Better to believe you're lucky

Do you consider yourself lucky?

My (more) significant other, Sharon, posed that question to me earlier this month.

Her tone was earnest, sounding nothing like Clint Eastwood when he made a similar inquiry while playing an (armed) urban poet in the 1971 film “Dirty Harry.”

I realize that my answer should have been an immediate and unambiguous, “Yes!”

I’d have to be a pretty self-absorbed asshole to look at everything my life includes and say, “Yeah, honestly, it could have been better.”

But if I’m being honest …

If I reach beyond the stuff I know I should say …

If I tell you how I really feel …

I have a hard time seeing myself as lucky given the things that happened early in my life.

I was 13 when my father died. He died at 38 after being sick much of his adult life. After my mom remarried, I had a difficult time with my stepfather, who turned out to be a thoroughly dishonest creep.

The death of my Pop and the results of my mother’s second marriage continue to cast a shadow over how I see my life no matter how many times I remind myself how fortunate I am in the overall scheme of things.

But in the two weeks since my wife asked me if I consider myself to be a lucky person, I’ve found myself thinking about some different ways I might be able to answer the question, “Do you consider yourself a lucky person?”

There’s a reason for that, which I’ll get to.

But first, Sports!

People who consider themselves lucky tend to have good things happen.

Social scientists have demonstrated this repeatedly in a variety of ways, and it was this fact that prompted Sharon to ask me if I felt I was a lucky person.

The most well-known research on the subject was done by Richard Wiseman, a British professor (who is also a magician, btw). He spent a decade studying “lucky” and “unlucky” people.

In one of his more famous experiments, Wiseman posted an ad, requesting responses from people who considered themselves either very lucky or very unlucky.

It’s worth pointing out that the subjects categorized themselves. Wiseman did nothing to assess whether the respondents were as lucky (or unlucky) as they claimed. This was entirely based on self-perception.

Over the 10 years of Wiseman’s research, he interviewed 400 people. One of the exercises he did was to give respondents a newspaper and ask them to count the number of photographs that appeared. The respondents were told they needed to get the number exactly.

There was a headline on Page 2 that said, “Stop counting – There are 43 pictures in this newspaper.” This headline was placed near one of the pictures, in the area the subjects would be certain to look.

The respondents who considered themselves “very lucky” were more likely to notice this than the respondents who considered themselves “very unlucky.”

Then, halfway through the newspaper, there was another headline stating, “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.”

Again, respondents who considered themselves “very lucky” were more likely to notice this (and collect $250) than the respondents who considered themselves “very unlucky.”

Now I suppose some would interpret this data as confirmation that there are people who are born under a lucky star or – as my late father would have said – seem to have a horseshoe wedged permanently in their hind parts.

I do not believe that this is the way the world works, however. I think that all things being equal, good fortune is random and indiscriminate.

Yet it’s not just this exercise of counting photographs. Another experiment, conducted by researchers in Toronto, showed that subjects who watched a humorous video clip followed by a general affirmation—"Good things tend to happen to you”—performed better on tests measuring dexterity and reaction time than subjects who did not see the video and the subsequent affirmation.

The title of this study is kind of wonky: Positive breadth increases the effect of attentional selection

I prefer my own version: Better to believe you’re lucky, that’ll make you good.

So how do you explain that simply considering yourself lucky makes a person more likely to notice a competitive advantage or learn of a financial bonus or to perform better on a physical test?

Could be that people who consider themselves lucky tend to be more open to new possibilities. Maybe they are more aware of and alert to things around them. Or perhaps people who consider themselves unlucky are so fearful of making a mistake that they become tense and hyper-focused, oblivious to other things around them.

It would seem that there is power in positive thinking. So how do I make myself not just recognize that I’m lucky, but truly feel it?

I believe the stories we tell about ourselves are very important.

They shape how others see us, how we’re treated, and the opportunities that open up for us.

I believe the stories we tell to ourselves are very important, too. In fact, they might be more important than the stories we tell about ourselves.

“I’m someone to whom good things happen” is an example of a story we can tell ourselves.

So is, “I’m someone who tends to suffer misfortune.”

Here’s the story I’ve told myself for much of the past 30 years, “I’ve done pretty well, all things considered.”

This strikes me as fairly measured and largely true.

There’s one major problem with it, though: the underlying pessimism. I’m characterizing the obstacles I’ve faced, the pain I’ve endured, as a weight that I’m still shouldering. I see it as a burden that continues to impact how high I can soar, how much I can achieve.

It’s another way of saying, “I’ve done pretty well in spite of the bad luck I’ve suffered.”

This story isn’t hurting me per se, but it might not be putting me in the best position to recognize the opportunities around me.

I might be like one of those people fearfully counting the photos in the newspaper, oblivious to the headline announcing a $250 bonus.

So what if I change that story I tell myself?

I don’t need to gloss over what has happened nor minimize it. I don’t have to view it as a challenge that I’m still trying to overcome, either.

That’s my first crack at a new story. Or perhaps it will be, “I'm excited and ready to see what comes my way.”

I’m going to try and focus on the future, which (I hope) will put me in position to recognize the opportunities that pop up around me. I'm going to keep working on it, and I'll have periodic updates here at The Dang Apostrophe.

In the meantime, here’s a podcast that Sharon and I listened to after she asked me whether I considered myself lucky. It’s Mel Robbins, who's interviewing Tina Seelig, a professor at Stanford whose new book is “Everything I Wish I Knew About Luck.”

I’ll conclude this newsletter with the same question it began with: