How Luck Happens summary

Everyone wants luck on their side, and the good news is that there are a few ways to help you transform your day-to-day approach to life and improve your luck.

The first method is to be persistent and passionate about your ideas. With enough determination and hard work, you will eventually find the break you need. Luck presents itself to those who continue hanging around even after the majority have given up – people like best-selling author John Grisham, who didn’t give up even though he was rejected by 28 publishers. Today, he’s sold over 275 million books globally.

There are several techniques you can adopt in your life that will help you be ready when an opportunity comes knocking.

The first is to establish a wide network of acquaintances. The possibility of new opportunities is greater when you’re around people you hardly know, as opposed to your close network of friends and family, a phenomenon the sociologist Mark Granovetter calls the strength of weak ties. When you know what kind of lucky break you’re after, communicating this to every new face you meet will eventually lead you to the right person – someone who can, for example, set you up with an interview at your dream company.

There’s a legend about the investment firm Goldman Sachs. Apparently, the applications of first-year analysts are divided into two piles: one pile will be considered; the other will go into the trash. And, according to the hiring personnel, you’ve simply got to be lucky.

So how do you avoid the wastebasket and ensure that you’re in the lucky pile?

People often talk about how lucky they are to have found the perfect partner. But what they don’t realize is that there’s much more to the pairing than pure chance.

To find the right person, you need to be in the right place. As previously mentioned, to increase your luck you need to put yourself in places where opportunities are abundant. This also applies to meeting potential partners. So, for example, if you love art, you should go to galleries and see who you meet.

Lucky children are happy children, and you can make your kids luckier by teaching them the principles covered in the previous blinks.

To increase a child’s luck, you should show them the wealth of opportunities available to them, while refraining from forcing them down any particular path. Dr. Jessica Levenstein, from the Horace Mann School, in New York, believes that children (and, by extension, adults) will be happier if they believe their lives are governed by their own actions, as opposed to by external actors. She explains that parents who refuse to allow their children to be educated by specific teachers – because, say, that teacher has a poor reputation – often stifle their children’s independence and learning.

Sometimes, bad luck likes to show up unannounced at your door. But preventing bad luck is similar to encouraging good luck – you’ve got to be prepared and you’ve got to approach situations intelligently.

Preparation is the best way to reduce the severity of natural misfortune. And it’s usually best to start small.