Psychologist Richard Wiseman is an authority on luck — or what is perceived as luck in our lives. In his book The Luck Factor, Wiseman found that the best predictor of how many “lucky breaks” a person has was how social and interconnected they were with those around them. Lucky people enjoy connecting and relating to other people and are comfortable doing so. When presented with new social situations, unlucky people talked to people they already knew or people who were most like themselves, whereas lucky people talked to a large array of people equally.
Group of young people having fun in a summer surf class outdoors
Most of life’s opportunities don’t land on us mysteriously. They come through our networks, our connections, people we stumble across at random.
My one-and-only attempt at a day job was landed through an acquaintance I had made when I was going out five nights-a-week in Boston back in 2007. I once landed an audition for a touring rock band by randomly meeting the singer at a Fourth of July party (he and I happened to be hitting on the same girl). A blogger recently wrote about sitting down in a coffee shop to work on his laptop and accidentally striking up a conversation with an old man who just happened to have invented the first ever programmable computer and spent the afternoon chatting with him.
Wiseman states in his book:
“I discovered that being in the right place at the right time is actually all about being in the right state of mind… Lucky people increase their odds of chance encounters or experiences by interacting with a large number of people. And that makes perfect sense: Chance opportunities are a numbers game. The more people and perspectives in your sphere of reference, the more likely good insights and opportunities will combine.”
As the old saying goes, it’s not what you know, but who you know.
Great