How to Make Yourself Lucky

How to Make Yourself Lucky

Orison Swett Marden

What you, my friend, may right now be calling your hard luck, may be the result of some weakness, some bad habit, which is thwarting your efforts, keeping from you the prosperity you desire.

You may have peculiarities, objectionable traits, which are bars to your progress, stumbling-blocks in your path. Your bad luck may be lack of preparation, a poor education, insufficient training for your special work.

Your foundation may be too small for any sort of a respectable life structure. Or, your bad luck may be indolence, a love of ease and pleasure, a desire to have a good time first of all, no matter what happens.

Good luck is the very opposite of all this. Every successful man knows that good luck follows the strong will, the earnest, persistent endeavor, good hard work, thorough preparation, the ambition to excel and a dead-in-earnest purpose.

The "lucky" man is the man who has been a closer thinker, a harder worker, than his "unlucky" neighbor. He is more practical, his life has been ruled by system and order. Luck is like opportunity, it comes to those who work for it and are ready for it.

Make the best possible use of your time, this will make you lucky.

The men who are made of winning material do not talk of hard luck or cruel fate; they do not talk of being kept back by others.

If a man has yeast in him he will rise; nothing can keep him back. Clear grit will attract more good luck than almost any other one thing I know of.

It is usually the lazy, the indolent, the pleasure-loving good-for-nothings, the weaklings, who are the firmest believers in luck.

The mere fact that a man is always talking about his "hard luck," blaming his non-success, his defeats on someone else, or on unfortunate circumstances, is an admission that he is a weak man.

It shows that he has not-developed independence or strength of will, the mental fiber which overcomes obstacles. There is everything in forming this habit of thinking of yourself as lucky, fortunate, of always seeing yourself as you would like to be, not as one who is inefficient and always blundering.

There are multitudes of hard-working people who are continually driving away from them the very thing they are trying to get, because they do not hold the right attitude of mind.

They lack the enthusiastic man's optimism, his faith and self-confidence,—all friends of good luck.

If you persist in looking and acting like a failure, or a very mediocre or doubtful success; if you keep telling everybody how unlucky you are, and that you do not believe you will win out, because success is only for a favored few, those who have a pull, someone to boost them, you will be as much of a success as the actor who attempts to impersonate a certain character while looking, thinking, and acting exactly like the opposite.

Talking disparagingly about yourself, depreciating yourself, is self-deterioration. The constant suggestion of your inferiority, of your defects or weaknesses, will interfere with your success in anything.

You can't be lucky, you can't be successful, if you are all the time talking against yourself, for this will undermine your confidence in yourself and in your efficiency.

Hold a good opinion of yourself. Think highly of yourself. Learn to appreciate your ability and to respect yourself, not egotistically or from a selfish standpoint, but because you appreciate your marvelous inheritance of divine qualities.

Remember that every time you talk depreciatingly of yourself, no matter if you do not really believe it, if you do it for effect, that is, telling others of your hard luck, admitting that you cannot get along as do other people, that you cannot make money and save it, that you don't seem to have any money sense, you are lowering your estimate of yourself, your ideal of yourself, and this is the pattern for your life building.

Always think of yourself as lucky. Never allow yourself to think of yourself in any other way. Say to yourself: "I am good luck. I must be lucky, because I am a part of the divinity which can never fail. I partake of omnipotence because I am a child of Omnipotence, a partner of the Almighty. It is my nature to be lucky. I was made to be lucky. I was born to win. I am the child of the King of kings.

You should no more harbor a fear thought, a worry thought, a jealousy, envy or hatred thought, a selfish thought; than you would listen to the temptation to steal.

These things rob you of your peace of mind, your power, force and vitality, your poise as well as your comfort.

You would not allow a thief to ramble through your home to steal. Why should you allow your enemy thoughts to roam through your mind without a protest?

Nothing can defeat you or rob you of success but yourself. No conditions, however inhospitable, can swamp you, or thwart your life aim—if you have a life aim.

Your own weakness only can do that—your lack of determination, your lack of energy, your lack of backbone, your lack of confidence in yourself. Nothing in the world can make you a nonentity; no mischance’s, no conditions, no environment, nothing but yourself can do that. You can be a nobody if you will, or a somebody if you will; it is right up to you.

You can make a success of your life; you can send your influence down the ages, or you can go to your grave a useless nobody, without ever having made a ripple in the current of the life of your day. Your luck, good or bad, is in yourself.

If we think of ourselves as being always lucky, we may not be extraordinary examples of good luck, but we shall always be happy, smiling and contented, believing that everything that comes to us is the best that we could possibly attain.