Improving Your Luck: Extended Version

Article by Herb Rubenstein

Introduction

Gary Player, the great golfer says, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” There is much wisdom in this statement regarding both golf and life. To adapt his phrase to life, one could say, “The more prepared I am, the luckier I get.” Practice is preparation. However, there is much more to “making your own luck” or “getting lucky” than just being more prepared or practicing more. This article sheds light on some of the other key elements to improving your luck.

First, we must start with a working definition of “luck,” or what we mean by “good luck.” Good luck is an occurrence of success, good fortune, positive results, or the absence of failure, misfortune, and negative results which cannot be fully explained through normal powers of observation, analysis, or reasoning based on the concept of cause and effect. Being lucky means that “things are going your way” without your experiencing yourself or any clear preceding action or circumstance directly as the “cause in the good result.”

This definition of “luck” opens some significant insights into what people can do to improve

their luck, and even influence the “luck” of their colleagues, family members, associates, team members, followers and those they work with or influence.

“Luck” is important. As Willie Park, Jr. stated in 1896 in this seminal book, The Game of Golf, “There is a good deal of luck in the game…” (p. 128). The same is true about life in general.

No introduction to an article on “luck” would be complete without a discussion of superstition and its “relation” to luck. The great economist, Kenneth Boulding, one of my professors at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, defined superstition as “the belief in a causal relationship where none exists.” If the only thing you get out of reading this article is this clear and precise definition of “superstition,” I trust you will find reading this article worthwhile.

One can list thousands of “superstitions” to show the interrelationship between superstition and luck, but two well-known ones will suffice to make this key point: The belief in a superstition itself or the ritual surrounding the superstition can itself become “a causal factor,” (more than a self-fulfilling prophesy) in bringing about the claimed “good” or “bad” luck suggested by the folklore related to the superstition.

Superstition No 1. If a black cat walks across your path, it will bring you bad luck.

Superstition No 2. In sports, if you wear the hat (shirt, article of clothing, etc.) you wore when you (your team) won last time, wearing that article of clothing will bring you and your team “good luck.

If I “believe” the Black Cat superstition, then I am believing or saying to myself that if a black cat crosses my path, I will experience something negative that I cannot otherwise explain or ascribe to a different “causal factor explanation” other than the fact that “a black cat walked across my path.” While every “rational” person (one who believes strongly in seeking to identify the true cause and effect of results) would say the “black cat reason” is a “false cause” totally “made up,” spurious (not true, authentic, or authentic) reasoning one can easily imagine the following scenario.

Example Number 1:

Person A is walking on cobblestones in an ancient town. A black cat walks directly across their path and the person walking cannot go out of their way to avoid the path the black cat crossed. This person actually believes (gives “causal power to) the superstition and is now on “notice” or actually “believing” that something bad will happen, some “bad luck.”

At this point the person starts to worry or becomes concerned (if not outright fearful) of “imminent bad luck” or some type of “doomsday scenario.” This person “senses,” “thinks about,” “pre-experiences” different notions or examples of bad luck” possibilities in their mind. This person may even “visualize” some of these bad luck “scenarios” like twisting an ankle on the uneven cobblestones, or worse yet, falling down on their way to their destination.

As the person “believes” bad luck will befall them due to the black cat crossing their path, they will certainly try to suppress or not think about the many varied “bad luck scenarios” that could befall they as they go past the place where the black cat crossed their path.

Since every person has “limited cognitive capabilities” and one’s cognitive capabilities affect one’s physical capabilities (motor functions), the person is now using some of their limited cognitive capabilities both to think about “bad luck” scenarios and to try to “suppress thinking about” back luck scenarios. The brain activity devoted to thinking and suppressing these conscious and now also “unconscious” back luck scenarios might not be inconsequential. In fact, they just and might limit the person’s actual physical capabilities to accomplish the task at hand, to arrive safely at their destination, in spite of the fact that the black cat crossed their path. Clearly, the person walking on the cobblestones is now “distracted” and is therefore “not fully present” or “fully focused” on the task at hand, successfully walking on and navigating through the uneven cobblestones.

Guess what happens (or could happen). The distracted and worried person walking on the cobblestones “twists their ankle.” This accident “confirms” the superstition, a black cat walking across your path brings bad luck. It “must have” been bad luck because this person often walks over these cobblestones and never twists their ankle. In fact, the person would believe that the chance of ever twisting their ankle on these cobblestones is so low that bad luck must have intervened to cause them to twist their ankle. Suspicion confirmed.

