want to feel luckier?

° It’s just what has happened to us, as much as we’ve done it. Some worms end up in beautiful, rich, wet soil, and some worms end up on the sidewalk on a hot, sunny day.

Dave Matthews | American music artist | 1967 -

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Whenever I notice feeling a little self-satisfied, I remind myself—

To be lucky or unlucky is a matter of luck.

Heretical position given my work. Until a few years ago, I’d have argued we make our luck with most things. But, when I reflect on my experiences and those of so many others, all of it appears to be rooted in and often nurtured by chance.

Think about having these wonderfully helpful things—

1. Good Health

2. Kind Heart

3. Solid Work Ethic

4. Good Environment

5. Good Work

6. Curiosity

7. Intelligence

8. Talent

9. Charisma

10. Good Looks

Each can be nurtured or neglected by choice (maybe) but at their beginnings and sometimes along the way, they’re gifts. I can’t see any way around that now. 

I hope you’ll go deeper with me on this below and challenge the thinking where you disagree. But, to start with a solution if it’s true, what do we do with our good luck (our luckys)?

1. Stay appreciative* for the luckys we’re given.

2. Nurture those beautiful things with continual thinking and doing (attention).

3. Do our best to be luckys in the lives of others where we can.

Below are my thoughts on each lucky—a mind explosion with aftershocks that have bounced around in my head for a few years now. What started as 6 is currently 10.

*appreciative: adj. feeling or showing gratitude or pleasure (such a wonderful word—it takes care of both being thankful and enjoying things)

° People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck—especially successful people.

Michael Lewis | American writer | 1960 -

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Let’s explore in descending order of importance—

With what I think is objective reflection,¹ even on what I might call a bad day, I know I’m fortunate. Here by the grace of chance am I.²

1. I can think, see, hear, eat, taste, smell, walk, talk, feel, and enjoy (from my daily affirmation). To me, those fall under the lucky of Good Health—easy to reason as primary to everything else and accept as a gift. It includes physical, emotional, and mental health. I’ve revised the order of the remaining luckys several times.

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2. A Kind Heart out of the gate is a gift I’m guessing most of us have when we’re born.

It's my label for a compassionate, humble, patient, understanding, and objective nature. All other luckys might nurture a kind heart, but it’s hard to argue credit for its beginning. I place it second because without it, I know from experience, life would be pretty unpleasant.³ A kind heart enables good use of all the other luckys. 

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3. A Solid Work Ethic might be the most beautiful lucky.

It can cover for several lacking luckys. Defining a solid work ethic as lucky, given my work, is blasphemy. Not long ago, I’d have challenged a solid work ethic as lucky with every self-help platitude there is. But, how can we take credit for something so influenced by all the other luckys?

Consider someone you admire for their work ethic. Where was it born? How was/is it sustained? When sustained, isn’t it sustained because of the mental health one might have that enables that?

Could it be the environment (family, friends, place, time, affluence, content) that further fuels that work ethic?

If I’m gifted with a particular talent, doesn’t that increase the likelihood I can exploit it with my remarkable work ethic? Won’t that lead to a positive momentum that fans that fire even more? A desire to improve things is a gift rooted in work ethic. It’s how we grow individually and collectively.

° If you can't outplay them, outwork them.

Ben Hogan | American championship golfer | 1912 - 1997

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4. A Good Environment makes things easier.

It can nurture, minimize distractions, and give us room for risk without risk of serious consequences. It’s made up of the people in our lives (family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, bumps⁴) and includes place (home, location), time (when we’re alive), affluence (money, education), and content (influences).

Eventually, we might have choices but no one has a choice at the beginning and nobody ever gets full control over all of it. Just as with good health, a wrench thrown into a good environment at any moment can change things quickly. How we handle those wrenches depends on the strength of our environment and other luckys. 

° I was super lucky with my parents. I got a lot of exposure to computers that made me see that software was going to be a big thing. And, I had great friends … [My book] was fun to write and reflect on the incredible luck I had that set me up to create Microsoft.

Bill Gates | American entrepreneur & philanthropist | 1955 -

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5. Good Work is a beautiful thing.

It’s subjective—hard to give it a universal definition past the basics (safe, ethical, enjoyable, equitably paid).

It’s easy to see how one might argue good work isn’t lucky. “It’s earned,” I can hear myself saying over the many decades of my life. Sure. But in many of those stories where it’s earned, if I go deep enough, there’s likely a break or two that helped things along—a critical moment, person, people, situation.

“But I worked to make that possible!” Yes. But a few other luckys might have played a role in it, right?

° If you have an idea, you tell me because I haven't got a clue. I believe that luck has a lot to do with it. There are lots of people who are more talented or whatever, but somehow this has been my path.

Cher | American singer and actor | 1946 -

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6. Curiosity is a wonderful gift.

It’s enthusiasm for thinking and learning. Take it out of life and not only would there be little progress beyond nature’s push, there’d be little joy.

And like our other luckys, at its root, isn’t curiosity dependent on a positively engaged brain that we have only if we’re gifted with it? Don’t environment and work ethic play a role in nurturing it?

