“You know what luck is?  It’s believing you’re lucky, that’s all.” Stanley Kowalski in A Street Car Named Desire.

Luck. If you’re successful and happy, people often say you’re lucky. Things just go your way. Good stuff happens to you. But I wonder, is there really such a thing as being lucky? Or do we make our own luck?

Studies have shown that there are several key characteristics that lucky people possess that unlucky people do not. Lucky people create, recognize and act upon chance opportunities. They use intuition to make successful decisions. They expect the best for the future and they have the ability to transform bad luck into good fortune. If this is true, lucky people actively create their own luck—it doesn’t just happen. Taking that premise one step further, even if we feel unlucky, we have the power to change our luck. So, what are we waiting for? Let’s get lucky!

Be a People Person
Lucky people expect to meet people who are interesting, happy and fun to be with. They expect their interactions to go well and be successful. Being an extrovert increases the probability of meeting and keeping in contact with more people. The more people you meet, the greater the chance that you will encounter someone who will have a positive impact on your life. Their influence may come in many forms including but not limited to support, knowledge, challenge, encouragement, love, mentoring. Social magnets attract others because they exhibit behaviors that other people find attractive and inviting, namely eye contact, smiles and welcoming body language. They tend to be adept at building long-lasting relationships and keeping in touch with a large network of friends and colleagues.

Welcome New Experiences
Making luck happen means being open to trying new things and taking a few risks. It means leaving your comfort zone and experimenting doing things a new way. Don’t be bound by convention and labeled as predictable. Being open to new possibilities helps us to see the chance opportunities that come our way. People who have one-track minds and are set in their ways, will miss these potentially rewarding opportunities.

Trust Your Intuition
Lucky people make good decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings. Use your network of trusted friends and colleagues who are honest, reliable, and successful in their careers and financial transactions as a sounding board when you need help making the right choices. If you have responsibly and thoroughly assessed the problem and evaluated your options, trust your intuition when making decisions about how the issue should be addressed or handled. Have faith in your ability to simply know when a decision is right. Lucky people’s hunches tend to pay off time and time again. In contrast, unlucky people often ignore their intuition and regret their decisions and missed opportunities.

Expect Good Luck
This is a big one. Lucky people's expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions. They take control of their lives and difficult situations and concentrate on bringing about positive outcomes. Predicting the success or failure for the goals they set in their personal and professional lives has the power to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because they believe in their dreams, they will them to come true. They are convinced of a positive outcome before they begin a new endeavor. They work hard to achieve their goals, and even if their chances of success seem slim, they persevere in the face of possible failure. What’s more, they maintain a positive outlook if things don’t go exactly as planned and look upon their less successful endeavors as positive learning experiences that will only serve to help them make better, more educated decisions in the future.

Transforming your goals into reality requires a strong faith in your abilities. High expectations motivate lucky people to persist in achieving their dreams and goals even in the face of adversity. They don’t give up. It’s just as they say, “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t – you’re right.”

Transform Bad Luck
You have the power to change your luck. Even lucky people experience “bad luck” and negative events, but they have a special way of transforming their adversities into incredible good fortune. Lucky people see the positive side of their misfortune and tend to recognize that whatever the problem is that they are dealing with, it could have been worse and will all work out for the best in the end. This outlook helps them feel much better about themselves and their lives. It serves to keep things in perspective.

When lucky people look back on their lives they do not dwell on their bad luck, instead they concentrate on happy times and accomplishments. They recognize that all things happen for a reason, that experiencing hard times is part of life and that it should be viewed as a learning experience – something they needed to go through to get where they are today.

Their positive memories make them feel happy and lucky. Those feelings create an aura of well-being and that in turn makes them feel luckier and luckier.

When working through a stretch of bad luck, lucky people view this time in their lives as being short-lived. They simply shrug it off, not letting it affect their expectations about the future. When misfortune blocks the path to their goals, they explore other ways of solving the problem. Conversely, unlucky people are convinced that any good luck in their lives will only last for a short period and will quickly be followed by their regular dose of bad luck.

Changing bad luck into good takes some work. Changing your mindset won’t be easy, but it will be worth the effort. When you encounter difficulties and setbacks in your life, don’t view it as bad luck. Start using some constructive problem solving to move past the crises and convert them into positive opportunities.

• When confronted with a problem, take action. Make the decision to take control.
• Take action now. If it is truly out of your control, pray, meditate or go to your higher power.
• Consider and then make a list of viable options to deal with or control the situation. Be creative. Brainstorm. Come up with as many potential solutions as possible. Think out of the box and don’t be afraid to ask your support network for advice.
• Consider every possible solution and then decide on how you are going to move forward. Trust your intuition.
• Implement measures to solve the problem. Be prepared to adapt your solution if you are not getting the expected results. Keep your mind open to new methods and ideas.

Good Luck. Bad Luck.
Many believe how lucky you are makes the difference in all aspects of your life – happiness versus despair, health versus sickness, success versus failure, wealth versus poverty. But I think that luck is a state of mind and that we each have the ability to transform the impossible into the possible. I believe that we will become what we think we will become. I believe in the extraordinary power of positive thinking. I further believe that luck is synonymous with happiness and success and that you can interchange these words freely. Luck takes work. It’s the result of action, not passiveness. And I firmly believe we are responsible for our own luck.

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."  Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) 3rd President of the United States, Principal author of the Declaration of Independence. -

Cindy Ciardo, BOC Orthotist and CEO of Knueppel HealthCare Services, Inc. is also the education chair of WAMES, the VP of the Continuing Care Coordinators of SE Wisconsin and is on the editorial advisory panel for HomeCare Magazine.