"You Lucky, Lucky Bastard" Michael Palin, The Life of Brian.

Is luck an unobtainable; unquantifyable entity, or can people generate their own luck?

It seems to me that I have never been lucky expect in cases of extreme distress, in which case I have been exceptionally lucky, i refer to my bike crash, face burning, car crash, and selling that dodgy crashed car without reprecussion.

I have never been able to win competitions or the lottery, or be lucky when things are going well. If i had to quantify my luck, i would say that i exhibited a life preserving lucky streak, which is in many ways better than the ability to win the lottery, but why couldn't i win the lottery, what is it about me that stacks the supposed equal odds against me?

The lucky feeling inside

In the simplest sense i think that when people feel lucky, and they do actually have a feeling of luck inside them, then they are lucky, and the reverse is true also, when waiting for the lottery numbers to be called, if you cannot generate the lucky feeling inside, then you have no way of bettering your chances. But what is this feeling and how can it affect odds?

The Nature of Luck...

I believe the feeling of luck could change the universe at a quantum level and tips the outcome of events in your favour, similarly a feeling of apathy or negative emotion can send luck the other way and you are less likely to have an outcome favorable to yourself. With me a feeling of total desperation can bring lucky results also, so this seems to contradict whati have just said, perhaps it is a loop hole in the way that luck works!

Arrogance and confidence also can play a role in the rules of luck, If you are arrogant or confident enough (or both) to expect to be lucky then you often are, and if you take a balanced view or are negative then then the opposite is true. So if you think about a geometric plane with peeks and troughs representing good luck and bad luck, then there are things you can do to help you orbit the peeks and avoid the troughs, how you react to situations will mean that you are more likely to be lucky or unlucky.

An experiment

I've just tried an experiment, I thought to myself i expect Ali to call me, and she has just sent me a text message to me asking how i am!

Did i actually exert a force that made her think of me and contact me? I was using the arrogance trick, which has often worked for me in the past on small things and it appears worked again now.

Ok lets try this again, i am expecting to find a job for me on the Reed website that i can apply for and i will be phoned about in five minutes...

Well that was a bit odd, I did see a job that sounded good, it was a little out of my league but i applied anyway, I would like to do such a job and feel i could handle a management position better than many managers. I did not however get called back, so i don't know what to make of that, I felt funny about the experience; a little nervous, worried and like i had done something wrong, but still i did it, and now feel good for having tried.

Summary

So what is luck? I think that it is a force that you can exert on the world around you, it changes the makeup of the universe at a quantum/sub-quantum level and you can change the odds of events happening through willpower alone. You can make your own luck, if you are feeling lucky! If you are not, you can go the other way and be unlucky, expecting things to happen is arrogant but can work for you. Its easier to exert yourself on a person that an event, but then if you find the person controlling an event then you can control the person and thus the event.

22/05/03