We all want to be lucky, but is luck really something that can be taught? Aren’t some people just born with it, and the rest are either cursed to be unlucky or not touched by the hand of luck at all?

Well, I think that depends on what you think luck is. Is it some mysterious and devious force that selects its chosen people at random, or is luck something else entirely? Is it something we can cultivate and make work for us, or is it something we fumble to catch when it comes our way?

Well, I found a good opinion of what luck is and how we can attract that force, and it came from a surprising source. When I read The Richest Man in Babylon, by George S. Clason, I wasn’t expecting to come across the chapter titled, Meet the Goddess of Good Luck, and even more unexpectedly, I agreed with almost everything that was written on the subject.

While I don’t agree that luck is the favor of a goddess, I did enjoy the perspective on luck that was shared, and I agreed on what the definition of what luck is, and most of all, I enjoyed the tales that put it all together.

So, what is luck, and how does one attract it? While The Richest Man in Babylon doesn’t explicitly define luck, there is a theme throughout the chapter that puts together a definition of what luck is and also explains how to attract it, and I think the following quote is a good summary of it.

“Good luck, we do find, often follows opportunity but seldom comes otherwise.”

-Arkad, The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES

Luck, it seems, is the fortune that follows when one takes advantage of opportunities that are presented. Perhaps the reader would counter that the gambler gets lucky every now and then. It is an argument to which I would counter, they do, but how often does that happen? Perhaps they are attracting luck because they are taking advantage of an opportunity to increase their money on a game of chance, but such instances as this I would define as blind luck.

Winning by taking advantage of opportunity is attracting luck. If there was a Lady Luck, then I would say that she frequents the pockets of the house at casinos more often than she frequents the pockets of the gamblers, and that because the house is taking a more calculated risk, a more calculated advantage of the opportunity to separate gamblers from their monies. The house takes advantage of fools willing to bet their monies on unfavorable odds, blindly hoping that Lady Luck will grant them favor.

Some people see men and women of great wealth and say that they are lucky because they fail to see the opportunities these men and women took advantage of. Some people achieve great success in business and earn themselves great riches, and people call them lucky or blessed by fortune, but those successful businessmen had to take advantage of business opportunities that came their way and work to see the fruits of that opportunity come to them.

Successful business people see opportunities normal people don’t; they take risks normal people don’t and work in ways normal people don’t. They aren’t making blind decisions and getting money shoved in their pockets.

Some people get rich off of the stock market, and people call them lucky, but they had to take advantage of buying the stock while it was cheap. Some people invested, and some didn’t, the investors got rich and we call them lucky; I call them opportunists.

Have you ever had an opportunity in hand and not taken it , only to see another take it and have good fortune favor them for their action? An outsider may call you “unlucky” and the opportunist “lucky”, but the only real difference is that one took advantage of the opportunity and one didn’t. Perhaps your peers would’ve called you lucky if you had decided to take that chance and profited from it. It is not the favor of luck that makes the difference, it is the decision to act or not act on an opportunity that brings about good or bad luck.

So, if you see someone who has good fortune, look for where they took advantage of opportunity and learn from them before you brush their success off as good luck. Take advantage of opportunities that come into your life to attract good luck, but be wary of doing so blindly like the gambler. Take advantage of opportunity in the way a wise investor does, calculated, and think of luck just like that: a calculated investment in opportunity.

AVOID PROCRASTINATION

“Opportunity waits for no man. Today it is here; soon it is gone. Therefore, delay not.”

-Arkad, The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason

There is a tale told by a merchant about an opportunity that came by him to make a great bargain, and his hesitation robbed him of the good fortune that opportunity would’ve brought. He was bargaining with a farmer about buying his flock outside of the city gates at night, and he hesitated to make the purchase because it was dark and him and his servants could not get an accurate count of the massive flock, yet he still would’ve been making the bargain at a considerable profit.

The merchant refused the bargain, mostly out of stubbornness, and in the morning when the gates opened, buyers flooded out and bought the flock for a high price, much higher than the price discussed by the merchant and farmer the night before. Had the merchant not procrastinated, he would’ve made a considerable profit.

We have all had moments like that, when we are unsure or perhaps even lazy and an opportunity presented was taken by another or passed us by entirely. We would say that the merchant was unlucky, but really he was a procrastinator. We would say that the farmer was lucky that he didn’t make the bargain the night before, but really he profited off of the merchant’s hesitation, and then took advantage of the desperate buyers that came the next morning.

