The luck advantage: How sharing opportunities comes back to benefit you | Barnaby Marsh| Big Think

[Music] One big pitfall that I see is that it's problematic if you are not positioned to take advantage of luck when a lucky event comes your way. So, people who are lucky positioned themselves so that when something happens that they can take advantage of, they can grasp that opportunity and make the most of it. This comes back to this idea of lucky events being different from lucky outcomes. Lucky events can happen to a lot of people, but only some people in that population might be in a position to actually capitalize on those lucky events and create a lucky outcome for themselves.

For instance, imagine the example of a lottery winner. The focus is on having the winning lottery ticket, but what really matters and what people talk about is the ability to spend that ticket. So, if the person has the winning ticket but loses it, they don't consider themselves very lucky, usually. But the person who gains the winnings from the lottery ticket and who uses them in productive ways is seen as lucky.

There's an old Chinese poem about lucky or not lucky, and it illustrates how different outcomes in our lives can have consequences that affect us detrimentally or positively. There are so many areas of life where we think we might be lucky, which might lead to consequences that aren't lucky. Sometimes, things that happen to us, or we think we're not lucky, actually lead to an abundance of luck.

You take the example of a lottery winner, for instance. You look at lottery winners; sometimes the lottery winning actually destroys their life. So, the question was, was winning the lottery a lucky event or not? Well, it depends on the outcome. It depends on how well luck is used to create other luck going forward.

One of the most interesting things I found when we were looking at luck from a scientific point of view has to do with how a very small advantage can grow over time when it's shared. So, if you share a lucky event or the outcome of a lucky event with others who are likely to have future contact with you, that luck is likely to grow and bounce back to you. The most selfish thing a lucky person can do is to share their luck with other people.

When you're suited to many, many opportunities, by definition, you can't pursue and you can't take all of them. But what do you do with them? The best thing to do is to share those opportunities with other people that you know who could use those opportunities. As you share them, you're creating a bond and the preconditions for pro-social activity to happen in the future.

Lucky people almost always share their luck with other people, and it comes back to benefit them in great ways. There's a saying we have that you don't get lucky by sitting home watching TV; you get lucky by being out there, by talking with people, by interacting with them and engaging with them, letting them know what excites you and letting them know how your talents might be able to help them.

There are a lot of social butterflies out there, and they might be working really hard behind the scenes to make more luck. When the work happens to them, they say, “Well, I was just lucky. There was a lucky person, and it happens to me.” But of course, when you look more closely, many of the times they're just prepared in a much better way. They're positioning themselves well, and they’re able to avail themselves of more possibility than the others who are not quite as engaged.

[Music]