Sometimes life seems like it’s just a big crap-shoot.  There seems to be little rhyme or reason as to why things happen (or don’t happen).  For example, I have a number of friends in the performing arts and we’ve often discussed the seeming randomness behind the careers of actors and musicians.  Getting picked for a role, or having a song that becomes popular, seems to be based on pure chance as much as ability or experience.  Sometimes, it seems that it all comes down to luck.

In fact, the idea of chance playing a role in success or failure in life is pretty well established.  We don’t even have to make it about something big like success and failure, we can simply look at Path A or Path B.  In a world that isn’t completely predictable, chance impacts the results of our activities more than we would like to think (for in-depth and potentially mind-boggling examinations of this idea, see Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan).

Is this an excuse to not do anything?  Does the power of chance rationalize passivity.  I mean, why try to do anything if the final determinants are out of your control?  Should you just sit around just hoping that you'll get lucky?

Absolutely not!  First of all, there are only a few arenas where the results are completely out of your control.  In most of your activities, you have the ability to at least influence the outcome.  It's like playing with loaded dice.  Even though the results aren't a sure thing, it makes sense to get the odds in your favor.  This understanding of chance then, should encourage the exact opposite of passivity - it should motivate you to more action.  If there is uncertainty, it makes sense to make a lot of attempts at something you want - especially when you have some power to help determine the outcome.

Secondly, when we talk about luck, we tend to be talking about things going our way, even if uncertainty is involved.  So the way to create luck is to put yourself in positions of uncertainty as often as possible!  This is where chance and luck diverge.  Chance means that uncertainty and probability are involved.  Luck means accepting that there is uncertainty and giving yourself as many opportunities to get a positive result as possible.  So the saying, “you create your own luck” has more substance than you might think.  This is the meaning behind the aphorism, "the harder I work, the luckier I get" - the more opportunities you give yourself for chance to go in your favor, the more successes you will have!