Good luck comes to those who accept opportunity and act upon it quickly. When opportunity comes to you, do not procrastinate. Lady Luck knows that if a man desires to be lucky, that he will act quickly and decisively. If you are unsure of what procrastination is, there is a quote from the book that defines it well.

“At last, I did recognize it for what it was -a habit of needlessly delaying where action is required, action quick and decisive.”

-The Buyer, The Richest Man in Babylon, George S. Clason

Being decisive when taking action, where many people fail or falter, is to stop changing your mind. This is another way that people procrastinate, they make a decision on an opportunity, but then they get cold feet and back out or change their mind about it. Once you make a decision you must not falter in your judgement. Unless you are absolutely sure that you made a foolish judgement, then hold fast to your decision and act promptly upon it.

Often times our first judgement is the correct one. Yet we will begin to doubt our decisions and make excuses to change our minds and unfortunately, that often results in shooting ourselves in the foot. Whatever the reason, as human beings we tend to be more stubborn and steadfast when we are wrong than when we are right. To protect yourself from this folly, make prompt decisions and then act upon them at the first given opportunity.

ACT AS IF EVERYTHING ALWAYS WORKS OUT FOR YOU

Acting as if everything always works out for you if is a fundamental mind game that we play in The Eclectic Method. It is a staple of the winner mindset; it inspires us to play to win. It is a mind game I have played with great success in my life, based on faith that God will always provide me with the best possible outcome if I act from a position of righteousness, and it was further solidified when I heard Jim Rohn teach about this mindset. A link to the YouTube video will be provided below.

For simplicity sake, the phrase act as if everything will always work out for you will be abbreviated into the acronym AAIEAWOFY to make reading the rest of this article more digestible and to shamelessly reduce the repetition for the author.

AAIEAWOFY allows one to create their own luck, to create luck in the event of hardship and challenge where most would accept misfortune, and to transmute failures into good luck. AAIEAWOFY allows one to perceive the opportunity often unseen in challenge and hardship, and I will explain how.

Often when stuck by misfortune, we are so busy feeling bad for ourselves that we fail to see the opportunities those hardships can bring riding on their coattails. Those challenges are opportunities to grow, to learn, to build wisdom and strength if we are willing to accept them and continue to act as if, and to believe, that everything will work out in our favor.

You earn the favor of Lady Luck when you use failure and hardship as an opportunity to propel yourself forward. Using failure as a vehicle for positive change is a fundamental part of the mindset of AAIEAWOFY and it results in growth. This is how you become the person that sees the possibilities in problems, solutions instead of excuses. As Jim Rohn would say, you create the reality you act out.

AAIEAWOFY is how you take lessons from failure and use them to make wiser decision in the future, so that when opportunity presents itself in the future, you are wise enough to act on it and attract more fortune to your life.

Another common theme from The Richest Man in Babylon, was what I took the liberty of terming wisdom before gold. In the book they make the metaphor of how an unwise man handles his gold by describing how if you were to throw meat at a feral dog, it would not change the dog in any way. The dog would eat the meat all at once and then go back to its usual behavior of strutting and fighting the other dogs. So it is when you give a man gold before he is wise enough to handle it; it is gone as quickly as it came.

Even Arkad, the richest man in Babylon, did not give his fortune to his son to inherit until he proved wise enough to handle it. He kicked his son out of their house, with a bag of gold and a tablet inscribed with the Five Laws of Gold and told him to come back when he could prove he could handle inheriting the fortune.

Sure, Arkad gave his son some gold, but ultimately it was the wisdom of the Five Laws of Gold that allowed his son to become rich after he initially squandered the bag of gold he was given at the start of his journey.

AAIEAWOFY allows you to learn the important lessons when things go wrong and to grow from them and become wiser. If you want to be fortunate, then you must make wise decisions and people who cannot see the wisdom will call you lucky. The AAIEAWOFY mindset makes one receptive to learning lessons when failure occurs. Instead of blaming others or complaining, you learn and grow wiser.

Attract wisdom before you pursue gold. To be wise in your decisions is to attract luck. To receive gold before receiving wisdom is blind luck and is likely to be lost as easily as it was gained. When God gave King Solomon the opportunity to receive whatever he wished for, King Solomon asked not for riches, but for wisdom, and ironically he was the richest man in the Bible.

AAIEAWOFY is a staple of the winner mindset. Winners don’t win because they get blindly lucky. Winners win because they pursue greatness like it’s already theirs; they know in their hearts and minds that everything is going to work in their favor.

To foster the winner mindset, AAIEAWOFY and become aware of how you think. Change your way of thinking into an opportunistic mindset. Even in failure or challenge, think of ways to turn those events into a win. The more wins you collect, the more fortune you attract and the “luckier” you become. This is the subtle art of turning a loss into a gain.

