Eight Habits of Lucky Gamblers

 

We would all like the “secret sauce” of being successful and lucky. – There is no magic to the process, and most are common traits and practices for anyone who excels in a chosen field. – Nothing like having a little reminder of keeping the important task at the top of the list. Grab yourself a pencil, make a mental note or just let it fall over you like a waterfall of good fortune.

Cultures for centuries have faith in lucky charms and symbols they feel give them an edge:

  • Sailors: The albatross
  • Chinese: Bamboo
  • Thai: White elephant
  • Japanese: Maneki-Neko
  • Irish: Four-leaf clover
  • English: Horseshoe
  • Native Americans: Dreamcatcher
  • Germans, Italians, Russians, Turks: Ladybug
  • Americans: Rabbit’s foot

Here are some practices we can always take a self assessment to see where we need to focus:

1. – Be mindful of what is going on around you – Take notice of the company you keep. Are they positive, toxic, or just a negative downer that will eventually drag you down. – Mom was right, we are the company we keep.

2. – Be proactive – Lucky people make good things happen. They leave the negative outside in the car before venturing in to make a wager.

3. – Be opportunistic – Many people are blind to opportunities because they don’t notice them or because they are inflexible and stuck in their ways. People who practice opportunism see opportunities all around them and are able to use them to their advantage. Being an opportunist involves being mindfully aware; being flexible enough to change your original plans; and being open-minded enough to take advantage of these new opportunities.

4. – Be insightful –  Making use of this knowledge depends on your ability to access this information and trust in yourself. Having insight involves integrating explicit and implicit knowledge with an understanding of social situations and emotions, both yours and others’. Insightful people have higher emotional and social intelligence.

5. – Be flexible –  “You can’t step in the same river twice.” The truth is that you can’t even step in the same river once, because even as you’re stepping in the river, it is changing. Appreciating the dynamics of life and being able to go with the flow provides enormous advantages to finding new ways of doing things or getting places or creating opportunities. Lucky people are flexible and take advantage of new situations.

6. – Be optimistic – Optimism helps you see the advantages in any given situation. Lucky people with an optimistic outlook are better able to identify the silver lining in any given situation.

7. – Think out of the box –  Out-of-the-box thinking. It isn’t always painful; often it involves looking for loopholes and looking at situations from multiple perspectives. 

8. – Be resilient – Take advantage of new situations. Several of history’s most famous inventors found out thousands of ways to not do something before they finally figured out something that worked. Were they lucky? Most people would think so. Obviously, these individuals were very bright—but there are a lot of bright people in the world. What made these people different was their resilience.