What we think about chance, fate, or fortune can influence what happens to us. Our practice shows us a better way to “get lucky.”
Imagine that you are driving to your job in the morning. You’re going to work one morning, the sun is shining, and no cars are on the road. It feels like a great day. You see a dark figure out of the corner and feel an impact. A driver ran a stop sign and hit your passenger door. Your first thought after confirming that you’re (thankfully) alive is, What luck!
What kind of luck do you have? You are lucky to be alive and unharmed. Is it bad luck that the vehicle you own is destined for a junkyard?
Scientists have found that your personality can influence whether or not you consider an event good or bad luck. Dr. Barbara Blatchley, professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, and author of the book According to Why We Believe in Lucky, Western psychology used to believe that people who believed in luck lacked self-efficacy and were incapable of changing. Although this view is still prevalent, people continue to engage in behaviors that are influenced by their belief in fate. They may cross their fingers, knock on wood or hold onto a lucky item.
Science has advanced, and so has our understanding of the factors that influence our beliefs about luck and our behaviors. Blatchley says that recent research shows people who think they are unlucky to suffer from diminished executive functions and are less happy or well-adjusted. They may feel that they lack control, and are less able to deal with what comes their way.
Researchers found that in a study of university students from Hong Kong, happier participants were more likely to view luck as a force external to their lives and to think they were lucky. The neurotic participants believed that fate could be the cause of their luck (like being hit by a vehicle) and not luck itself.
The Logic of Luck
Blatchley claims that humans evolved to detect patterns because patterns help predict the future. She says that when you can expect the next step, it makes the world a safer and less uncertain place. We will look for reasons to explain anything, as we dislike blaming randomness. We blame luck when we feel that a situation is beyond our control, such as in the case of a car accident.
When you know what is going to happen, the world becomes a safer and more uncertain place.
Barbara Blatchley is a professor of neuroscience and psychology.
Steven Hick is a mindfulness instructor and director of MBSR Ottawa. He says that our brains are wired to categorize and label things. Hick says, “Without the ability to recognize that something is dangerous or friendly, we’d die.” While our ability to label things is vital for survival, Hick says it does not represent our truth. Labels can create a dualism in our view of the world. (Good versus Bad, or Lucky versus Unlucky). But with mindfulness practices, we learn that everything is connected and interdependent. Our lived reality is more nuanced than we would like to think.
Hick points out all cultures have a version of luck. He says attributing events to fate, chance, or fortune is a common human trait. Many belief systems are in favor of the idea of fate. For example, many Christian sects believe that all humans are born as sinners. Or, Eastern spiritual traditions view past bad behavior as having consequences for our present life.
Labels that Limit Us
The belief that we can influence our luck is comforting, but it can also cause us to be afraid of anything that could bring bad luck. If we live our lives based on fate-driven chance, we will be frustrated when things do not go according to plan or when negative events confirm our belief that nothing ever goes our way.
Hick offers mindfulness strategies to help us overcome our tendency to believe in luck, whether good or bad. First, identify the objects that are in your awareness. These could be internal sensations or emotions in our body or external events. Some people find that using generic labels to describe things that catch our attention is helpful, such as “thought,” “sound,” or “sensation,” can be very helpful.
After noticing these objects, we should let them go without engaging or rejecting them. A thought about a car accident may lead to ruminations about what caused it or how we could have prevented it. Hick says that noticing this rumination without becoming caught up in its ramblings is “a practice to disengage from our identification with experience.” This is known as “choiceless attention” in the mindfulness community. We choose not to sustain our focus on the object we are noticing.
Hick states that even the most advanced meditation will still label and categorize experiences. When we become skilled at choiceless awareness, we can relate to our experience differently and more clearly.
How can you make your luck?
What would happen if you let go of the labels we use to label and categorize our thoughts and experiences? Was there any place for “luck”? It could, but the look and feel might be different.
Blatchley says that expanding or increasing your scope of attention is a huge benefit. “If you increase your attention, your brain will be better able to predict what is going to happen; you might even be more prepared. And maybe, all of this is just being lucky.”
Our brains can accurately predict future events at least several seconds in advance. This allows us to quickly evaluate a situation and prepare our bodies for a response. Blatchley illustrates this with the example of parents and children playing catch. The neuroscience of our brain has shown that it must react milliseconds in advance before our child returns the ball to us so that we can predict its trajectory and prepare our bodies to catch it.
What happens if our prediction is incorrect and we lunge left when our child throws a ball to the right instead of to the left? The brain works to fix itself the next time. Our child’s brain does the same as well.
We gain perspective when we are mindfully tuned into our lives. Our agency does not come from luck or fate but rather from our quality of awareness and the things we choose to pay attention to.
It can be exhausting to have our brains wrong constantly. Blatchley says that if you make predictions that don’t come true, you begin to doubt your abilities and ability to control things. Predicting our future experiences could help us to better respond to our environment. We gain perspective when we are mindfully aware of our lives. Our agency does not come from luck or fate but rather from our quality of awareness and the things we choose to pay attention to.
It is possible to improve your ability to see what’s coming by improving your clarity and scope of attention. If you had been more aware of your feelings and current actions, it could have helped you see the car just a fraction before it crossed the stop sign and hit the brakes to avoid an accident. Your brain could be holding the cards.
A Mindfulness practice to awaken the spirit of curiosity
by Elaine Smookler
Interpreting our experiences is a big part of “getting luck.” If you relax and let the story unfold, you might find that fortune smiles upon you.
- Choose a situation in which you’d like to experience more good fortune.
- Take three deep breaths. Breathe in for three and out for five to relax.
- Be curious to see what happens, even if it initially does not seem lucky.
- To broaden your perspective, try engaging the thought. Tell me more about this.
- Spend some time thinking about or writing about the following: what do I believe about this?
- Experience? Has it already been pigeonholed as lucky or unlucky by me? What proof am I using to show this is lucky or unlucky behavior?
- Take note if this experience reminds you of something in the past. If so, try to welcome a new perspective and adopt the attitude that you don’t yet know what will happen. Allow yourself to be curious about what is happening right now.
- Notice the effect of your mood on whether you feel lucky or unlucky.
- What labels, if any, of “lucky,” “unlucky,” or both could you apply to what you have discovered about the slings and arrows of outrageous luck?
