I feel that I tend to be pretty unlucky. If something can go wrong, then it goes wrong. I have even had friends comment on my seeming unluckiness.
Conversly, my sister says that she feels like she tends to be pretty lucky. She says that things just “tend to work out”.
So, do you think you are a lucky person, or an unlucky person?
Poll to come…
I don’t “believe” in luck, but I’m “lucky” in that good things tend to happen to me, for whatever reason.
Same here. Put yourself in good places and good things are likely to happen. One of my nicknames actually is Lucky Pierre though, no foolin’.
Normaly my days are just so so.
I have days where everything goes wrong.
One week I had every major electronic device I had die. My car blew a head gasket. I got an abscessed tooth Friday night.
Once I was working extremely long hours and getting about 8 hours of home time daily which I want for sleeping. I went out to eat after work for my only meal of the day. Five days in a row my orders were totally screwed up and I didn’t get anything close to what I ordered. Each day was a new food joint. The fifth day was Pizza Hut and they made a Pizza I couldn’t eat because of the toppings they put on it. I just said to myself I can’t believe this. This is the fifth day in a row every meal I’ve ordered to eat has been screwed up. The manager heard me and I got the correct pizza 30 minutes later and a coupon for a free one the next time. Luckily I had the next day off. I soon quit that job when they added about 3 more hours a day work which somebody else wasn’t able to find time for. There was a rash of quitting that week. Right after I quit that job I fixed the brakes that went out and right after that the engine seized up.
To some extent I’ve made my own luck. I worked my own way through college, and have always worked hard to bring value to every job. I have avoided most high-risk activities, I get along with all my famly members and friends, and I don’t have any enemies. I manage my money pretty carefully.
But in a larger sense, I was lucky to have born at a time and in a place where everyday suffering far less than the usual for all of human history. I’ve never had a major debilitating disease or condition that couldn’t be treated. I’ve never been the victim of a violent crime or severe physical abuse, and have never lost a close friend or family member in the prime of their life. When I think about what 99% of people throughout history have had to deal with, I figure I basically won the lottery. All I have to do to have a comfortable life is not screw up. I call that lucky.
A quick comparison of what I have vs. what I deserve leaves no conclusion other than I’m the luckiest sumbitch I’ve ever met.
I’ve been incredibly lucky as far as the opportunities presented to me go, but the decisions I made to take advantage of them have nothing to do with luck at all.
Exactly what I was going to say. Taking everything into account, I don’t see many people in the world much luckier than me.
I don’t believe in luck, exactly, but I think of myself as having a charmed life.
Sometimes bad things happen to me, but I’m lucky in that it could’ve been much worse. Or I’ll fail to get (x), but then it’s ok because I end up getting (X!) which is better.
So I think “luck” is just in how you perceive events and whether you focus on the positive or negative. I’m kind of a Pollyanna.
I was born in the modern era. I was born in a 1st world country. I was born healthy. I was born to educated parents. I was born to a family without serious money concerns. I was born reasonably intelligent. I got a solid public education. My parents didn’t have drug or alcohol problems. My family emphasized the importance of education and hard work. I had the opportunity to go to university. I wasn’t seriously injured in any accidents. I wasn’t the victim of any serious crime. I found a job that paid enough to support me. I married a decent man. I had healthy children.
I can’t imagine being luckier than that.
I’ve always been fascinated by how there are people to whom bad/unlucky things consistently happen (people whose situation and upbringing would not naturally bring such ill fortune). I’ve even spent a fair amount of time trying to understand this. As far as I can tell, it tends to always, ultimately, come back to bad choices. The bad luck can’t always be traced directly to the last bad decision, but it’s a trail…if you hadn’t done that, then that wouldn’t have happen, leading to that, leading to that, leading to THIS.
I have had good fortune; maybe it continues to exist in my life because I did not make some stupid choice to negate it.
Well, or there’s always karma…
Obviously, it depends upon your situation but I think that the vast majority of life stories can be told both as a series of fortunate events and as a series of unfortunate events.
As for me, I’m very fortunate. There are so many people worse off than I am that there is little, if any, reason to complain about anything.
I’m very lucky person. I have had such an interesting life full of ups and downs and the highest highs and the lowest lows and in betweens. I’ve had many near death experiences. I really don’t believe in luck anymore then I believe in fortune cookies but I can’t dispute that I have been very lucky.
On a day-to-day basis, “lucky” things don’t happen to me. I’ve never won more than $2 in the lottery, I don’t accidentally stumble over buried treasure, I don’t coincidentally run into the right person at the right time who says the right thing.
OTOH, I was born into a great family in a good place in the world & the country at a good time to be alive. I have/had natural gifts & talents, and have had opportunities to make use of them. So, pretty lucky!
The less fortunate things that happen to me during my ordinary life have mostly been due to my own foolish actions, or worse, inaction. The few fortunate events are generally due to others helping me out or pure happenstance.
I have not had too great a life, as these things are measured, and most of that was due to me, not bad luck.
I don’t know. I am generally a pretty optimistic person, despite my “luck”. I think that this is mostly due to my ability to make good decisions. My decisions help to keep the bad luck from ending up truly terrible.
When the university accidentally checked that I had opted out of admission, my calling and checking why it had been so long since I heard from them, thus exposing the mistake, kept it from being an extra 6 months before I started.
The three not-at-fault car accidents I have been in (1- head on around a blind curve, 2- rear ended in stop and go traffic, 3- side impacted by someone backing onto the street from a blind drive way into my car) were survived with little injury due to the use of my seat belt and being a diligent driver.
I could go on, but basically, I feel that luck is what happens to you, good or bad. The decisions you make dictate how that luck affects you.
Someone once told me that if you go to sleep at night in a bed, with a full tummy, clothes to wear, relatively free of fear of violence, with a little change in your pocket and with a few people who care about you then you comprise about 8% of the world’s population.
Considering that much of that is a circumstance of birth, I’d say I was very lucky.
Do I ever win anything? Scarcely ever. What fortune beyond all the good, and most important, things in paragraph one has been earned by hard work. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m pretty lucky to have been able to do that as well!
I don’t believe in luck, but I have found that the harder I work, the luckier I get.
I never wanted kids. I got pregnant three times in two years. Once on the pill, once using foam and condoms together, and once with an IUD. Miscarriage, carried to term, and miscarriage. And it’s not like my husband and I were having that much sex, either. He was on temporary duty about half the time, which meant that he wasn’t even in the same COUNTRY as I was, and was on a different shift than I was most of the rest of the time. And no, I wasn’t having sex with anyone else, either.
After the last pregnancy and miscarriage, I didn’t have sex until I got my tubes tied.
Still, three times in two years…what are the odds? All of those methods were supposed to be more than 99% effective.
Sounds to me then that you are not “unlucky,” but in fact “lucky.” Had you been “unlucky” you would never have found out your admission was deferred and you would have been injured in those car accidents. It all depends on how you look at it. Are you a positive person saying that it could have been worse, or are you a negative person asking yourself why bad stuff is always happening to you? I don’t believe in luck much, but I do believe that if you make good decisions things do tend to work out, this could be considered luck I suppose. Either way, your good decisions helped to make bad situations considerably less bad. Lucky you. I do, however, tend to have a knack for winning raffles and lotteries and such. I guess my good decision is deciding to enter.