Luck: It's All in Your Head

When I was a younger, I would frequently lose in games of luck, such as rock-paper-scissors or heads or tails. So from a young age I grew up thinking that I was just plain unlucky. To make matters worse, the more I thought about how unlucky I was, the more unlucky I became. Although I was never a pessimistic person, I always thought that I had to work harder than my lucky friends because everything always seemed to somehow work out for them. This mindset stayed with me all the way until eighth grade.

In eighth grade, everything seemed to work out perfectly. It was my last year of middle school and I was now one of the big men on campus. That year, school sat shotgun while my social life sat in the driver's seat. I was always a confident kid, but that year my confidence became borderline cockiness because everything always seemed to turn out right. for example, if I would forget to study for a Monday morning test, by some stroke of luck that test would somehow get pushed to Tuesday. Likewise, that year I was captain of the volleyball team, and I would almost always win the coin toss or rock-paper-scissors for first serve. While those lucky situations seemed insignificant, winning $1000 dollars in an art contest that I did not even know I was entered in proved in my mind that I was now a lucky person.

My lucky streak continued throughout high school all the way until I had the misfortune of needing braces for a few months senior year because of a surfing accident. All of a sudden, it seemed like my luck had vanished. When my girlfriend saw me with braces, she dumped me on the spot. Also, school seemed especially hard that year and I was constantly sick. Interestingly enough, my luck reappeared the day I got my braces off. That girlfriend that had dumped me three months before somehow knew my braces were off and said she wanted to hang out again. Additionally, school seemed easier all of a sudden, and I was no longer sick.

Looking back, I realized that my luckiness directly correlated with my overall happiness and state of mind. In middle school I had always been a tense and overwhelmed overachiever (I went to a tough private school and struggled to be at the top of my class), but once I had mellowed out and put everything in perspective in eighth grade my luck increased. Likewise, my stressed-out senior year left me feeling unlucky. From past experience, I've discovered that luck depends on one's mindset, meaning that someone can create their own luck if they have an overall positive attitude.