However, as you have already surmised, it is much more likely that this “distraction,” this lack of being fully present or focused on the task at hand, was the “intervening factor,” the “cause” that increased the likelihood of the person twisting their ankle. The cobblestone example is a good metaphor for life.

By limiting your already “limited” cognitive capabilities by a false belief in a bad luck superstition, you limit your brain’s ability to control your motor functions and your physical abilities, and you increase the likelihood of something bad happening, that you probably could have avoided if you were able to deploy all of your cognitive capabilities to the task at hand - successfully negotiating the cobblestones and arriving safely at your destination.

One could argue that this example is easy because in this example the “one” who believes the black cat bad luck superstition is also the “actor” in the scenario, and is the one who “actually caused” the ankle twisting.

Variation of Example Number 1:

But we can also think of our being lucky or not when we are either not the actor at all, or one’s role in the situation is tiny. Let’s assume the cat walked across the path and the person continued to walk on the path and ten minutes later, just one minute before they would have successfully negotiated all the cobblestones and safely arrived at the destination, someone a block away, dropped a loaded gun, it discharged in the walker’s direction, the bullet ricochets off the cobblestones and hits the walker.

This scenario (and this is bad luck almost everyone would agree) could not have been caused (provided the walker did not change their pace of walking due to the cat), by the walker thinking he was going to have bad luck, and not being completely focused on the task at hand.

Using this example, while most people would call this “bad luck,” this is not bad “luck” at all. Even though this is most unfortunate, luck (an unexplained or unexplainable set of circumstances) had nothing to do with this particular person being struck by the bullet while walking on cobblestones to a known destination.

This result is the direct result of many simultaneous events and events very closely related in time and space.

1. A person was walking at a place and time

2. A person dropped a gun.

3. A gun discharged.

4. The bullet went in the direction and on the trajectory caused by the position of the gun and its barrel at the moment of discharge.

5. The bullet traveled as directed by the gun.

6. The bullet hit the cobblestone and changed direction as a result of the physics, the weather, the wind, and all of the physical conditions that affect the path of bullet hitting that cobblestone at that speed from that direction.

7. The person was walking and located in both space and time where his body intersected with the path of the bullet.

8. The bullet had enough speed to hit his body.

Everyone one of these simultaneous occurrences or occurrences very closely related in time and space had a very, very low probability of occurrence. However, the entire scenario is completely “explainable” and the cause of the death had nothing to do with “bad luck” at all, much less the black cat that might get the blame for this by some people.

Example Number 2:

The “lucky article of clothing” example suggests that if “I wear this hat, I win (do well)” (like a baseball pitcher, golfer, or anyone who regularly wears a particular “lucky hat” while performing an activity). There is a simple explanation for what is going on that is a more powerful explanatory factor than “luck.”

Part of success in athletics and in life is “confidence.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor at the Harvard Business School, in 2005 published an excellent book titled, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. She documented the important role of confidence in promoting success and sports psychologists often remark that confidence is an important factor in winning or doing well in any endeavor.

Back in 1896 Willie Park, Junior, in his book, The Game of Golf, wrote:

The art of putting lies to a great extent in the player having confidence in himself. If he goes up to his ball in the full belief that he can and will hole his putt, he has a better chance of doing so than if he is troubled with doubts about this…and if his vision is obscured by the dread of a missed putt. If he dreads the putt, the longer he hangs over his ball the worse it will appear, and the less likely is he to hole it. (pp. 109-110)

What Willie Park, Junior and Rosabeth Moss Kanter are talking about when they use the word “confidence” is the “positive state of mind, the optimistic state of mind that allows for a person to use all of their cognitive capabilities in directing their physical capabilities to accomplish the desired result.” (Author’s explanation).

So, simply put, when one wears the “lucky hat,” one is more likely to feel good, improve their confidence, and thereby increase their probability of a good result, a win.

Thus, this belief in “luck” or “the lucky hat” itself can “create” confidence, enhance one’s available cognitive capabilities become an important factor in one’s ability to perform a physical act, especially a difficult one. In effect, the “lucky hat,” in a good way, positively impacts one’s “state of mind” or “state” for short. The “lucky hat” therefore may contribute, through the belief that it is lucky to helping create a “positive state of confidence” that promotes excellent physical actions and success.

