What's luck got to do with it?
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip on August 6th, 1945, right when the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city. He survived, and made his way back home for medical treatment.
Unfortunately for him, his home was in Nagasaki, where the second nuclear bomb fell just three days later. Yamaguchi once again found himself too close to the epicenter of the explosion. He survived the second attack with further injuries — and the kind of trauma most people couldn’t withstand once, let alone twice.
These were the only two times a nuclear bomb has ever been used in war, so let’s pause for a moment to consider: Do we think Yamaguchi was extraordinarily unlucky? Or, in a strange way, extraordinarily lucky to have survived the most unlucky thing imaginable?
The definition of “lucky” depends on perspective: it can shift from a mysterious, external force, to a largely predictable outcome of people’s mindsets and behaviors.
And indeed, while Tsutomu Yamaguchi was one of the few people recognized as a double hibakusha—yes, there is a Japanese term for survivors of both atomic bombings—he went on to live a long and purposeful life. He died at the age of 93, after decades spent advocating for peace and nuclear disarmament.
The anatomy of a lucky person
It’s tempting to view luck as some kind of lottery ticket, where you’re either blessed by the universe or you aren’t.
Psychologist Richard Wiseman spent a decade studying people who self-identified as exceptionally lucky or unlucky. His findings, detailed in his book The Luck Factor, point to the opposite, however: Lucky people generate their own good fortune through basic psychological principles.
One of the biggest differences between lucky and unlucky people is in the way they pay attention. Wiseman found that people who consider themselves unlucky tend to have more anxiety, and anxiety tends to be bad news as far as luck is concerned because it forces people to focus intensely on the specific task at hand. This narrow focus causes people to miss unexpected opportunities. For example, a more relaxed mindset would have allowed them to notice the $20 bill on the sidewalk, participate in a chance encounter at a coffee shop, or take advantage of an unscheduled opportunity that defies their original plan.
Lucky people also rely on a particular kind of optimism that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you expect a social interaction to go well, you will naturally smile more, speak more engagingly, and stand taller. Other people respond in kind, and this makes the interaction go well. Meanwhile, the “unlucky” person, expecting rejection, withdraws, and in doing so, virtually guarantees the very rejection they feared.
And, while bad events happen to all people, the “lucky” among us have a way of turning the negative into a positive. The literal equivalent of “If life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” some people view setbacks as a temporary situation or a learning opportunity that may contribute to them being lucky some other time. This resilience also protects them from the downward spiral that could otherwise shut down future efforts and bring on more misfortune.
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