And why are some of us curious about some things and have no interest in others? I’m very happy some people are curious about the tax code and accounting just as they might be very happy there are people curious about intellectual property law or marketing or organizational culture.

° But what if I didn’t do anything? What if they figure out there’s a little piece of zinc in people’s brains that makes us do what we do?

Conan O'Brien | American entertainer and producer | 1963 -

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7. Intelligence is about the capability of one’s mind.

At high levels, it along with curiosity and several other luckys can produce all kinds of wonderful. But, even at lower levels, it doesn’t necessarily get in the way of living an enjoyable life. (Isn’t that lucky?)

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8. Few people will argue against Talent being a gift of chance.

If you’ve been on the planet for more than 25 years, you’ve seen enough examples of successful people (however you define that) to know good talent, like intelligence, isn’t always necessary to make good things happen. That’s why I put this lucky so far down the list. 

Talent is something I think we can sometimes develop through the previous seven luckys. I say sometimes because I’m confident no matter what I might have done in my younger years, betting on a career as a musician, calculus professor, or professional athlete wouldn’t have gone well.⁵ 

° I learned very very early on that you can be very very talented but if you don't take care of your talent, it can go away. It's like a big baby. It needs to be fed.

Annie Leibovitz | American photographer | 1949 -

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9. Charisma and 10. Good Looks are gravy luckys.

Both are unnecessary for a meaningful and enjoyable life. But like big bags of extra money, they can make traveling easier and nicer.

You might be able to improve things here, but the seeds of that improvement come from nature, nurture, and other luckys.

So again, if this is correct, what do we do with it?

I think we do our best to…

1. Stay appreciative* for the luckys we’re given.

2. Nurture those beautiful things with continual thinking and doing (attention).

3. Do our best to be luckys in the lives of others where we can.

*appreciative: adj. feeling or showing gratitude or pleasure.—Such a wonderful word. It takes care of both being thankful and enjoying things.

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Scraps…

I struggled with whether money is its own lucky. I decided to fold it into environment.

We get money by earning, winning, inheriting, or stealing it.⁶

You have to play blackjack and the lottery to win. Inheritance depends on a gift from someone else and is likely dependent on the family into which you were born or adopted (environment).

Earning money? Wow. The variables that can impact this are enormous but at its base, you'll need several luckys and even then a market needs to want to pay enough for what you provide (product, service, effort, attention, skill).

If we agree that stealing is bad, it’s easy to see how the lack of a few luckys can get us to participate. (Remember, Trading Places?⁷)

Does this mean we don’t have choices? I don’t know.

I’m with the many of you who feel we have choices. But, don’t luckys or lack of luckys influence those choices? Wouldn’t that make them more a result than a choice?

I’d love to know I’m responsible for my contributions to the world. I want to matter. (I’m a very special starfish.) But maybe ridding myself of that craving would help me enjoy more and be more enjoyable for others.

And being able to rid myself of the craving, how lucky would that be?

Quote sources—

• Dave Matthews: New York Times—”Why Are Dave Matthews Band Fans So Loyal?”

• Michael Lewis: Princeton commencement speech. In it, the writer tells of how he graduated from college “without having ever published a word of anything, anywhere.” Also, he shares how after asking one professor what he thought of Lewis’s writing, the professor said, “Put it this way, never try to make a living at it.”

• Ben Hogan: Time magazine cover January 10, 1949

• Bill Gates: Book promo video on TikTok

• Cher: Associated Press article June 19, 2013. Cher has at least one new #1 hit in each of seven decades beginning in 1965.

• Conan O’Brien: New York Times—“Conan O’Brien Doesn’t Matter”

• Annie Leibovitz: ‘Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind’ (2011 episode)

Email me (or comment here) with your thoughts, questions, or suggestions. With suggestions, please don’t be shy or worry about my feelings. Quick, blunt, and maybe helpful⁸ is always welcome.

1. Can anyone over the age of 5 really think objectively? Who doesn’t carry at least a small bag of bias into most rooms.

2. My positive twist on “There but for the grace of God go I.”

3. I’ve been an asshole too many times in my life. (Still am occasionally.) And you gotta be careful. Assholery begets further assholery. (Say that like Sean Connery.)

4. A bump is someone you bump into who ends up playing an important role in your results (good or bad). I don’t think it’s a thing. It’s a label I use. “Alice was a bump I met on a plane. She shared an idea that helped me open my thoughts on having a better marriage.”

5. At this point in my life, I believe we become who we’re supposed to be. Scary thought when things aren’t going well. But with patience and maturity, it can be freeing. It helps me get back to now.

6. We might get a gift of money but I folded that into inheritance to make the sentence pop. What about borrowing? Can’t keep that money. You can but then I’d bunch that with stealing unless one is unlucky and just cannot pay it back.

7. Things have taken a turn for Louis Winthorpe III. The luck has gone bad.

8. “Maybe helpful” is meant to free you of concern.

I’d rather someone risk sharing something with me than being concerned it might not land well. If your thought implies I’m stupid or sound self-satisfied😊, you might be right. If so, I’d like to try to fix it.