Variation on Example 2:

When a “fan” wears a “lucky hat” for the team (or turns it around to make it a “rally hat” the fan might believe in the superstition that wearing that “lucky hat” will “make’ the team win. Thus, the fan is believing that one can impact the results of others. Certainly, people influence others.

When our son was just two years old, he and I stood on Calvert Street in Washington Street on a night with a full moon. It was partly cloudy. We were looking at the sky when a small, but wide, cloud slowly passed between us and the moon. For nearly a full minute, the moon could not be seen behind the cloud. Then, one could see a little light coming from behind the cloud, but we could still not see the moon directly. Then, our son said, “Come on moon,” and soon thereafter, the cloud passed and we could see the moon.

After explaining to the two-year-old about how clouds move, how the earth and moon move, how light from the sun reflects on the moon thus making it look like the moon has its own capability to produce light, I stopped and experienced the full wonder and joy of realizing that this two year old was “rooting” for the moon. He also must have believed that his “rooting” for the moon would influence and help the moon accomplish the goal he wanted for the moon – to be visible again.

This occurrence over three decades ago shows the basic instinct or belief that humans have, even two-year olds have, that we, as individuals, and collectively, as part of the universe, can influence things, even things 238,900 miles away with a few, softly spoken words like, “Come on moon.” But, surely his words did not impact the clouds or the moon.

So, when the fan wears the “lucky hat” and is in a crowd of 60,000 pretty quiet fans in the first inning, and a batter on the fan’s team hits a home run, the hat had nothing to do with it, and certainly, the hat brought no “luck” to the batter. This is a function of “co-incidence,” pure and simple. A co-incidence is a combination of events, or sequence of events, that have no causal connection but may occur in a similar and space and time framework or over time.

But when the fan yells louder, along with 60,000 other fans many wearing their “lucky hat,” an impact on the team’s performance is certainly possible.

Now, we must address important question, “Is there anything called “luck?” This next section proves that “luck” exists and that humans can improve their “luck.”

Does Luck Exist?

Example Number 3:

A couple wants two children and there is no medical/fertility type of intervention. They very, very much want a girl first and then a boy.

For argument’s sake let’s say the probability of having a girl (or a boy) is 50/50 (it is not). So, there is a 50% chance of a girl first child. Similarly, there is a 50% of a boy second child, and 50% that if there is a boy and a girl, it would be in that order (since it could have been in the opposite order). So, if my math is correct, there is a one in eight chance of having a girl first and then a boy child, not even counting the possibility of twins, triplets, etc.

They have a girl for their first child, then a boy for their second child. They got what they wanted, a girl first and then a boy child. And it was a strong preference. Were they lucky? Yes.

There was a much greater probability of a different result, but they got the result they really wanted. It is generally agreed that when you want a result very much and the probabilities of getting that result are low, and you don’t do anything to change the relative probabilities of getting that result over one of the other possible results that are equally or even more likely to occur, you have been lucky or had “good luck.”

So, using this definition, luck certainly exists. This example sheds great light on how to improve your chances of “good luck” or “being lucky” even when you cannot directly, or even indirectly, affect the outcome that you seek.

Two Paths To Having “Good Luck” or Being Lucky

I will return to the birth order example later in this article. But now, let’s turn to golf as a metaphor for life. Every golfer, especially Willie Park, Junior in the late 1800’s, knows there is “good luck” and “bad luck” in golf. Generally, golfers (and people in general) think of “luck” as existing in five types of situations:

1. A close call (a putt just “lipped out” or “just curled in”)

2. A good or bad “unpredictable” or expected bounce or roll of the ball after landing

3. A bad lie or position of the golf ball relative to a divot, tree, obstruction, hazard, etc.

4. A shot that looks like it has a great (or little) chance of being very good turns out opposite from how it seemed to start due to an unexpected and unpredictable wind burst, or great and unexpected roll, etc. Thus, what looked like it would turn out badly, turned out well (good luck) or what looked like it would turn out badly, turned out well (bad luck).

5. One’s opponent or opposing “force” being lucky or unlucky, thus affecting your own chances of success.

Each of these five examples will be discussed.

Close call – golf is not a game of inches. It is a both a game of millimeters and a game where very small increments of speed of the ball or club head can make a huge difference. The length of a millimeter is 1/25th of an inch or about the width of this “-“ . That difference, a millimeter, can be the difference between a putt or ball going into the hole or staying out.

