it that we really are just lucky, or is it something else?

And that’s when my brain started going down different rabbit holes, like it annoyingly seems to do 24/7. How much does being lucky really play into our lives? And is there a way to turn luck onto our side?

I like to think that we have more ability to change most of the pieces of life than most of us might think we do.

So how do you go from being unlucky to being lucky? Well, I’ll give you my thoughts and then you can give me yours in the comments.

There are a heckuva lot of forks in the road

“Being lucky” is an interesting concept that somehow exemplifies that you’re not fully in control over what happens in life.

I do believe that’s true… to a point. You can’t control your race, where you were born, your family, or your childhood, for example. And there’s no doubt that these factors and so many others can play a huge part in your life. It’s possible that they could have aligned you to be right where you are today.

But is there more to it?

Every time we make a decision in life, no matter how tiny or how big, it can have sweeping changes on our lives. It could be that you decide to walk across the street at one intersection instead of the other. And it could just happen that that one instance in time could be when someone runs the red light without paying attention and changes your life forever (or even ends it).

There are a million forks in the road and each time we decide to do something (or not do something), it has the potential to cause a domino effect on our future. It reminds me of some of those movies or shows where there are unthinkable numbers of parallel universes and each decision we make forks off into another completely different life. There would be an infinite number of parallel universes, all different, because of these decisions. That’s a lot for me to grasp without my head exploding.

And those are just the small decisions. What about choosing your friends, where you live, or your career? Would any of those have affected the outcome of your life? Of course!

The trouble is that you don’t know if the decisions you made are for the better or for the worse. Maybe you regret that you didn’t say “screw it” years ago and move to a beautiful tropical island of your dreams. But maybe if you did, you could have been hit by a hurricane and become a casualty on your second day there. Yikes!

Or perhaps you think you made the right decision on your career because you’re making more money than you could have ever dreamed. But in reality, there could have been a better job waiting for you elsewhere doing something you love more than anything and making just as much (or more) money that you are today.

The fact is, we just don’t know the directions that the different forks in our decisions are going to take us.

So is it really about being lucky?

I’ve always been a hard worker. Since I got my first job at 16 until the day I retired, I always just felt that if someone’s paying you to do something, you put your nose to to the grind and do it the best that you can. Strange concept, right? 🙂

So that’s what I’ve always done. I wasn’t the guy standing in an office doorway swigging a cup of coffee just wanting to shoot the 💩. I was there to work and so I would do my best. Don’t get me wrong – I still had fun and I’m not saying that there weren’t times when I wasn’t off. But I made sure my employers knew they were getting their money’s worth with me.

And maybe that’s why I always found myself moved up into middle management (yuck!).

That worked well, though. It seemed like being lucky was just something I was pretty good at since new opportunities seemed to always end up in my lap.

When I was an Assistant Store Manager at Walmart, I was still in college and working on a degree in Computer Information Systems. I ended up getting a job as a Systems Engineer with zero experience at the company I would later retire from two decades later. The owner of the company told me he that a big part of the reason he hired me was because of my management experience… that’s lucky, right? Or was that a result of working hard?

I made the most of this opportunity at the IT support company by learning everything I could for several years and becoming a very good engineer (IMHO). Then, when my wife and I decided we were going to move to Arizona and get out of Ohio, the owner offered to create a new position for me with a much better salary to stay and manage the engineers.

I took that offer and stayed in Ohio, but was that because being lucky was in my genes? Or is it possible it was something else…

“I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.”
— Coleman Cox

Hmm… interesting.

Whatever we are not changing, we are choosing

I was telling my daughter a few of the quotes that I was adding to this article and that’s when she told me this one:

“Whatever we are not changing, we are choosing.”
— Laurie Buchanan

I thought that nailed it. There will always be some luck involved in folks’ lives, but you also get what you put in. Being lucky isn’t solely about letting the chips fall where they may – a lot of it has to do with making your own luck.

My wife and I lived our lives doing things pretty well. I was “unlucky” that I used to be a spendthrift and had worked myself into $30k of credit card debt – that’s over $58k in today’s dollars!! But that “bad luck” became the incentive for me to change. I became more frugal, paid off that debt, and then we just continued to save. We paid off all our car loans, school loans, etc. And we just stayed frugal, continuing to sock money away, all while still having fun and enjoying life.

But then, somehow, the idea of being lucky fell in our laps again.

I stumbled onto Joe Udo’s Retire by 40 blog at a time when I just wanted not to be working so I could be there as our daughter grew up. And we were already on track to do this – something I didn’t even know was possible for regular people before this eye-opener.

That led me to keep learning and keep making positive changes. Not every change was a winner, but the more I learned, the more adept I became at reaching our goals.

I retired at 43, and I’m into my 8ᵗʰ year of retirement now. That’s insane to me!

That helped me realize that being lucky isn’t really about being lucky. Being lucky is about making positive changes in your life to give yourself the best chance of living life the way you truly want to live.

It doesn’t mean you’re going to get everything you want and it doesn’t mean that the world’s ever going to stop throwing you destructive curveballs. But making positive changes can help hedge your bets to give you the best chance of success.

A great example of us “being lucky” is when we just got done with a 38-Day Europe Trip with first-class flights, 25 days of cruising with balcony cabins, a first-class train ride, spending several hotel nights in Italy and Spain, food, drinks, and everything for around $6,000 from start to finish… total for the three of us!!!

And we did have folks tell us how lucky we were to be able to do this.

But it wasn’t luck! Hearing that small bit of what we got to do alone might make you think it’s luck, but it discounts the fact that I’ve been learning about travel rewards for years now – blog after blog, podcast after podcast.

“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
— Ray Kroc

This kind of stuff is available to so many people – if you pay your credit card balances off every month and have good credit, you’re in! It’s not some secret club for the elite. It’s a matter of making your own luck by learning and doing.

If you’re interested in “being lucky” like us with this, open a free account at Travel Freely and make it happen. Start slow and learn. Open a travel credit card through the site (maybe the Chase Sapphire Preferred or something), where you know you can complete the spend requirement without spending more than you normally would, and enjoy that great sign-up bonus.

Level two is that you keep learning and leaning on Travel Freely for some guidance. You learn how you can take those big points awards you get and make them stretch even further – sometimes even double or more what you would normally get from them. Learning and understanding how airline alliances work can make one sign-up bonus easily worth thousands of dollars of travel! Or maybe you transfer Chase points to Hyatt where you get probably one of the biggest bangs for your buck because you understand how points are valued.

The point is that if you just go through the motions every day, you’re probably going to notice that perhaps being lucky isn’t your strong suit.

But if you focus on learning, making positive changes, and trying something new, your “luck” will probably change. Not every change is going to be a homerun for sure, but if you stack the deck in your favor, you’re sure to have a much better shot at being one lucky guy or gal!

Wow, two mixed-up idioms in one sentence – baseball or gambling? Let’s throw ’em both in there – why not?!

“Opportunity” might be a better word than “luck” in most cases and I believe that the broader your horizons are, the more opportunities will likely present themselves. Learning, trying, changing, adapting, and growing are important. And the other important thing… people. The more people you know and stay in touch with (ugh, it’s leading to the “networking” word I hate for this), the more opportunities will seemingly pop up.

That’s my take, love it or leave it!

Let’s wrap things up with this quote that made me chuckle…

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

Anyway, I think this was a good post to start off the new year at Route to Retire and I hope you enjoyed it. Make some positive changes, have fun doing it, and watch your luck change for the better.

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Plan well, take action, and live your best life!

Thanks for reading!!

— Jim