Article by Kardi Teknomo

You have learnt that things happen in your life mostly because of your own decision. Having “free will” means, you can determine your own luck. It is your choice whether to be lucky or always suffer misfortune. "Luck" actually does not exist. Luck is just your perception on a chance event. If you look at chance from positive point of view, then you say you are lucky. Even if you sometimes experience a mishap or something negative, it is your way of thinking that ultimately makes you are successful. When you see that some failure happens, you should only focus on your success. You can set your believe that success is your true nature, while the failure is just incidental caused by random events.

If you believe the random event from negative point of view, you may call it unlucky. You only focus on your failure and see the success as just incidental. Luck is nothing more than perceiving a random event from an optimistic point of view. A lucky person is just an optimist.

One of the best stories about luck is an old Chinese tale about a farmer and his only son. One day, during a walk in the fields, a farmer found a wild horse. He was able to capture it and eventually train it. He felt very lucky. A few weeks later, his only son tried riding the horse but fell off it and broke a leg. The farmer said, "Oh, how unlucky, this horse brings misfortune.” A few days later, a band of soldiers came to his house and demanded that his son join the military service. But seeing that he had a broken leg, the soldiers decided to leave him alone. The farmer said, "Oh, how lucky I am because if you go to war and die, then there will be no one to inherit our family name." The horse and the incident, after all, brought them luck.

The farmer felt unlucky in one moment and in another occasion he felt very lucky. It is how we perceived a particular situation. In reality, there is no lucky or unlucky situation. It is just how we perceive situation.

Knowing that you have free will, you can choose to perceive something as lucky or unlucky. "Hey!  Who wants to be unlucky?" you may say. Yes, generally speaking, it is good to be optimistic and feel lucky in life.

However, to be optimistic and feel lucky all the time may not be always good. Felling too lucky is not good because actually luck never exists. Here is an example: Feeling that you are a lucky person, you gamble away your money. Even after you lose all your money and bring hardship to your family, you will most likely continue gambling. All because you believe you have (or will have) good luck. Your perception that you are lucky will ruin you.

When I was a teenager, I gambled a lot, winning most of the time. I remember one day, gambling, I won 7 times consecutively but then started losing. After 3 consecutively losses, I stopped. I believe I was lucky enough because I was able to control myself and stop when I wanted to. I know people who cannot stop gambling, and they are now ruined financially.

There are a lot of stories about gambling, even ancient ones like the Hindu story of Mahabarata. This story speaks of Yudhistira, the main character, who, because of gambling, lost not only is his Kingdom, but also his beloved wife and family.

My simple researches through observations and discussion about how lucky persons behave have shown that they have certain characteristics or attributes such as being optimist, enthusiast, cheerful and full of strong will as if they have 'positive energy' come out from their kindness. Internally they have full trust and surrender at the same time.

For those of you who would like to measure luck quantitatively, luck can be viewed as probability of independent events that happen in a series. Luck is often happen as a matter of timing and how you view that small chance. For example, you know that the train you are going to ride is coming every hour. If you come just after the train left, you may view it as unlucky. If you arrive in the station just a few seconds before the train goes and you are able to ride the train, you may feel lucky because you don’t need to wait too long. All the other time in between can be perceived as normal situation. Thus the chance to be lucky or unlucky is relatively small compare to normal situation. It must be noted however that luck is just the way we perceive it. If you don’t expect certain threshold of waiting time, the feeling luck or unlucky does not exist. The same measurement can be offered for people's perception toward traffic signal in the intersection. When it happens that one just arrive right after the green light and don’t need to stop or decelerate, people may perceive it as luck.

I have been teaching for more than 10 years now, and I consistently get excellent students to supervise. People say I am lucky to always get good students. But I think they are wrong to say this. I get the same kind of students as they do, but under me, these students excel. I challenge my students to excel. I push them to study hard and achieve the best that they can. I work hard to encourage my students to achieve more for themselves.

Occasionally however, some students fail to reach my expectations - but most of them do.  Because my students know that I have high expectations, even if they "fail", their achievements are still higher than their batch mates who were not pushed to achieve more. In this sense, I am optimistic about their future and at the same time feel truly lucky. Maybe this is why I always get good students!

Murphy's Law stated that things would go wrong in any given situation if you have given a chance. To be unfortunate one, you just started with bad feeling, being pessimistic and everything will go wrong as negative vicious cycle. If one joke that are believed to be true can turn into a "law" then I shall offer more positive way to overcome bad luck.

The more you feel lucky, the more you will be showing the attributes of lucky persons. The more you show those qualifications, you will attract others like magnet and the more you feel lucky. It is a positive vicious cycle that can be driven at your will. Similar to how Murphy's Law works, the mechanism behind this simple 'Law' is just a suggestion. If you believe it true then it will work for you. Unlike Murphy's Law, however, the 'law' to overcome bad luck is positive and starts from a decision to think that whatever the situation is, you are still lucky.

So, how does one become a lucky person? The answer is simple, just believe that you are lucky -- then you will be. The more you feel lucky, the luckier you are. Take risks but don't gamble. Because if you do gamble… that is pushing your luck too far.

Thanks for Nino Pujelta for editing this text.

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