In addition, golf is not only a game of inches or direction, but also a game of speed, and a shot traveling just a foot faster per second can mean the difference between a putt going into the hole or not going into the hole. (Recently, I repeated putted a 10-foot putt on a very fast (15 Stimpmeter) area of a putting green at Alpine Country club with Dr. Craig Farnsworth and others observing (the Putt Doctor). The ten-foot putt took eleven seconds to go into the hole or stop right next to the hole. If the ball moved just one foot per second faster it would have gone way past the hole, and if it moved just one foot per second slower it would have been short of the hole and never gone in.

When Gary Player said, “The more I practice the luckier I get, he was primarily referring to the close calls. The more you practice, provided your practice well, the better you will get and this will allow you to putt the ball at least one millimeter closer to the center of the hole, and closer to the ideal speed, and the more likely that your near misses will turn into “near makes.”

Similarly, the more you practice the more likely you will just “carry a bunker” or hazard, just stay to the side and out of a hazard than would likely happen if you were less “practiced.”

Good and bad bounces/rolls - Actually, a good number of good and bad bounces in golf are predictable, if you practice the shot often enough and are able to observe and learn about the likelihood of different types of bounces from the types of shots you hit and the types of terrain you encounter. Practicing and studying these shots, and even knowing how to play a golf shot to influence how it bounces and rolls, takes both practice, observation, and foresight. Foresight, in golf and in life, is important because it allows you to anticipate the roll or bounce that the golf architect or golf superintendent may have intended for that attempted shot and understand better how the elements “wind, hardness of the ground, direction the grass grows, etc.) will impact the bounce and the roll.

Often a caddie or person familiar with a golf course will tell you, “Everything runs to the right (or the left) on the green. That statement is based on experience and represents the brilliance of foresight. It is not bad luck if you did not know “everything runs to the right” on the green and you hit a shot on the right side of the green and it runs away from the pin at a good clip and might even end up in a bunker or the water. It is lack of foresight. (Recently, at the Waste Management Open on number 17, after driving a par four, Ollie Schneiderman was putting for eagle to a back left pin, and hit the putt too hard. He and did not realize how “everything ran to the left on the hole, towards the water” and putted the ball into the water. Bad luck. No. Immediately afterwards, he pointed his finger to his head knowing he had done a dumb thing. However, it was his lack of “foresight” that turned a good birdie opportunity into a bogey. He still shot 68 for the day.

Some “bounces or rolls” are predictable, but of such low probability, that we them “luck” since they fit both into the in the close call category and in the good/bad bounces/roll category.

On June 24, 2001 in Concord, Massachusetts Tom Kite was one shot back going into the seventeenth hole, a relatively easy par three, 167 yards, with water in front of the green. He hit what he thought was a perfect tee shot. As, the ball flew towards the green, and while it was over the water, the ball hit a bird, a Purple Martin. (Now, that Purple Martin was “unlucky!) His ball went into the water, took his penalty shot, made double bogey, and ended up in third place, three shots behind Larry Nelson.

Other examples of such “bad luck” are on April 11, 2013, Tiger Woods hit a wedge into number fifteen green at the Masters, and his shot hit the pin and bounced/rolled back into the water in front of the green. If he had made birdie on the hole, a likely prospect, he would have gotten into the lead. Tiger bogeyed the hole and fell a stroke back and eventually lost the tournament by four shots, in part due to this two-shot swing. Hitting the pin on a short approach shot and it is bouncing/rolling into the water also happened to Ian Poulter on November 2, 2017 in the Turkish Airlines Open.

In either of these cases of the ball hitting the pin and going into the water, if the ball had gone ¼ inch to the right or the left, the ball would have bounced more sideways off the pin (which is normal) and neither shot would have gone in the water. This was bad luck on both of our first two counts, close call and bad bounce/roll. But it was Gary Player’s practice, that led Ian and Tiger to hit such their shots perfectly in line with the pin and bounce into the water after hitting the flag stick.

There is virtually nothing one can do about the ball hitting the flag from 100 or more yards and going into the water. If you are good, you aim for the pin from 100 yards in, and as Gary Player, “you have to bend over to see the pin” – because the ball obscures it.

But, in most situations, like Ollie putting the ball into the water, to help avoid terrible bounces and bad rolls, and to help create or increase the probability of a good bounce or good roll, the key is to do your homework. One needs practice “foresight” to study and learn the probabilities of which way the ball will bounce, or roll given the shot you expect to hit, where it will likely land, and the terrain you will encounter.

