Everyone is on their own journey through life. And people start their journey in different places. Some have it easy. Others suffer from bad luck, and are playing life on “hard mode”.
We all have a distinctly different set of characteristics, skills, and abilities that make us unique. Unfortunately for some, their combination of traits make them disadvantaged in modern life. You could describe their circumstances as unfortunate or “unlucky”.
Being “unlucky” can affect everything from health and social outcomes, to job prospects and future earning potential. There are many things that are outside of our control, but there are ways to transform luck into forces that you can use to improve your circumstances.
Welcome to the Saving Series – my thoughts on how taking intentional action to improve your circumstances can help you reconsider how lucky you are.
On Extreme Disadvantage
I am writing this series primarily for myself, to capture the philosophies I try to live by. I’m an able-bodied male who can read, write, and count. I’m not an Olympic athlete (far from it), but I’m fit enough to run recreationally and lift furniture when family and friends move house. I live in a clean apartment that I own, with access to every basic amenity I require. Every good or service I could possibly desire is accessible within walking distance or via the internet. I have no dependents, and have a wonderful relationship with my partner and my family. And I have the ability to work wherever I want (and choose how much I work) thanks to the expertise I gained throughout my career.
The things above may not sound that impressive at first glance, but I believe the combination of them is. I live a privileged and stress-free lifestyle, with all of my physical and mental faculties intact. And while I may have worked hard to achieve this lifestyle, I still consider myself extraordinarily lucky.
Not everything I write will be relevant (or even applicable) to your circumstances. Nor do I aim to imply I understand the challenges of everyone around me.
I cannot possibly understand the challenges faced by one who lives every day in pain. Or one who struggles to fully engage with everything the world has to offer due to disability.
Some things cannot be comprehended until they are experienced first-hand.
Reframing how we examine luckiness doesn’t mitigate or eliminate genuine hardship. I don’t aim to do this. Whatever your circumstances, carefully consider how my writing (and the writing of others) applies to you and your situation.
What is Luck?
Luck, or chance, is how we describe random things that happen to us. If a person is lucky, then more often than not, good things happen to them by chance. But for a person who’s unlucky, the reverse is true.
Feeling as though you are unlucky brings a never-ending feeling of being hard done by. It’s like the universe is out to get you. It’s natural to think this way.
As humans, we are hardwired to notice negative things and remember them vividly well into the future. This is a defence mechanism to help us ensure that we avoid negative situations in the future.
But taken to the extreme, this can make you feel as though you can’t succeed or do anything you want in life.
We often think about luck in a static sense: that person is unlucky; they are lucky; a lucky thing happened to me. But luck is a little bit more nuanced than that. Sure, there are some things that we don’t have any control over, but we’re much more in control of our luck than we think.
The 4 Types of Luck
Luck isn’t just a force of nature that we have no control over. In fact, Dr. James Austin believed that a large portion of luck was within our control.
In his book Chase, Chance, & Creativity: The Lucky Art of Novelty (1978), Austin proposes 4 different types of luck. These different types of luck each have a different degree of randomness and different means of being achieved.
By defining the different types of luck, they can be understood. Once understood, they can be controlled.
Blind Luck
Blind luck relates to anything over which we have little to no control:
- Being born in a particular country
- Who your parents are
- Acts of God
- Winning a lottery
The outcomes of blind luck events are completely out of our control. And they often have large impacts, too. Our entire existence – and the miracle of life – comes down to blind luck. In many ways, we’re lucky to have made it this far at all.
Luck from Motion
Luck from motion refers to luck events that occur from us taking action. If something unexpected and good happens when you’re doing something, chances are it’s positive luck from motion.
- An acquaintance you exercise with offers you a job
- You get a promotion after taking on extra responsibilities
- You’re invited onto a podcast after sharing your writing online
You still have to be lucky. But you’re taking actions that expand your luck surface area to make your more likely to be lucky.
You miss out on a lot of luck by not engaging with others. And moving forward to combat entropy and inflation allows you to create situations within which you can become lucky.
Luck from Awareness
Luck from awareness refers to our ability to take advantage of opportunities as they become known to us. As we move through our careers, we gain expertise in various disciplines and get to know more people. These skills, people, and experiences give us the ability to discern value from the things we encounter.
The unique perspectives that we’ve gained throughout our life give us the ability to take advantage of things that other people don’t notice or aren’t equipped to take advantage of.
Here’s an example from my career. As I continued working in payroll processing, I noticed that our team didn’t have a lot of experience in the time and attendance system our company had recently implemented1. I took it upon myself to learn as much as I could about that system and then went on to train others in the organization on how to use it. This sent my career on a completely different path, and was the catalyst for me being able to double my salary over the following five years.
I was lucky to have been in an organization where that opportunity presented itself. I was lucky that nobody else decided to take on that responsibility. That allowed me to kick-start my career within time and attendance systems, which ultimately led to catapulting the value of my time to new heights.
