I once told someone glibly that I didn’t believe in luck. That triggered a lengthy discussion about being hit by lightning and other instances of unpredictable mishap or serendipity – aren’t all of these luck?
I’m closer now to articulating what I meant. I don’t believe in systematic chance. Or to put it another way, some people are luckier than others, but this is a function of attitude rather than fortuity.
My dad likes to remind me that ‘the harder I work, the luckier I get’ [1,2]. There’s some truth to this – but Lady Luck wants to be serenaded not seed-sown; pan-handled not strip-mined.
Richard Wiseman is the standard-bearer of the scientific study of luck, and he writes beautifully on the four characteristics he has identified in lucky people – they:
- are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
- make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition
- create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations
- adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good
For fun, substitute ‘lucky’ for ‘entrepreneur’ when reading the above 4 points.
Greg Detre 
I won a free steampunk zombie novel, at odds of roughly 33 to 1, after proclaiming in full view that it would be so. How does your “psychology” explain that?
(A: I bothered to read and comment on a reasonably random post blurped up in my RSS reader. Alternatively, I have become a supremely charismatic telepath.)