Practical Ways To Change Your Luck

Luck is largely the result of taking appropriate action. When we’re passive, we don’t take sufficient charge of our affairs and we become victims of all kinds of ‘bad luck’.

Take for example the woman who claimed that the dry cleaner ruined her slacks. She would probably end up saying things like, “Well, he ruined my suit too.” What she is unconsciously doing is revealing that she knew she was taking chances with the new cleaners in her life. When she starts on a level of activity with different cleaners, she’s going to create the same problems again. Another person talking about how she may have wasted the day, may reveal her thinking pattern in saying “Well, it always happens.” She allowed it to happen.

When we permit ourselves to accept such ‘bad luck’, there are usually reasons. We may fear that we can’t or shouldn’t take any action and some of us have unconscious fears. Others tend to blame society for what goes wrong in their lives. As it seems society has helped create the drug addicts, the alcoholics, the derelicts, but if we place the blame on others, it leads us away from looking within and facing up to our own responsibility in what is going on. It also promotes passivity. If we continue to carry our childhood grievances with us to feel overwhelmed by bad luck, because everything is our parents’ fault. For example, we won’t make any attempt to improve our world, regardless of who is to blame.

It’s all up to us to take charge of our lives as best as we can and to take it from here. I believe that once you recognise your own role in creating less than perfect situations, you are able to make changes, and that’s when things get better.

Where fate, destiny and luck are concerned, all of us have been given certain resources and abilities and disabilities. What you do with what you’ve got helps determine your luck. “The fault” as the Shakespearean quote goes, “is not in our stars, but in ourselves”. The more we act to change our luck, the more we take charge and the more secure we feel. The minute a person does something positive, he feels good, he feels less angry because mastering an activity are conditions of a healthy life.

All kinds of signals will help you recognise when to let go of a bad situation or cycle of activity. Repetition is a red flag - a sign that you should make a change. Some people may say “Well, I’m so unlucky in love.” Yet, each time they end up picking up a person with an alcoholic problem or an inability to be faithful, then they start repeating frustrating failures and errors in specific areas of their life again and again. The accumulation of bad results often make us conclude that we
have ‘bad luck’ in choosing husbands or wives or any of a thousand other things.

If you begin to see a pattern of things going wrong, you need to ask yourself “What is my role in this? Why do I feel bound and trapped in the situation? What makes me complain about it rather than do something about it?”

In effect, you need to be self-critical. One of the aspects of self-criticism is to have the ability to evaluate and criticise your personal relationships. Perhaps you have problem-ridden friends who are emotionally dependent who lean on you so heavily, it’s an emotional drain. So you ought to examine your excuses for wasting time with emotional dependants. “What really lures us into this?”

People get sucked into their friends’ problems because they really want to be sucked in. It prevents them from doing more difficult things. It’s possible to be caring to friends without letting them absorb all one’s time. So if you feel pressured and overburdened, examine your own role to see if you’re not being too agreeable.

Sometimes, when we’re anxious about things, or bothered by them, we tend to put them out of our awareness. Many of us avoid paying attention by daydreaming about being on an island in the Caribbean or turning to alcohol or maybe even eating or going out and spending money on something we don’t need. These are actions that deflect good luck and they often occur on a day of misfortunes.

Instead of escaping from frustrating experiences in this way, why not ask yourself “What can I do that will make me feel more competent.” Forgo the drink or the telephone chatter or the refrigerator raids, instead do a task, even some household chore you dislike, like cleaning out a messy closet.

That single small accomplishment will promote new feelings of pleasure and security because you’re pleased with yourself for taking charge. Making little changes makes you like yourself better and when you begin to like yourself better, you begin to do more useful things to improve your life in small ways which can lead to positive changes in bigger ways. That, of course, is luck.