For example, I remember a news story some time ago about somebody winning the US national lottery (or something similar, I get fuzzy on the details) not once, but TWICE! The lottery company was throwing around the words like “1 in 14 billion billion chance” and “what are the odds of THAT happening!”. Well, yeah, the chance that ONE PARTICULAR PERSON will win IN TWO PARTICULAR LOTTERY DRAWS might be that. But the chance of SOMEONE winning SOME TWO LOTTERY DRAWS is actually pretty good. I think someone calculated that the chance that SOMEONE will win the lottery twice is about 50-50 over a 7-year period. (probably assuming they keep betting even if they win). So flip a coin right now. Got heads? Somebody will win the lottery twice over the next seven years.

It’s the same with you taking action. But instead of spreading the probability across a lot of people, you spread it across a lot of small actions. Same result. SOME action will get lucky

@Sheila:
Wow, that WAS fanscinating! Thanks for sharing!

And kudos for not giving up even after 87 rejections! That takes balls! (even if you don’t… literally… never mind)

@Robert:
Ah yes, focusing on the positive . One of my favorite things to do. Not only do you create more positivity (and thus happiness) in your life (since you forget some of the negative experiences you don’t pay attention to). You also reinforce the behavior that gave you the positive results, to get more success in the future! (If it’s something you can influence. I’m not sure it will work on traffic lights :p)

I declare myself as an extremly lucky person. The trick is pretty easy:
Your driving your way home from work by car. Let´s say 6 out of 10 traffic lights were red when you arrived. 2 of them were just turning red, in the very moment you were close.
But: 2 of the traffic lights were green. What I do then is saying to myself: “wow, this one is green! I am always so lucky in my life!”
And arriving at home all I remember are those 2 green traffic lights. forget the others.

So this was a pretty easy example, of course there are tons of things I do like that. I just keep on reminding myself about this 1 time in my life when the 5% chance came true.

And not only that. I noticed that it is important to tell other people over and over how incredebly lucky I am. Because in 5% of all the cases the 5% percent chance becomes reality. You just have to keep on reminding yourself on it, and the five percent seem to grow to 20 or more.

I think most of us are lucky, we just have to notice it.

Yes, the lucky people habitually talked to strangers. They also had a large group of friendly acquaintances, and they’d mention things to them, eg, “I’m looking for a new car. Something cheap to run and under $3000″. Unlucky people didn’t. So who do you think gets to hear about the private sale first?

Lucky people look around more. They set up meetings with the subjects in a cafe, and put a £20 note on the ground outside it. All the lucky people saw it and picked it up. None of the unlucky people did. He theorized that the unlucky people probably wouldn’t see dog mess either – until they stepped in it.

Lucky people tend to have better problem-solving skills. One of the unlucky people had a whole run of car accidents. (“I rear-ended the car in front. The law says it must be my fault for following too close.”) Co-workers suggested refresher driving lessons, but she concluded that the car was jinxed, and sold it. Surprise, surprise, the next car was jinxed, too.

Lucky people are more persistent. If they want to be a pop star and get turned down at the X Factor audition, they don’t give up. They go to another twenty auditions and keep learning and practicing.

I write short stories. Normally I get about one sale for every ten submissions, but some years ago I went through a horrible patch of noting but rejections. Worse, after a while I started to bump into people who said things like, “Oh I used to write. I sold the first few stories no bother, but then I started getting rejected and I never got published again.” You can imagine what that did for my morale!

And then I started asking them, “How long did you go on trying after the rejections started?”

Most of them gave up after two rejections.

So that was obviously something I could do differently, and I steamed on. And on. And on. 87 rejections later — EIGHTY-BLEEDING-SEVEN — I sold another story. And now I’m back to roughly one sale for every ten submissions. And as you may have heard, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” was rejected 17 times before it sold. I imagine J. K. Rowling’s rather pleased that she didn’t give up.