By developing this ability to exercise “foresight,” one can become “luckier” since one will better understand the true risk and reward potential of each shot in golf. If you know the probability of a bad bounce is one in ten, and if the bad bounce or roll can cost you a lot of shots, this 10% probability of a terrible result is generally not worth the risk in golf or in life.

The bad or good lie or position/result relative to a divot, tree, obstruction, or hazard, etc. – This is one of the most underestimated factors in life and in golf. My recent quadruple bogey on my tenth hole in a tournament proves it. I was in the rough, ball sitting down a little, about 153 yards from the pin cut on the front of the green, with a ten mile per hour wind in my face, water in front of the green. I can hit a 7 iron from that lie about 155, so I took the wind into account and hit a six iron. You can see the snowman (score 8 on the hole) coming.

I analyzed the lie thinking I would hit a seven iron. Then I switched to hit the six iron, but did not think through that the lie was tougher to hit the six iron from than hitting a seven iron from that lie. I thought I hit the six iron pretty well only to see the ball splash into the water right in front of the green, maybe 15 feet (5 yards) from the pin.

I drop a ball in the fairway, take a penalty shot, hit an 80-yard wedge, and this time, I also take a little extra club, a 50 degree gap wedge, but take a little off the shot. I hit it just short of the the green, it rolls backwards, and is in the hazard sitting on top of some rocks. I hit the ball from the rocks and it goes to the right just off the green, laying five. I chip up and not wanting to be short, I left myself a ten-footer that I missed and made eight.

I failed to even consider that I might hit the six iron into the water. After that terrible result, I was not mentally ready to hit the gap wedge, since I was still reeling from the previous shot, and, again against the wind, I went for the pin on the front of the green. I did not even think about hitting the ball, or trying to hit the ball, to the back or near the back of the green, or even the middle of the green, to avoid the water and avoid a big score.

Due to my lack of “foresight,” I made just about every mistake on a golf hole one can make. The fundamental mistake I made was not properly assessing my lie in the rough relative to the six iron I was trying to hit to the green. I said to myself I had “bad luck” with the lie in the rough, but I was just stupid, unaware of the potential and probable likelihood of the danger of the water in front of the green, and shot myself right out of the tournament on that one hole.

Yes, my six-iron shot was “close,” only 15 feet from the pin. It even might have been knocked down by some unexpected wind, but there was zero room for error short of the flagstick and aiming for the flagstick over the water when I had a lot of open room to the left of the green, and calculating my distance exactly to the front pin flagstick rather than the back of the green or back middle of the green, were really dumb decisions on my part.

So, no “foresight,” bad strategy and decision making, terrible result, no bad luck at all. Worst of all, pride probably got in my way thinking that I could hit the shot over the water, and not even thinking about the real probability (which might have been as high as 50% depending on my skill level) that I would not hit the shot perfectly, that the rough or wind would affect the ball more than I had planned (probably 75%), or thinking about the good chance I could have make par, and certainly no worse than bogey just by hitting an easy wedge 70 yards and hitting an 80 yard shot to the green and hopefully draining a putt (probably 95% all cost me three or four shots on one hole.

My poor evaluation of the situation I was in, the potential and real risks was the result of not using all my cognitive capabilities that are needed to do well in life and in golf. Using all of your cognitive skills promotes good results on things we want very much to accomplish and therefore, improves your “luck” in both life and in golf.

While we need to be “aware” of such hazards, and penalties for failure in golf and in life, and factor them in as we make our decisions or “shot selection”, it is also essential, that once we make a decision to hit a particular shot over water or any hazard, (or undertake any activity in life) that we stop thinking about the hazard, or penalties, or failure well before we start to take our swing (or start our action). As Willie Park, Junior informs us from his book well over 120 years ago:

...I can adduce for this that if the mind be concentrated upon an object [hazard], the hands, working in concert with it, unconsciously direct the ball towards that object. When, therefore, it is desired to avoid a hazard, I would recommend players not to think of avoiding the hazard; but to concentrate their attention on the intended line of play and blot the hazard out of the mind altogether. (p. 130)

So, when you know you can carry a hazard or avoid it almost all of the time (80+% probability of success), get the hazard out of your mind before you address the ball and keep it out of your mind while you are swinging.

