Lucky you🍀

I have been waiting for long before writing again on my website.

Mainly because I have been busy with my life.

Moving back to my origin country, after 3 beautiful and extremely challenging years in the Netherlands, required quite an effort, as you can imagine. On top of that, my main goal during this time of my life is pretty clear: to choose the next thing to do, the best option among the many available, the right opportunity to embrace in my career.

Over the last three years, I have been able to explore different work environments. I met people from everywhere, I spent a lot of time by myself too after leaving behind the girl I thought I was in love with, I travelled to Asia two times, and I faced a kaleidoscope of challenges.

So far, I have been playing around with different AI Tools. I was interviewed for the first time in a Podcast hosted by Emanuele, and now I am ready to share with all of you, which is the main goal of this introduction.

I want to bring on my website a discussion that I am running out of the public radars because I have been constantly asking this question to the people that are part of my inner circle: “Do you think that luck exist?”

Among all the people questioned, only one is seriously convinced that luck doesn’t exist because he doesn’t believe in something that simply doesn’t exist.

99% of the time I have asked this question then, I received different replies with the majority of them reporting how the fate, the destiny or just the blind fortune is something we can stimulate with our actions. However, there is always a component that will be out of our control.

The psychology of luck: the science and experiments behind it

Renowned psychologist Richard Wiseman—a professor at the University of Hertfordshire—has gained international recognition for translating psychological science into practical insights, especially in the study of unusual phenomena such as luck.

Driven to understand why some individuals consistently experience good fortune while others seem trapped in a cycle of misfortune, Wiseman launched a decade-long investigation into the psychology of luck.

His research encompassed 400 participants who identified themselves as either exceptionally lucky or unlucky, aiming to uncover whether luck was truly random or a product of mindset and habits.

Wiseman’s studies found that lucky people excel at spotting and seizing unexpected opportunities, listen to their intuition, maintain a positive outlook, and are adept at reframing bad luck to find hidden benefits. He designed ingenious experiments to test these traits.

In one, participants were asked to count the photos in a newspaper; “lucky” people often quickly noticed a bold message halfway through saying, “Stop counting—there are 43 photographs in this newspaper” while “unlucky” participants, absorbed in the explicit task, usually missed the clue and laboured on.

In another experiment, Wiseman arranged for participants to visit a café where he had planted an actor instructed to engage in light conversation. “Lucky” participants were more apt to start conversations and make connections, sometimes resulting in new opportunities (like potential job offers or new friends). The “unlucky” participants typically stuck to themselves, missing both the deliberate opportunity and the spontaneous potential in the environment.

These experiments illustrated that “lucky” people’s openness to social engagement and willingness to embrace novelty consistently exposed them to more chance encounters and beneficial outcomes.

Wiseman even created a “luck school,” coaching people in these strategies.

Over the course of a month, participants—many of whom initially described themselves as unlucky—were taught practical strategies based on Wiseman’s four principles of luck: maximizing chance opportunities, listening to intuition, expecting good fortune, and turning bad luck into good.

Participants engaged in exercises such as breaking out of daily routines to meet new people, being more observant of their environment, and reframing negative events to find positives. They were encouraged to attend events they normally wouldn’t, initiate conversations with strangers, and keep a diary of new opportunities or “lucky breaks” they noticed as a result.

The results were compelling: nearly 80% of “unlucky” participants reported feeling significantly happier and luckier by the end of the program. Many experienced tangible improvements—such as career breakthroughs or new relationships—highlighting that shifts in mindset and proactive behaviour can dramatically enhance one’s experience of luck.

Wiseman’s findings reveal that luck is not just a matter of chance, but a psychological phenomenon shaped by one’s behaviour and perspective.

The four “agents” of luck

Decades of research and popular writing converge on a simple, memorable framework: luck is not a single force but the result of four distinct “agents” that interact with our behaviour and expertise.

The 4 types of luck
by @naval

Excerpt from The Almanack of Naval Ravikant.

🧵 Thread pic.twitter.com/3oM5aVQXTi

— 𝙋𝙖𝙡𝙢 (@PalmQuays) October 6, 2020

Originally articulated by neurologist James H. Austin in Chase, Chance & Creativity (1978) and later popularised by entrepreneur-investors such as Marc Andreessen and Naval Ravikant, the model breaks luck into four progressively more controllable form.

How the Agents Combine

1. Sequence through life:
   • Blind luck dominates early life circumstances.
   • Motion luck grows as you hustle in your 20s.
   • Awareness luck emerges with expertise in your 30s.
   • Uniqueness luck compounds over decades as reputation solidifies.
2. Additive effect: The more you move, the more raw opportunities appear (Agent 2). Expertise lets you spot the best ones (Agent 3). A distinctive reputation then makes opportunities seek you out (Agent 4). Together they create an upward spiral of “being in the right place, noticing it, and being the obvious person to call.”

Take-away and link to other authors

Luck is less a mystical windfall and more a portfolio of behaviours you can deliberately weight in your favour. Hustle expands the playing field, expertise sharpens your vision, and a memorable personal edge turns you into a magnet for serendipity.

Put all four agents to work, and what looks like “good fortune” will increasingly be the predictable by-product of your strategy.

This is the list of sources and articles I took inspiration from:

• Blog post: the art and science of luck by Sahil Bloom