The Four types of luck

I mentioned in a previous blog post that there are three key ingredients to success: Hard work, Timing and Luck.

Here I would like to flesh out the topic of luck. It is a commonly held belief that luck is something that is outside our sphere of influence and hence we cannot control it. This is not entirely true and so I would like to discuss here what I learnt about luck and its different types. Let us start:

1. Blind Luck:

The first type of luck is blind luck.
This is when one gets lucky because something totally out of their control happened. i.e fortune, fate. When blind luck favours you, you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth or fortune lands on your lap without you even wanting it or trying to have it. Being born to rich parents or inheriting a large fortune are examples of blind luck.

2. Luck by Persistence:

The second type is luck through hard work, persistence, hustle, and motion. This is when you are running around creating opportunities. You are generating enough force, hustle, and energy for luck to find you. You walk, you fall, you stand up and you try to walk again until you reach a point when good things start happening to you. Like getting into shape to win that next assignment or building critical skills through hard work or working for that next promotion. It is all about sheer persistence by which you eliminate competition.

3. Luck by Hunting:

The third way is to become good at spotting luck. This is a much smarter thing to do and yet it requires very keen observation, patience and focus. If you are very skilled in a field, you will notice when a lucky break happens in your field, and other people who aren’t attuned to it won’t notice. So, you become sensitive to spotting luck and once you spot it, you immediately grab it and use the opportunity to grow. So if you are a salesperson, then you would diligently shortlist the most desirable prospects, study them, understand them and woo them when you know some big opportunity is coming up.

4. Luck by Invitation:

The final kind of luck is the weirdest, hardest kind, where you build a unique character, a unique brand, a unique mindset, which causes luck to find you. For example, you are the best deep-sea diver in the world. You are known for taking on deep-sea diving attempts that others won’t even dare to attempt. By sheer luck, somebody finds a sunken treasure ship that they can’t get to.
Their luck just became your luck. They will come to you to get the treasure and you’re going to get paid for it. Create a unique position and name for yourself in your team, company, business community and then when opportunities arise, people will find you know you’re the right person for the job.

While it is easy to talk about the four kinds of luck, it is not easy to move from relying on blind luck to luck by persistence and so on. But by being aware of the four kinds of luck, at least there is hope that you slowly be able to hunt for it or let it find you. That is what I am trying to do as well and I hope this post helps you do the same.