How Luck Happens

How Luck Happens shows you how to foster your own luck by creating the conditions for it to manifest itself in your work, love and all other aspects of life.

Luck manifests itself to people who trust their ideas and are persistent.

John Grisham had to submit his first legal thriller to 28 publishers before finding a small house who accepted it. 28! He was just about to burn the manuscript of his rejected book when a friend convinced him to try one more time. Today, he has sold millions of copies and many successful movies were based on his books.

Even J. K. Rowling had to face twelve rejections for her first Harry Potter book. Finally, she got an advance of 1500 £ and could print her first 1000 copies, the beginning of the fortune we all know now. Was it just chance?

New ideas can look ridiculous to people who’ve spent a lifetime maintaining the status quo, which is why persistence is all-important. Just ask Dick Fosbury.

Dick Fosbury tried different sports but wasn’t very good at any of them. One of them was high jump. At first, he didn’t have good results jumping the way everybody else used to. One day, he invented his own technique: he went over the bar headfirst and backward. Today, this is called the Fosbury flop.

He kept practicing his own way, getting better and better while other people made fun of him. Even when he won the gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1968, journalists and coaches kept advising people against jumping backward as he did. Luckily, they didn’t listen, and since 1972 every high jump gold medal winner has been a Fosbury flopper.

When asked how he could score so many goals, ice hockey champion and all-time legend Wayne Gretzky always gave the same answer: “I skate to where the puck will be.” When a young Harrison Ford moved to L.A. to become an actor, he first worked as a carpenter in the house of a very young director. That young director was none other than George Lucas, who eventually cast him in Star Wars, a movie that would supposedly be very unsuccessful. But we all know what’s happened since. What about Charlize Theron? She moved from Australia to Italy and then to the U.S.A. to become a dancer. She couldn’t make it because her knees gave out and she became very depressed. However, just when she was about to give up and go back to Australia, a talent agent noticed her and launched her as an actress. We can also learn from young and broke Aristotle Onassis, who couldn’t afford to have lunch in the most expensive hotels…