An 80 yard wedge you want to fly within ten feet of the pin in the middle of a 5,000 foot green that has to cross 70 yards of water is the exact same golf shot (assuming same lie, conditions, etc.) as the same distance shot to the same pin on the same green if there were no water there at all. The proper execution of the 80-yard wedge shot needs to be done in both situations. In fact, those two shots, one with water in the path and the other with fairway in the path) are exactly the same golf shot assuming you are going to fly the ball to the green. In addition, it is the same shot whether you are playing a practice round, a little tournament, have a $1 or $1,000 wager on the round or the hole, need it to be successful to shoot your best round ever, or not, or even need to hit the shot successfully to win a big tournament. That is how you learn how to handle “pressure,” - focus on the shot you need to hit to succeed and the target, but do not focus on the result you hope for or what bad things might happen if you do not execute the shot properly.

Think about the hazard or consequences of a bad shot limits your cognitive abilities, and therefore, your physical abilities, and increases your chances of a bad shot or a shot into the hazard. While some people might blame the ball going into the hazard or water, especially if it was close to avoiding the hazard, as “bad luck,” we know better.

The lesson here is to improve your luck in life and in golf, you would be well served to:

1. Have a strong desire to achieve or have a particular result that you are capable to achieve, at least some of the time (forget about the impossible, but if the risks are low, be willing to take chances and try the probable, even if the probability is low. That is how we improve.

2. Be prepared for the action you intend to take

3. Make a clear decision and have a clear commitment regarding how you will perform the behavior you want to achieve success

4. Assess all risks properly should you fail to perform up to the standard you thought (hoped) you would.

5. Have “foresight” as to the consequences, good and bad, that can result from your undertaking a behavior

6. Be skilled enough to perform the desired task at least most of the time

7. When you are implementing your behavior, focus and direct one hundred percent of your cognitive and physical abilities on your action, and not be distracted by the risk or consequences of failure once you begin to undertake the action you want to be successful.

8. Know that every action you take in golf and in life is very important and do it to the very best of your ability.

This analysis of what it takes to “improve your luck” also shows that to reduce your chances of “bad luck,” there will be times when it is smart to scale back your goal and undertake a behavior (shot) that reduces the risk of failure that you would have trying to perform the more daring, more difficult, riskier shot. Scaling back the goal certainly reduces or eliminates the chance of a wildly successful golf shot or action in life, just as it reduces the negative consequences of not pulling off that more difficult shot perfectly.

However, when you scale back your goal, or as we call it, play it ‘safe’ in golf (laying up on a par five from a distance you know you can hit it, but wanting to avoid all of the hazards and difficulties right around the green if you miss the green), you still have to successfully execute that ‘safe’ shot. Never take an “easy shot” or action in life for granted. Pursue that “easy shot” with just as much diligence, focus, effort, intention, and skill as you would the most difficult shot you might attempt.

This maximizes a good result, or as some would say “good luck” and minimizes failure or “bad luck.” If you are thinking about “failure” while you are playing golf, giving a speech, or doing any act, you increase the probability of failing, pure and simple. You increase the probability of failing by a lot and by a little. If you fail by a little, we call that a “close call” and your buddies might call that was bad luck, but we know better.

Going Beyond Gary Player

How you think about things, how you assess a situation, how you use “foresight,” and how you quiet your mind during performance so you don’t think about negative consequences) are the insights of this article that expand on Gary Player’s line, “The more I practice, the luckier I get.” seems to miss. In golf or in life, when a person has a near miss, bad bounce, or what they consider “bad luck,” rarely is that person immediately fully capable of restoring all of their cognitive skills or mental faculties sufficiently to properly evaluate the next situation with its risks. The old adage that “one wrong turn leads to another” could not have been on better display than by Jordan Speith at the 2016 Masters when he hit two balls into the water in a row on the short twelfth hole to lose the lead and the tournament. He had a three-shot lead, made a quadruple bogey and was one back on thirteen tee.

After any loss or “unexpected failure,” regrouping, or “becoming present in the moment,” or what teachers call “rebound” is needed. If you think you just had bad luck, or experienced a bad result of any type, you should learn quickly from the mistake, if you made a mistake that caused the bad luck or bad result. Even if it takes time to analyze and learn how not to repeat that mistake, right after making that mistake you need focus on what you need to do in the present and the future to be successful, and not keep thinking, dwelling on, focusing on, or even talking about the bad luck or negative result that just occurred or occurred anytime in the past. Being able to “regroup,” quickly is an essential “survival tactic” in your quest in golf and in life, to have more good luck and avoid bad luck.

