Essay about luck

Luck is any phenomenon that is believed by an individual to be good or bad which brings success or failure. Luck can be defined as any external factor that heavily or partially influences the outcome of an event. According to my point of view, luck is totally a matter of perception which depends on an individual's personality psychology.

Famous poet John Milton has described luck as a residue of design. It implies that one's success is a result of one's preparation, actions and opportunities.

Now, how one sees an incident as an opportunity completely depends on one's ability to view something from a different angle which varies from person to person.

Psychologist and author Richard Wiseman found out from his years of investigation that luck is how we choose to look at our lives. He has worked for years on the perception of luck among people and has been able to prove that good fortune comes from within. He has defined the lucky-ones to be the people who can grab on opportunities at the first hour and utilize them in the best possible way to abate any difficulties.

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His work also demonstrates that good fortune amoes down to attitude; people who consider themselves to be lucky are more positive in response to any uncertainty.

"There are no guarantees, but what most people call good luck is the ability to notice great opportunities and take advantage of them. Open hands are a start, but an open mind is where luck is made.

" - David Kleinhandler, Forbes Council

Beside this, self-perceived luck influences a person's future actions as well as how they react to certain situations. In an experiment to demonstrate the effect of near wins and near losses on perceived personal luck and subsequent gambling behaviour Wohl and Enzle (2003) proved that near big losses heighten the perception of personal luck relative to near big win. This basically shows that successful people do not thank their luck for their achievement but the unsuccessful ones do blame their luck for their failure.

Rotter (1966) stated that the locus of control of an individual is the degree to which an individual feels s/he can control the daily events in her/his life; it has two dimensions- internal LoC and external LoC. Many studies have been conducted to verify the relationship between the dimensions of LoC and the belief of an individual on chance and luck (Darke & Freedman, 1997; Andr, 2006; Maltby et al., 2008). It has been found that the people who feel more internally controlled, i.e. who have internal LoC, believe that everything that happens in their lives is a consequence of their own actions and thus believe less in luck. On the contrary, people who are external bilevers with external LoC believe that whatever happens in their lives is externally controlled and their belief in luck and chances is very strong.

From all the facts presented above, it is very apparent that luck is a perceptual concept. Luck exists if you believe in luck, luck does not exist if you do not believe in luck.