AAIEAWOFY is how we avoid procrastination and avoid changing our minds. If we believe that our decisions will work out in our favor, then we don’t hesitate to act on them. If we believe that our decisions will work out in our favor, then we don’t change our minds about our decisions. The commitment to taking advantage of that opportunity promotes the reality we desire and increases the likelihood of it happening, and we create our own luck. We act towards our success.

The Principle of Vibration teaches us that like attracts like. When you AAIEAWOFY, you raise your vibration and you attract to yourself the desired outcome. If you don’t believe me, think of it like this: there are two men, both take advantage of an opportunity. One believes it will work out for him and the other has doubt about his success.

The man who believes it will work out acts in ways that increase the likelihood that it will work out. He plans, he acts and every step towards manifesting his desire builds power towards its manifestation.

The man who has doubts hesitates. Perhaps he fails to act upon further opportunities to see his wish through to the end because he doesn’t truly believe it will work out. Perhaps his doubts convince him to change his mind and back out of his decision, which is a guarantee of failure. He has no faith. He doesn’t AAIEAWOFY and decreases the probability that it will work out with his actions based on doubt and disbelief.

Just the other day AAIEAWOFY gave me more than satisfying results. I was trying to find a suit for my wedding and so I browsed online to see what was out there, and I found some good deals, but unfortunately, I didn’t know my suit size, so buying online was not the best idea.

The thing that bothered me was that a suit I thought was perfect was the last one available on this online store for a huge discount, but I didn’t buy it because I wasn’t sure if it was my size. Although I was tempted, I know there ain’t nothing cheap about wasting money, so I held off and elected to go to the store and get my measurements taken.

So, I went to the store I saw the good deal on, and I told myself I’m going to find exactly the suit I want, and it’s going to be at a great price. I knew it would all work out. I walked into the store, got my measurements, and then I started looking from rack to rack until I saw it.

The suit in the exact color I wanted was hanging on a rack by itself at the back of the store. It was the last one. I bee-lined to the suit and tried it on, and it fit perfectly. Thank you God, I silently prayed for the good fortune, and walked to the checkout after finding a dress shirt to go with it.

The sales representative said to me as he scanned my items that I was lucky because that suit was the last of its kind for that collection and that it was on sale for an insane deal. When he finished scanning everything he let out a breath of surprise and turned the receipt toward me and told me to compare the normal price to the price I paid.

I let out a similar-sounding breath of relief when I saw the numbers. Normally the entire purchase would have come out to over $800, but I got it for less than $200. I can’t explain why it worked, but it did. I just trust God will make things work out for me and they did. My faith was rewarded because I acted on it.

My fiancée saw the entire series of events unfold and she asked me why it was so easy for me to find what I wanted and made a statement about how she was jealous it was so cheap. I just smiled and replied that I knew it would work out.

There is a thing called luck, but it isn’t a mystical force or favor from a goddess. It is something that we create for ourselves through our mindset and actions. Opportunity is yours for the taking. Create your own luck.

Summary:

1. Take advantage of opportunities that come your way.
2. Avoid procrastination and perform decisive action.
3. Act as if everything always works out for you. (AAIEAWOFY)
4. Foster a winner mindset.
5. You create your own luck through proper thought and action.

Act as if everything always works out for you: Jim Rohn

Now, I for one love to create reminders of these ideas so that when life gets busy or chaotic and I fall out of a mindset I am trying to maintain, I can glimpse that symbol and remember the idea. So, I made some stickers that you can put on a water bottle or notebook or computer so you can look at it and remember these ideas and be inspired.

The “AAIEAWOFY” acronym stuck with me after writing it a million times for this article, and it serves as a great reminder to maintain that mindset and to think and act as if everything will work out for you. Remember: you create your own luck. Click the link below to get yours.

AAIEAWOFY sticker on Eclectic Method Shop

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The four-leaf clover has long been a symbol of luck. This symbol acts as a reminder of the truth that we create our own luck by taking advantage of opportunity and by being decisive and acting towards our success. See the four-leaf clover and remember that you are lucky because you attract luck by how you think and how you act. The link is provided below.

Four Leaf Clover sticker on Eclectic Method shop

Click the banner below to get a $10 credit towards your first purchase!

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Support the Eclectic Method and get cool stickers in return! Click the banner or the link below to shop on the Eclectic Method store at StickerMule and get a $10 credit! Search @theeclecticmethod and browse for unique designs and artwork created by the author.