Most of us know someone who seems unbelievably lucky. They hear about a new apartment being for rent before anyone else. They wander into situations that suddenly catapult them into a great new job or project, or buy an unimpressive stock, and it suddenly goes up a lot. And when enough of these seemingly random, positive outcomes happen to someone we know, we start to think that some of us just have more luck than others. But what if luck isn’t what we think it is? What if the way luck works can be explained by a set of rules rather than the randomness of life?
One of the most forward-thinking researchers in the study of “luck” is the Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer. Back in the 1970s, Langer gained recognition for her work on the “illusion of control,” our tendency to believe we can influence outcomes that are, to any objective person, governed by random chance. Langer’s research showed that people tend to overestimate their ability to influence random events, such as choosing lottery tickets as though their selection criteria actually matter. [1] We tend to throw dice harder when we want a higher number and more softly when we want a lower one. We act like events governed by chance are under our control even when they’re not.
How Mindfulness Can Increase Luck, According to Ellen Langer
This might seem like bad news for anyone hoping to get lucky. That said, Langer’s later research suggests a much more interesting finding. When she shifted her focus from the illusion of control to the practice of mindfulness—not mindfulness in the meditative sense but mindfulness as the active process of noticing—she uncovered a rule that someone can follow to become “luckier.” That rule is this. Most of our lives are spent not noticing what we’re doing while we’re doing it, like a plane on autopilot. We complete routine tasks, spend hours with already-familiar people, and act like everything we’re going to experience is already known to us. When we do that, we stop noticing what’s actually happening around us because it’s not necessary to notice anything. Why bother? It’s all just the same routine. But it doesn’t have to be. Instead, we can be mindful of what we’re doing at any given moment. Mindfulness to Langer means making ourselves aware of possibilities that were present all along, but we missed because we weren’t paying attention. And when we pay attention, we automatically have a greater number of opportunities which could potentially turn out for the positive. And there you have it—a rule you can follow to become luckier.
Langer’s research lays a good foundation for the work of another researcher, British psychologist Richard Wiseman. [2] Beginning in the 1990s, Wiseman studied people who described themselves as either lucky or unlucky. His findings were surprisingly consistent with Langer’s. Lucky people weren’t enjoying lives full of a greater number of positive outcomes than everyone else. What they did, which made them describe themselves as lucky, was notice opportunities others missed. They were more open to new things. They talked to more unfamiliar people. They took action on a greater number of long-shot possibilities. And importantly, they recovered from negative outcomes and setbacks more quickly than people who described themselves as unlucky. Basically, they experienced a greater number of positive outcomes because they were paying attention to more opportunities.
All of this seems to answer the question: When people are more mindful, are they somehow creating luck, or are they just noticing “more of the luck” (meaning a greater number of opportunities for positive outcomes) that was already there? In one sense, the answer may be that being lucky or unlucky is completely within our control. As humans, we have limited attention. Moment to moment, our senses and brains are taking in and processing much more information than our conscious minds can focus on. The brain, shaped by our life experiences and personal temperament, is our one crucially important filter, highlighting what’s important to us and ignoring the rest.
If you decide tomorrow that you want a green BMW, a well-known phenomenon happens. Within days, maybe even hours, you start seeing green BMWs everywhere. They’re suddenly on the highway, in the parking lot, next to you at traffic lights, and in the neighbor’s driveway. Of course, the number of green BMWs in the world has not changed because you wished it to. What did change is your attention to them. Your mind puts your new desire at the top of the list to pay attention to, and visual information that used to be ignored is now being noticed. But what if there’s also something else at play? What if something we know about physics is also at work, operating in parallel to the behavioral science that’s been proven time and again?
Quantum Physics and Luck: Is There a Connection?
In quantum physics, systems exist in multiple possible states until an observation causes what physicists call the collapse of the wave function. Before “measurement” (or, in the case of luck, “noticing”), the only thing that exists is the probabilities that one outcome or another might occur. After measurement/noticing, however, one specific outcome is the one we experience.
It’s important not to make more of this idea than what physicists actually mean. There’s no scientific evidence, currently, that human intention directly results in quantum events in the way popular culture suggests. But the idea is compelling. Every day, we stumble through myriad possibilities for positive outcomes. Most of these are never realized because our brain’s attention filter disregards those we weren’t interested in. But when we consciously decide that something matters, we start observing/noticing reality a lot differently. New opportunities pop up all over the place. New relationships seem to happen without effort. And new information is suddenly of use to us when before it wasn’t. Whether this can be explained by behavioral science or whether consciousness in the context of quantum physics plays some role in shaping what we experience as reality is an open question. Science supports the first explanation. We may never know whether the second explanation plays any role. What’s clear is that attention matters. Intentionality matters. Noticing matters. People who actively notice more of the world around them encounter more opportunities, and those opportunities sometimes result in positive outcomes, and those positive outcomes get labeled as luck. So maybe the physics of luck is not really about luck at all.
Maybe luck starts with a simple decision about what we choose to observe/notice. Whether you’re noticing new possibilities because you’ve updated your brain’s filters or whether your conscious attention somehow plays a role in bringing about certain realities you want into focus, we don’t know. What we do know is that the world contains a lot more possibilities than any of us can take in all at once. And the things we decide to notice tend to show up in greater numbers in our lives. That may not be a satisfactorily complete theory of luck. But it’s a good place to start to feel lucky, and anyone can begin at any time.
