J'ai de la chance: How to feel lucky and become even luckier

Chance is a French word. It means 'luck'. But are those two things actually the same? Why else would English have stolen that word...

Lucky memories

When the girl of my dreams walked into the room I groaned.

I suppose you can’t blame my reaction. I’d just spent 5 days hiking between Icelandic volcanoes; my feet were bandaged, my mouth hadn’t touched warm food in days and my brain was numb to human interaction.

I had finally reached a major town, and this camp kitchen symbolised my safe haven. That was until a sopping wet young guy and girl hurried inside to take shelter from the torrential rain which buffeted the windows.

Theirs was an impromptu friendship. They had spent the day hitchhiking together from the previous town. The rain was too strong to ride their bikes.

Begrudgingly, I listened passively, then interestedly (she was cute) to their stories that night.

Then we all went to bed, and the three of us went separate ways the next morning.

Three weeks later, on the other side of the country, I entered another campsite kitchen. She had already started cooking her dinner but had forgotten the pasta. As she left to fetch it, we bumped into each other at the front door.

We spent all night together, and much of the next day. We said goodbye again. I was supposed to fly out in a few days.

My plan in Sweden fell through. Her circumstances changed overnight. We ran into each other a third time.

This time we didn’t say goodbye.

We travelled the rest of Iceland together, above the arctic circle in Norway, and to the giraffes and elephants of Kenya.

We fell in love.

A lucky series of events is an understatement.

*on the ferry to the Lofoten Islands, Norway. We would see the northern lights for the first time that night.

When do we get lucky?

Lucky moments like this in life are pretty friggin awesome. They are memories that we will cherish forever.

Inherent of this description, truly lucky moments seem to occur few and far between. The usage of ‘luck’ in everyday conversation has quite a limited definition.

To summarise this article, luck had a much wider intended definition. It was supposed to encompass all moments of life. Tragically, just like a once beautiful beach, the definition of luck has eroded over the centuries.

We have forgotten how to be truly lucky.

What is luck to you?

When is the last time you felt lucky?

Stop and have a think about it.

Until recently, I felt lucky when something

1) favourable,

2) out of my control, and

3) disproportionate to my daily existence occurred.

Drinking the last scoop of milo in the staff room. Catching 4 babies in my recent obstetrics rotation. Chance encounters with amazing people.

They fulfil these requirements, and fulfil the additional premise of assigning luck after the event occurred, not before.

Conversely,

· Falling sick before a big exam,

· Making the top sporting team, or

· Waking up each day

aren’t conventionally lucky events. They’re either unfavourable, a result of my hard work, or expected.

The English peasants of the dark age thought otherwise.

Our ancestors figured this out

The saying ‘I’m lucky’ in French is ‘j’ai de la chance’.

Broken down, ‘Chance’ means ‘luck’, and ‘j’ai de la’ means ‘I have some’.

For context, refer to my last post or historical summaries of why the French invaded England in 1066AD:

Chapter 1, Battle of Hastings, Entertaining Youtube video

The Anglo-Saxon population in the 11^th century started hearing the French talk of luck. I have some ‘chance’, the French said, joyful.

The English adopted this word over the coming centuries. But ‘chance’ for us today means something very different. Chance for us means uncertainty, unpredictability, maybe something will work out, maybe it won’t. A very different meaning than luck.

Or is it?

If they mean such different things, chance and luck, then why did this word, chance, emerge from a French saying about luck?

Perhaps, the English discovered that at its core, our current definition of chance is being lucky.

That luck is a state of uncertainty, unpredictability, to just have a chance.

It drops the bar for ‘lucky moments’ significantly - I believe this was no accident.

They forged their correct interpretation of luck into our language.

But for those that don’t interact with English and French languages on a daily basis, or even for those that do but haven’t realised this link, this wisdom has been lost.

By bringing this back to the forefront, let’s correct our definition of luck (favourable, unexpected, better than average) to what the original meaning of luck used to be (just getting a chance).

To find out how to feel lucky and become even luckier.

Luck in difficult circumstances

We all suffer setbacks.

Things happen that we have no control over.

In my final year of high school I spent a week in hospital with rhabdomyolysis, a rare autoimmune condition which attacked the muscle I’d spent years building to row in the top school team. I was re-learning how to walk whilst my teammates were being scouted for overseas college scholarships.

Now hold on. I’m not one of those guys who blames an injury for their sporting career not taking off.

But you never know!! Hehe.

I had 3 months to go from the walking rails to the top QLD rowing race. I could barely move. I was bitter.

Was that lucky?

It didn’t feel like it.

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Let’s look at it another way.

I could have died. Genuinely. I could have been told I could never row again. I could have cursed physical exercise and never restarted.

Innately, I had some chance of making it back. However small. Even as coaches told me to give it up, through gritted teeth I would remind them that ‘I have a chance of getting there again’.

I didn’t know it then, but I was actually saying ‘I’m lucky’.

I was lucky to still be doing what I wanted to do. That was the true luck.

You know who doesn’t have a chance, even a 1% chance of success? Your great-grandmother who lacked educational opportunities. The girl in Africa culturally sidelined and silenced. The hypothetical child who died in infancy. They certainly don’t have a chance.

Setbacks aren’t unlucky. As long as you have a chance, luck is on your side. You relinquish that chance, that luck, when you give up.

I beat the odds and rejoined the top team with three weeks left. Did that ‘come down to luck?’ No, I worked extremely hard. But are those concepts mutually exclusive? Perhaps, the ability to work hard was lucky in and of itself. I paid homage to those chances by working hard - and my luck materialised.

The chance to work hard is enough of a reason to do it.

I went into this further here

Great youtube video, explaining why luck makes you happier, better received, and more generous

Is anything in life certain?