Similarly, even after some people experience a great success, they also cannot stop thinking about or focusing on that great success. As they continue to be “affected by” their recent success (say one, two or even three birdies in a row), this distracts them and keeps them from performing the best they can at the task at hand. Some people might also have the idea after some “streak” of very good success that bad results or “bad luck might follow.

Archie Manning taught Peyton and Eli, his two soon to be Hall of Fame quarterback sons, that regardless of whether something they did or just happened in football that was great or terrible, “get back to zero” for the next play. “Getting back to zero” means not having the past bad result or bad luck, or success, impact how you perform on the new task at hand, and the result you are trying to produce with your actions.

The key lesson here to improve your “good luck” and to reduce your “bad luck” is to make your disappointment, anger or even disgust “very, very temporary.” Yes, you will experience loss, sadness, fear, and many other emotions, but your duty, if you want to improve your luck, is to get through this phase very quickly and change your state to a state that allows you, and even helps you, do your best in a tough situation. Golfers know this. When you dump a short wedge into the water and are still “out” (farther away from the hole than any other player and therefore must hit before any other player hits if your group abides by the rule that that the player who is farthest from the hole plays the next shot), you only have seconds to fully regroup, and hit a much better shot, or your “bad luck” will hang around you.

Years ago, I had the rare privilege of showing up as a single golfer at a Florida golf course and was put in with a twosome of a father and son who were both golf pros. I rode with the father and hit a great tee shot on number one, down the middle with a little draw, about 275 or 280. When I got to the ball on a course I had never seen, (and was not fully prepared to play since I had not studied it), I knew I had about 140 to the green, no big deal. What I did not know was there was water in front of and to the left of the green and the fairway sloped to the left starting at about 250 yards from the tee. My ball had rolled into the first cut rough on the left of the fairway. Still, no big deal. But then I realized that about 20 yards ahead of me was a tree in the left rough and a set of low branches from the tree obstructed my shot to the green. Big deal.

I said to my pro playing partner, “I can’t believe my ball ended up behind this tree.” And the pro looked me in the eye and said, “We are not going to talk about shots we have already hit, are we?” And I shot back, “That is why you are a successful professional golfer, isn’t it?” and he said, “That is one of the reasons.” Lesson learned.

Bad luck being behind that tree or having water in front of the green, or having a fairway slope off to the left from the center of the fairway at 250 yards off the tee? No. If I had known the hole, I would have known keep the ball right off the tee. (I might still have hooked it left, but I would have at least known as soon as I hit the ball that it was my actions that brought the tree into the hole). I did not dare try to hook the ball around the tree for my second shot, because there was water left of the green. So, I laid up and made bogey on the hole, and shot one over for the day.

But, I learned a great lesson and it was very lucky for me to be paid with both the father and the son. I was lucky to learn a rule that the pro created and followed his entire professional life. Never talk during a round of golf about a shot you have already hit. What wisdom. And, what great joy to watch the match between the father and his child go down to the last hole when the father pulled the match out with a cagey par on 18, while his son missed the green with an eighty yard wedge and made bogey and lost the match.

Hope, Optimism, and Luck

Hope is a good thing. Optimism has its virtues, as well. However, success is something we must achieve by our actions (in combination with the actions of others often). Success, even on the “easy shots” is something we must never assume or take for granted.

Sometimes, we do not pay enough attention to the relatively easy shots in golf and in life. If we have a thirty yard shot over a bunker to a pin where we have room to land the ball comfortably on the green, we might still hit the ball in the to edge of the bunker and it plugs. Bad luck. No, close call, yes, in two ways. Not luck, just physics, and possibly taking this easy shot for granted, or worrying about the bunker while trying to hit the ball over the bunker, helped cause us to hit such a bad shot.

So, hoping you will hit it over the bunker does not help. Being optimistic or even confident about hitting over the bunker might help a little as it could help you relax and hit a good shot. In golf and in life, balancing the right amount of tension (due to wanting to perform well and having something at stake) and the right amount of relaxation (caused by your focus on your performance and not worrying about all of the ways you might mess us or bad things that could happen to you) at every moment of performance is essential to optimal performance. Too much tension (worry) in golf, and in life, restricts both our cognitive and physical abilities and when we are too tense (often caused by fear or “pressing” too much) we may feel like we are going to perform optimally, but we do not and blame it on “bad luck.”

While we have covered four of the five situations where one might consider themselves lucky or unlucky, we have not discussed the last situation where an opponent or opposing force is either lucky or not and it impacts whether you succeed or fail. If you think you are lucky because in life or in golf your opponent or opposing force is having bad luck, or think you are unlucky in life because your opponent or opposing force is having good luck, then you are ascribing way too much meaning to the term “luck.”

