This year, I mean, amiright?
Let’s just list SOME of the atrocities that made up the dumpster fire that was 2020
The obvious: PANDEMIC
The ongoing: Disruption of Democracy (impeachment, civil unrest, white supremacists, etc)
The overwhelming: Climate change leading to entire continents on fire, giant hurricanes, etc.
The ominous: Murder hornets, FIRE TORNADOS???
Somehow, fire tornado was not something I could find in stock photos…weird.
But in researching this article (because I’ve honestly already forgotten HOW weird 2020 really was), I found more: Monkey riots, Pentagon UFO videos, reverse waterfalls, a missing star (as in celestial body, not celebrity), furry-looking venomous caterpillars, Meghxit, Brexit, mystery drones, and NOW WTF IS WITH THESE MONOLITHS???
Seriously, some of this stuff sounds like an alien invasion in progress where the aliens are like “Really? THAT didn’t get their attention?? Well, they seem a little preoccupied. Maybe let’s steal some shit and just go.”
Like Earth is that schizophrenic homeless person that muggers aren’t going to mess with because he’s just too much trouble.
No intelligent life here…let’s move on to the next solar system
The list of strange and downright terrible things just went on and on.
But let’s be honest…was it really that much different from most years? Or were we just primed to pay attention to the terrible that much more because we were all already anxious and sitting home without nearly as much stuff to distract us?
Let’s talk about the coming year. A year is just an arbitrarily chosen set of dates that demarcates time to differentiate…time. Uhhhh…yeah, I didn’t look up that definition at all, but what I’m saying is that it’s MADE UP. Time is not real in the sense that we think of it, and 2020 was definitely not cursed.
But if you want to have better luck in 2021, let’s talk about some scientific ways to make that happen.
Creating luck in the lab
In his book The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life, author Dr. Richard Wiseman talks about the four principles that affect how lucky you are as a person:
Lucky people maximize their chance opportunities
Lucky people listen to their intuition and trust their hunches
Lucky people expect to be lucky
Lucky people turn their bad luck into good
It’s easier to find a 4-leaf clover than you’d think…AND easier to change your luck
You can change your luck.
A lot of the downfall of 2020 was that it inherently made some of these principles hard to live by.
When you rarely ever leave your house or meet new people, chance opportunities happen a lot less frequently.
When you’re busy numbing yourself to the shitstorm happening around you, it’s easy to ignore your intuition.
When every single day brings news that is anywhere from bad to just downright horrifying, it’s understandable that you’d come to expect bad luck.
When you are in the middle of a crisis, it can be easier to mourn the loss of what you don’t have, can’t do, or have to sacrifice, rather than accepting your circumstances and asking yourself: “Where is the opportunity in this?”
I have always considered myself a very lucky person. As an extrovert with a bias toward action and a distaste for strict routine, this makes a lot of sense.
It turns out, personality has a lot to do with luck.
In Wiseman’s studies, lucky people scored high in the personality traits of extroversion and openness, and scored low in neuroticism. The combination of personality traits allowed a lucky person to increase their odds of luck by increasing the opportunities they encountered and were able to recognize.
But just because you have a tendency toward routine, rumination, and hermitage, that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. But you will need to consciously take actions that may go against your natural tendencies.
And if you’re already an extroverted novelty-seeker, a few small tweaks can be all it takes to be the person everyone envies for their good luck.
Goodbye, 2020, you flaming trash heap of a year…
So, are you ready to relegate 2020 to the dumpster fire?
Here are a few ways to actively change your luck in 2021:
Interact with more people
You can’t maximize your chance encounters if you don’t have them. So first focus on creating more interactions, be in person, online, or by phone or text.
Meet new people if you can, and definitely reconnect with people you already know whenever possible.
More interactions give you more chances to find information or opportunities that are useful to you. Luck is a matter of mathematics. It’s probability and permutations. But that doesn’t make it seem any less magical when you just happen to talk to someone who just happens to know about a job you’d be perfect for the day after you’ve lost yours.
The next step is to maximize those encounters by following up. Did someone say to you “we should get coffee sometime!” Follow up! Keep in touch with new connections, learn about them…they might just be the key to the opportunity you’ve been seeking.
Don’t focus on your problems—focus on being open to opportunities
If you are too focused, or are preoccupied and ruminating about something that you can’t control, you’re going to be blind to opportunities that might be right in front of you.
Fear takes up a LOT more of our energy than we realize. When you find yourself worrying, ask yourself “Would this energy be better spent DOING something about this?” Sometimes, talking to others, especially those who have gone through the same thing, can be helpful, because they might have ideas you would never have considered.
Remind yourself daily that you get to choose how to use your limited time and energy. You can use it to worry about “what ifs” or you can use it to take action.
You probably won’t get lucky sitting in front of the TV
Spice up your routine
New and novel experiences give you new ideas, introduce you to new people, expose you to new opportunities. If you do the same thing every day, every week, and wonder why nothing NEW and interesting is happening, CHANGE IT!
Take a class, volunteer for an organization you care about, read a different type of book (or if you don’t read, maybe try it), watch a movie from a culture different than yours, talk to someone elderly or work with youth. Just do something that is not routine.
Try to add something new at least weekly. If nothing else, I’ll bet it makes you feel more awake and alive in the world.
When bad luck happens, find the lesson in it, and move on
In his book, Wiseman uses the example of someone who keeps going on bad dates. Instead of examining the reasons for the dates being bad, the woman just proclaims that she has terrible luck with men. If she looked at the dates, and was able to realize that she keeps going out with the same type of emotionally unavailable men, then she could change her luck by making different decisions.
If you are constantly broke, but never examine where your money is actually going, then you’ll remain in the cycle of scarcity. Find the lesson (“I need to stop buying things advertised to me on Instagram, because I’m spending a lot of money on things I don’t need” or “My job isn’t paying me enough; I should at least start looking for something better”) and move on.
One of the greatest and most comforting of truths is that when one door closes another opens; but often we look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us. We must learn the lesson of expecting good, better, best.
I hope this helps give you hope for the coming year. I’ve already made a plan to have coffee with 100 new LinkedIn contacts in 2021…thereby increasing my chances of business opportunity.
How about you? Have you experienced a time where a bout of luck has come from one of these actions? Please share in the comments!