Bed 18.

An overnight admission to the ICU – car vs motorbike at 60kms/hr.

‘You’re lucky to be alive’ the doctor says to the patient.

He can only nod in response.

Bad things only happen to other people until it happens to us. What is 100% guaranteed in your future? Is there any possibility that it doesn’t happen? I unfortunately meet many in the hospital who think there is.

Some things are extremely likely, sure. Like waking up. But no one hands around the ticket we hold in our head which says, ‘I have a right to live until I’m a grandparent, and then I’ll see what happens to me’.

The stopwatch of luck is starting at 75yrs old. Why not turn it on now? It won’t make you live less.

Acknowledging the uncertainty of every moment makes each moment infinitely more beautiful. It works the other way too. By acknowledging each thing you are lucky to have you acknowledge the inherent uncertainty of it.

If our man in the ICU is lucky to be alive with broken bones and paralysis, why can’t we?

Is luck just temporary joy?

On every overnight hiking trip you are guaranteed to hear someone say: ‘I’m so keen to shower and relax on the couch when I get home’. Yeah, the first time is great. 5 days later it’s forgotten.

Our emotions are too heavily swayed by transient changes, upgrades and downgrades, feeling the acceleration of good or bad circumstances. Luck and good fortune are defined by the boundaries we give it, and those goal posts are constantly changing.

The goal posts change because our expectations of life change. ‘Expectation’ is the opposite of chance: e.g. there’s not even a chance of that not happening, because I expect it.

How can that person feel lucky -> even if they’re receiving clean air, water, food, education, family... Expectation is a state of mind far away from luck.

Could we fix our goal posts to a state of zero expectation? (full dependence on chance). Everything in life we receive would then be a bonus. Oh how lucky we would be.

That doesn’t mean thinking ‘I don’t expect to have my car when I get home, it could be stolen at any moment. I’m lucky it didn’t today!’

It means saying:

‘I have all the chances in the world today to be happy. Nothing and no one can change that, so I don’t need anything from them.’

I got lucky when this happened

Sitting at the poker table of life, do we reflect on having the chance to receive aces?

More likely, we cheer only after the aces have been dealt to us.

If luck is found in the past, why then does your grandmother tell you: ‘you are so lucky to be young and have your whole life at your feet.’

Because a state of not knowing, of infinite chances and possibilities, is so lucky.
We are luckiest when we wake up each day, on a Monday morning, January 1^st. Therein lies so many chances to live life.

To live through these moments, every moment of life, is what luck actually is.

This inherently makes living a lucky life a state of living in the present moment. Not focused on the past nor worried about the future. Of observation, understanding, happiness and peace.

Luck is found at the crossroads

What feels right to say? If some or all seem to fit, which seems the ‘luckiest’?

· I am lucky to start building my business.

· I am lucky that my business has gotten off to a good start.

· I am lucky that my business succeeded.

The last one, right? Everything has gone so well.

Let’s try again, with the French translation.

Substituting ‘I am lucky’ with ‘I have a chance’, clearly only the first one works. The French are correct. The chance, the luck, comes from the present moment, at the crossroads of life, where you have the ability to make a decision that could change everything for you.

There is every possibility that the outcome will be unfavourable. There will be many roadblocks that are outside of our control during the journey. However, there is always some chance of success, no matter how small.

The chance to go to work, to start that business, or to ask that girl out for a drink, is lucky. Regardless of the outcome.

To be a ‘chancer’

You can’t get lucky if you don’t ask the girl out. You won’t be a lucky person unless you take the chances available to you in life.

The French encoded this into the noun describing a lucky person – ‘chanteux’. This translates back to chancer. Same word structure as runner, singer, etc.

Are you a chancer?

To be so, you must fulfill two characteristics.

1. Do you recognise the chances, the luck in your life?

2. Do you act on those chances/that luck.

Caution – as much as it feels like I’ve eluded to it, luck isn’t objectively measured in what we are able to do. It is measured by the amount of measuring we do. The woman in aged care acknowledging her chance to do and feel 100 things today is luckier than a ‘lucky’ millionaire who is pessimistic about life.

Then, do you act on those chances? To be a chancer, you must start doing so. That is what being lucky is! How can you get lucky if you don’t try.

That’s what I told myself when I decided to start this blog. I can’t get lucky if I don’t try -> because by acknowledging and acting upon the chance of success, I’m becoming a lucky person, a person capable of starting online writing. If it succeeds (maybe it already has?), I will certainly look back and admire how lucky and grateful I was that everything fell into place. But more so, lucky that the chance to achieve this was possible to begin with.

It’s like standing at those crossroads.

If you don’t realise you are standing on the road, not seeing the chances in life, you will get hit by the car and spend your life in the hospital of your brain.¹

If you recognise the crossroad but are too scared to walk, you can’t get anywhere.

You must start walking, looking each way as you cross the road, seeing the plethora of possibilities in life, saying ‘wow, I get to do this thing. How lucky am I’.

Luck – our new definition

To summarise, in a certain way, our original definition was correct. I get lucky when something out of the ordinary occurs – and what about this life that you are living right now is ordinary? What things in your life are 100% guaranteed to occur?

Or is nothing guaranteed? Is everything just chance? Does that then make each thing extraordinary? Each of us will draw that line somewhere – that’s how lucky you will feel each day.

To ask one of my earlier questions again, what have you felt lucky for recently? To ask this now a different way, what do you have the chance to do today?

Those chances might not be here forever. Use that luck while you still have it.

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Any French people please get in touch and spark an idea for the next piece!

1. In practise this looks like depression. One of the definitions of depression is a poor outlook on life. When you have lost all hope, you think there are no chances left.