Your job in life and in golf, if you desire to win or succeed, is to do as well as you can on any given day and improve in the future as much as you can to the point where you regularly produce better results than your opponent, and can usually overcome forces opposing what you want to accomplish. If you do as well as you can, if you select the right goals, if you accurately assess your capability level and intelligently seek to improve, then success will become more likely, and you (and others) will more likely be view you as being “lucky.”

Your “luck,” good or bad, has nothing to do with your competitor’s luck, good or bad. Sure, if your teammate or partner is successful (like in a close call where a field goal kicker barely makes or misses the winning kick), that will impact your result or success, but it does not make you lucky or not. It makes you fortunate or unfortunate, but this has nothing to do with your own luck.

Conclusion

“Good luck” is not merely overcoming odds and “bad luck” is not merely failing when success seemed likely. Here are some of the best methods to improve your good luck and diminish your bad luck:

1. Improve your intentionality and make your goals and definition of success more precise.

This is the lesson of the couple that very much wanted two children, first a girl then a boy. (a high goal backed up with a high degree of intentionality). There were not lucky so much because the girl was born first and the boy second, but because they really wanted this to happen. Another couple might have wanted two girls, or two boys, or a boy first and then a girl, so if they had exactly the same result, a girl first, then a boy child, they would have been viewed as being “unlucky” or not as luck as the other couple.

So, to “feel lucky,” it is as much the clarity of goal you set, as the result you get.

2. Improve your focus on your own activity you use to seek the result you want

3. Improve your ability to evaluate your current situation (the external environment, plus the skills, challenges, obstacles, mental attitude, cognitive and physical abilities, and supportive elements and opposing elements affecting whether you are able to perform the activity you need to perform well to be successful

4. Improve your ability to commit to do what you need to do to achieve your goal

5. Improve your ability to learn quickly and not be negatively affected by your past mistakes and failures

6. Improve your ability to “let go”, take failure or thwarted expectations “in stride,” and not focus on or think about your past failures (except to learn from them and not repeat them) or even your past successes.

7. Do not create a narrative that you have bad luck, or have any thoughts when you are performing or undertaking the behavior you know you need to do to be successful, do not “engage” or think about the past, no conscious or even unconscious thinking about the past or negative thoughts since these “past-centric thoughts” will distract you or limit your cognitive or physical abilities

8. Improve your understanding of the relationship between the goal you set and the potential for “high risk” you might either undertake in pursuit of the goal and the “high risk” that can cause you great harm if you have a near miss or do not achieve your goal

9. Practice more and do it with a clear goal in mind and make practice simulate as closely as possible the real conditions where you will compete or act in real life

10. Bing a positive, confident, optimistic attitude to new tasks since this approach will keep you from diminishing your own skills and abilities and will encourage others to help you reach your potential

11. At all times and for all endeavors, before undertaking an activity, visualize success, and visualize success after success, see the pattern of successes that will lead you to achieve your goal and know by doing this you will live, think, play, perform, and act as consistent with your potential as possible

12. Never underestimate your potential, but do not overestimate it either. Underestimating your potential will keep you from trying new and difficult things and from learning that you could achieve them, or, even if you do accomplish them, you might say it “was a fluke,” or you “were lucky. If you overestimate your potential and likelihood of success, this could prevent you from preparing properly for success.

Will doing each of these twelve actions “improve your good luck” and “reduce your bad luck?” Simply put, yes. By doing these things you will begin to ascribe fewer and fewer “things/events/successes/failures/results” to luck. You will begin to see yourself (and all who support you) more often as “being cause” of your successes and your failures. When you do this, you learn how to create and leverage what contributes to helping you be more successful (and “luckier) and how to avoid what contributes to failure (and being “unlucky.”

While you might experience “luck,” good or bad differently if you follow these twelve actions, by having such clear goals, you will feel lucky not only to achieve some or all your goals, but you will feel lucky to be on the path or journey seeking to achieve your new great goals.

Also, if you have a sense of gratitude most of the time, and if you have an appreciation for the opportunities you have in life, (even when times are tough), then you will be on the road towards taking the actions that might propel you to success. This is the true essence of being lucky. To modify Gary Player’s wonderful statement, I would say, “The more I appreciate, the more prepared I am, the more I am looking for opportunity with clear eyes, the luckier I get.”