When living a life of saving, investing, and choosing work we love, we find ourselves in all sorts of situations. Those situations allow us to directly benefit from being lucky and take advantage of opportunities that arise from them.
Luck from Uniqueness
The final type of luck can be summed up as a reward for the hard work that got you to attain it in the first place. Luck from uniqueness seeks you out based on your unique set of skills and experiences.
The things you’ve done, said, and shared work to build an image of yourself in the minds of others. That image then becomes something that attracts them to you.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to be a little bit weird. In fact, it’s more than okay. Your uniqueness is the driving force behind your very being, and if you can take advantage of the unique set of traits that you have, this type of luck can hit anywhere at any time.
As opposed to blind luck, luck from uniqueness stems from all the things that you’ve done before it. Building a reputation for yourself and being sought out for those reasons can be both powerful and lucrative.
Through engaging with others, achieving certain goals, or behaving in a particular way, you become a magnet that attracts good fortune to yourself.
What Can You Do?
There are some things that are entirely outside of our control, and there are some things that we have full control over. But most importantly, everything simply is.
In some ways, it doesn’t matter if you are unlucky and ran over a nail, getting a flat tire. It doesn’t matter that you are lucky and able to take advantage of an investment opportunity that goes well. Those events are what they are.
Luck can and will affect everybody in completely different ways. The whims of fate are random, capricious, and uncaring. An inconvenience in your life may be a tragedy in another’s.
So, in the face of rampant randomness that can seemingly derail your whole life without notice, what can we possibly do to overcome that?
Continue to Learn and Grow
We need to constantly be seeking out new skills, knowledge, connections, and experiences that allow us to continuously grow. Entropy and inflation will do everything in their power to try and pull you backwards. It’s easy to feel unlucky or hard done by if you have allowed entropy and inflation to take control of your life and finances.
Perhaps your fitness and health have suffered to a point where you are constantly ill or injured. Perhaps you have a high income, but can’t seem to save enough to cover the major expenses that pop up at the worst times. Just as you have the ability to create a life filled with good fortune and success, the march of entropy and inflation can force a life of misfortune upon you.
Leverage Your Uniqueness
Your uniqueness is the most valuable trait you have. Nobody has lived the life you have lived; nobody has amassed the unique combination of skills and experiences that you have.
I got my most recent position working on a system implementation, despite never working directly with that system. I was hired for this role because of the unique skill set that I held.
My experience in payroll, system support, corporate training, consulting, and system administration of other systems all combined to make me the perfect candidate for the role. I was forthcoming about my lack of experience in this system, but my unique experience was enough to see me as a successful candidate.
I work in a fairly specific field, but I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only candidate put forward for this role. Chances are, I beat out candidates with much more experience in this system than I have.
Sometimes, your unique set of skills is exactly what someone is looking for So you have to use what you have to your advantage.
Accept What It Is
It can sometimes be demoralizing seeing others around you succeed. It’s easy to feel jealous when people you know are making life progress2 at a faster rate than you are. Stories of job promotions and salary increases, of people buying their first homes or starting a family, can make you wonder why they get to enjoy those things and you don’t. This is disastrous for your mental health. As the saying goes, “Comparison is the thief of joy”.
Your life may simply be harder than other people’s lives; it could even be easier. But as I mentioned above, it doesn’t really matter if it’s harder or easier, whether you’re luckier or unluckier than anyone. You simply are. At the end of the day, no label matters. You simply have to move forward and try to make things better.
Do The Best You Can
The only person you should compare yourself to is yourself. All you can do is be better than the you you were previously.
I’ve heard people say that you need to be better than the you from yesterday, but I don’t know if this is the right approach. Doing this forces you into an infinite grind that requires progress every day and doesn’t allow you to rest.
Be kind to yourself and aim to improve, but not at the expense of your health and happiness.
Everyone has different skills, experiences, advantages, and disadvantages in modern life. All you can do is the best that you can do, to be the best version of yourself.
Closing
While this piece is part of my Saving Series, it hasn’t discussed saving directly. Having bad luck and being forced to spend money to fix things that go wrong directly conflicts with your saving goals. Whatever you can do to make yourself luckier and avoid bad luck will generally leave you better off.
Bad luck affects everyone, and unfortunately, it affects some more than others. Create the means to live a life where you aren’t wiped out when misfortune strikes. All we can do is continue to move forward in spite of however lucky we are.
Continue to build a repository of useful skills and experiences that you can draw on throughout your life. This doesn’t guarantee that you will be lucky. But by continuously moving the odds in your favour, you increase your ability to attract positive luck into your life.
Creating the means to be just a little bit luckier can serve you well in the long run. And all it takes is one lucky break to set you on the right track.
Thank you for reading.
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