How To Get Good Luck: 7 Real Tips To Be Lucky In Life

Who wouldn’t want better luck in their life?

To attract good things, to improve their circumstances, to live on more favorable terms?

There’s not a person alive who would wish for the opposite.

Good luck is something we all want to have.

Bad luck is something we all want to avoid.

But how, exactly, do you go about getting good luck? How do you become lucky?

This article will set out the core principles that you can apply in your life in order to increase your luck.

It’s not about which lucky charms work best, or how to arrange your furniture to bring more luck into your home.

No, it’s about the practical, effective things you can do right now and every day going forwards.

But first, let’s look at…

What Luck Actually Is

To be lucky, you have to understand what luck means.

More specifically, you have to appreciate the difference between luck, fortune, and chance.

Let’s tackle these one at a time, starting with…

Fortune

Whether good or bad, fortune relates to things that are mostly out of our control.

Finding a $50 bill on the street is good fortune. You didn’t take any specific action to make that happen. You were just in the right place at the right time.

Getting struck by lighting is bad fortune. You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The reason the word ‘mostly’ was bolded above is because you do, of course, have some small amount of control over most things.

You might find the money on the street because you are attentive to the things around you when you walk. You don’t have your eyes on a phone screen, for instance.

You might get struck by lightning because you played golf through a thunderstorm and the club you were holding acted as a lightning rod.

But, in general, fortune is not something you can exert a lot of influence over. For better or worse, it just happens.

Chance

Chance is all about the odds of something happening. Whatever those odds are, when enough particular situations occur, they should be accurate.

The lottery is a good example. You may think the holder of the winning ticket is the luckiest person in the world, but there has to (eventually) be a winner because millions of people play. It’s not so much luck as it is mathematics.

You could guess the result of a coin toss and be at the mercy of chance. You should guess correct roughly 50% of the time.

You could put all your chips on red at a roulette table and it is chance, not luck or fortune, that will determine whether you win or lose. The odds this time are slightly less than 50% due to the green zero on the wheel.

Luck

Luck can be thought of as doing something (or not doing something as the case may be) that stacks the odds of chance for or against you, and makes fortune (good or bad) somewhat more likely.

Luck is the intersection of both chance and fortune. Luck is something that you have some say over.

Consider a leak in your roof. Is that just bad fortune? Is it the result of chance?

Possibly. Perhaps something caused unseen damage to a tile or gutter that then led to water getting in. Without knowing about the damage, you couldn’t do much to prevent the leak.

Or, maybe the leak occurred because you neglected to take care of a dilapidated section of roof that you knew needed to be repaired. This could be considered bad luck.

You didn’t do something that you should have done and this meant that the chance of a leak occurring increased over time. Then the bad fortune of a heavy rain shower – perhaps more extreme than you would usually expect – tipped the odds into a certainty.

Or let’s imagine you bump into an old friend on the bus to work. It’s partly good fortune because you don’t have control over whether and when they get on the bus.

It’s also a matter of chance because if they take that journey every so often and you get on this bus every day, you would eventually be on the same bus at the same time.

But it can also be considered good luck because you have made the choice to take a bus to work instead of driving a car or riding a bike. That choice meant that fortune and chance could come together to cause the meeting with your friend.

7 Ways To Get Good Luck

Now that we’ve discussed what luck actually is, let’s turn our attention to some of the things you can do to increase and improve yours.

1. Be proactive.

Knowing that luck is the outcome of an action, it should come as no surprise to learn that being proactive is a big factor in being a lucky person.

Proactive people make things happen. Passive people wait for things to happen.

When you grab life with both hands and bend it to your will, you’d be amazed at how much influence you can have.

Proactive people both spot opportunities when they come along and make opportunities from their own hard work.

Likewise, being proactive means identifying potential problems ahead of time and doing something to prevent them, thereby avoiding bad luck.

Five-star general of the US Army Douglas MacArthur is quoted as saying:

“The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.”

This neatly summarizes the proactive approach you can take to luck in your life.

Part of being proactive does, of course, involve taking risks. Not just any risks, but what you might call ‘good risks’ or ‘calculated risks.’ These are risks with a far greater upside than their potential downside.

For example, let’s say you quit your job to start up your own business. If that business involves something that you have knowledge, experience, and qualifications in, then it might be considered a reasonable risk to take.

If you try to jump into an industry in which you have zero knowledge or experience, it’s a far bigger and less calculated risk to take.

This is why, as part of your proactive approach to life and the risks this will involve, it is beneficial to have at least some plan in place.

How will you get from where you are now to where you want to be? What are the steps you have to take to tip the odds of chance in your favor and improve your luck?

Yes, you can plan for luck. Or rather, you can plan to create luck.

2. Be resilient.

You will always face some adversity in life. Fortune will go against you and bad things will happen. That’s just how fortune works.

But how you respond to these difficulties matters when it comes to attracting good luck.

If you give up in the face of a challenge, you stop being proactive and start being a passive passenger in your life.

Instead, you have to see adversity for what it is – temporary. However bad things get, you still have a future ahead of you; a future that you have a say in.

