Want More Luck? Science Says Do These 3 Things Every Day

What is it that enables entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Sergey Brin and Arianna Huffington to make their own luck?

Entrepreneurs who feel lucky report higher levels of motivation and wellbeing, both essential for sustaining performance during tough times.  So how do you cultivate your own daily luck? Here are three things to do every day,

1. Choose A Lucky Attitude.

Luck is about flexibility of mind and a willingness to experiment and trust your gut. Take advantage of chance occurrences, break the weekly routine, and once in a while have the courage to let go. The world is full of opportunity if you"re prepared to embrace it. Steve Jobs emphasized the importance of trusting your gut when he delivered his now infamous commencement address at Stanford University: "If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can"t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, and karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

2. Be Ready.

Luck is as much about what you expect as what you do. Do you wait for success to happen, or do you get out there and make it happen? In his book The Luck Factor, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, England, describes why lucky people tend to share traits that make them luckier than others. This includes the impact of chance opportunities, lucky breaks, and being in the right place at the right time. He says: "My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good." On the flipside he says: "Those who think they"re unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune."

3. Own Your Success.

At times, you might privately think you can"t go on. You must persist. Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, says it best: "I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when 36 publishers rejected my second book. Many years later, I watched Huff Post come alive to mixed reviews, including some very negative ones, like the reviewer who called the site "the equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar, and Heaven"s Gate rolled into one. But my mother used to tell me, failure is not the opposite of success, it"s a stepping stone to success."

Dear Future, I"m Ready.

Luck isn"t just chance but an alchemy of courage, focus and a willingness to experiment. It"s about declaring to the world "dear future, I"m ready".

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