The Luck Advantage: How High-Achievers Engineer Opportunity
Luck looks effortless from the outside. But the “lucky” aren’t waiting for chance, they’re preparing, noticing and acting.
Do you ever catch yourself feeling like someone seems to have all the luck? Luck is often treated as something accidental - a fortunate break, of being in the right place at the right time. But when you look closely at the seemingly luckiest people, clear patterns emerge. Luck isn’t random. So, let's talk about how to elevate your luck.
1. You’re already luckier than you realise
Before you aim to create your own luck, stop to assess how lucky you might already be.
In The Unfair Advantage, Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba propose that you already have your competitive edge. The key is understanding and leveraging it.
Your unfair advantage is the secret to your success. One you may never have realised you had. It uses your conditions, assets or circumstances to help elevate your success.
The Unfair Advantage challenges two popular schools of thought:
Meritocracy: This believes that hard work deserves success.
Fatalism: Says success is all about luck, timing, natural talent and fate.
They propose the secret lies in the middle. Embracing both luck and hard work.
The authors present their ‘MILES’ framework. This proposes that any of the following dimensions can make up your unfair advantage:
Money
Intelligence and Insight
Location and Luck
Education and Expertise
Status
Even in the most celebrated success stories about hard work, the element of luck is often left out. For example, did you know Bill Gates went to one of the only schools with a state-of-the-art computer? You may have also lucked out in your location, born in the right place at the right time or living in the perfect place for your business idea, personal brand or talent to thrive where you are. If you have big dreams in a sleepy city, that still gives you an advantage in your environment. You can stand out as a big fish in a small pond.
2. Try stuff
So, how do you create your own luck? Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire, studied people who identified as ‘lucky’ or ‘unlucky’ people. The study of hundreds of people showed that lucky people maximise opportunities. To summarise, they:
Notice opportunities that others miss: Lucky people score higher on openness to experience and situational awareness.
Act on intuition more quickly: Lucky people trust gut feelings more and are more likely to act on them.
Expect good outcomes: They hold positive, but realistic expectations.
Recover from setbacks faster: They reframe, look for silver linings and hidden advantages and avoid catastrophic narratives.
Create more chance encounters: They place themselves in socially fertile environments more often.
Their mindset and expectations change their tone of voice, body language, persistance and how others respond to them. They talk to strangers and follow weak ties. Their “luck” is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In his book The Luck Factor, Wiseman says:
“Lucky people create, notice, and act on opportunities more than unlucky people.”
They weren’t “luckier”, they were more perceptive and behaviourally flexible. They are less neurotic and open to new experiences.
If you want to find yourself in the right room and with the right opportunities, you have to:
Notice them
Enter them
Signal openness
Follow up
3. An internal locus of control
What separates lucky people from the unlucky starts from within. Originating with Julian Rotter in the 1960’s, a locus of control describes where people locate the cause of outcomes:
Internal locus of control
“My actions influence outcomes.”External locus of control
“Outcomes are determined by luck, fate, systems, or powerful others.”
The research consistently shows that:
People with a more external locus of control tend to:
Wait for conditions to be right
Attribute outcomes to luck or bad breaks
Disengage faster when effort doesn’t pay off immediately
Experience higher stress in ambiguous environments
People with an external locus of control believe that luck happens to you.
People with a more internal locus of control tend to:
Take the initiative earlier
Persist longer after setbacks
Seek information and feedback
Feel more agency under uncertainty
Perform better in leadership and career outcomes
People with an internal locus of control behave as though outcomes are shapable. Those with an externally-leaning focus wait for luck, while the other encounters it.
Move like you’re already the luckiest person
Those who believe outcomes are influenceable behave in ways that create more opportunity, which others then label as luck. When you recognise your existing advantages, you move differently. You expect opportunity, and chance begins to organise itself around you. Because you stayed engaged long enough for it to respond. That’s how luck starts to feel less like a coincidence and more like a way of living.