If you can get through the hard times using sheer persistence and willpower, you will emerge stronger and more able to cope with similar situations in future.

Whatever hurt you suffered, whatever loss, whatever failure, whatever setback, you must remain disciplined and focused on your long term goals.

If all you can do is take one step each day, take that step. Keep going and maintain whatever momentum you can toward better times.

Always remember that whilst you may not have any control over the bad fortune that befalls you, you do have a say in the good luck that you create.

It is your continued action despite the turmoil you are going through that will help return your life to more favorable conditions more quickly.

3. Be optimistic.

In order to be lucky, it helps to feel lucky. Having a little faith that your future is going to be good does wonders for the mind and spirit.

Optimism helps you to see the opportunities that cross your path, even when they may not be immediately obvious.

It helps you to connect the dots and uncover ways in which X or Y can benefit you – ways that you would not notice if your mind is mired in negativity and pessimism.

Optimism helps you to be bold and to take the risks that are required to thrive in your life and get the good luck you are seeking. Without that hopeful outlook, all risks will seem too big and all potential rewards will seem inadequate.

Optimism is also an essential ingredient in the resilience we just spoke about. When you believe that better times are just around the corner, you are more likely to keep going and triumph over whatever adversity has befallen you.

Being optimistic is not the same as being delusional. You don’t have to ignore all the bad that is happening (that’s toxic positivity) or have unrealistic expectations or ambitions for the future.

It’s about knowing your capabilities and believing in yourself so that you can take the action required to change your luck for the better.

4. Listen to your intuition.

How do you know that the action you are taking is the correct action to increase your luck?

Well, one easy way to tell is to check with your gut. Your intuition is a very powerful decision-making engine that works below the level of your conscious mind.

It processes all of the relevant information about the situation, your feelings, your morals, your memories, and your desired outcome, and then tells you what the best course of action is.

Your intuition always has your best interests at heart. It will guide you well and help you walk a path through life that attracts the best luck possible.

Too often, people ignore what their intuition is telling them because they believe they know better, or because they are scared to follow it.

And you certainly don’t have to ignore your conscious thought-process. It can work in tandem with your intuition to direct you toward the best end result.

Your intuition is suited to making snap judgments about what is and is not a good opportunity – ideal when they can reveal themselves at any time.

Your intuition also does a good job of showing you paths that you may not have considered, but that will lead to more peace and contentment in your life – things you and others might not immediately relate to luck.

Changing career might, for example, seem like too risky a choice to take and one that will lead to lower earnings and less financial freedom. But it might also mean greater freedom and flexibility and a better work-life balance.

If you get to spend quality time with your family whilst others are stuck in an office or facing a long daily commute, you may well think yourself very lucky indeed.

5. Build relationships.

We achieve few things in life by ourselves. Most of the time, our successes come from working together with others.

It’s a lot easier to overcome obstacles and achieve the goals you set yourself when you have people whom you can rely upon and who can rely upon you.

Strong relationships will continue to provide benefits and continue to positively influence your luck year after year.

Relationships bring about opportunities in many ways. Whether it’s a job that you can get paid for, or spare tickets to a concert or sporting event, the people who know and care for you are sources of potential luck.

So be kind to others, help them, spend time building a genuine connection with them. Even the act of getting to know someone better can uncover ways to work together or spend time together that benefits everyone.

When others see you in a positive light, you will be first in line when they have something to offer.

6. Keep learning.

Luck is amplified by the ability to take full advantage of a situation or opportunity. You can’t take action on something if you don’t know how.

Skills and knowledge may take time to attain, but you never know when they might come in handy to bring about positive results.

So don’t rest on your laurels. Keep moving forward, most importantly in your chosen career or business.

Things can change quickly; whole industries can be turned upside down. When this happens, it’s those with their finger on the pulse that are most likely to not just survive, but thrive as change happens.

Just look at what happens to companies who don’t adapt to changing market conditions – they fail. The same can be said for people.

And don’t immediately dismiss ideas that might sound far-fetched. Be open-minded to things and learn more about them before deciding what to do with that knowledge.

Naturally, you can’t know everything. You can’t have all the skills and talents in the world. But you can strive to keep growing and getting better at what you do.

In the long run, this will increase your luck and you’ll reap the rewards of the hard work you put in.

7. Recognize good luck when it happens.

When things do go right and you benefit from good luck, try to see it and appreciate it.

What’s more, look carefully at what brought you that luck. Then, try to create those same conditions again to attract future luck of a similar kind.

Did you attend an industry conference and pick up some useful contacts that turned into profitable business? Keep going to conferences and building those relationships.

Did you approach someone at a bar and get a date out of it? Assuming that doesn’t lead to a relationship, approach other people and see where those conversations lead.

Has a side hustle taught you new skills that put you on the radar of senior management because of your improved work performance? Keeping pushing that envelope to improve your chances of promotion.

Whatever form good luck takes, learn to replicate it by following it back to the root source. Ask what tipped fortune and chance in your favor, then do more of it.