Luck: 10 out of 10

If you are a person who enjoys playing role-playing games, you are likely familiar with a character creation screen or the character sheet. You have a certain number of points that you can allocate to traits like charisma, dexterity, and intelligence. One of those traits is luck, and I have a 10 out of 10 for the luck stat. Even when things go badly, they tend to go badly in the best possible way for me.

If you're on this site, you know that I had a liver transplant. You also know that I was the first person in the world to receive a new type of procedure, one that was invented just in time to save my life. Luck, 10 out of 10.

I'm told it fits in well with the entrepreneurial style of thinking, effectual thinking. One of the traits of successful entrepreneurs is that they are able to make lemonade from lemons. They see what looks like a negative situation and find some way to extract good things out of it, to turn the situation to their advantage. It's actually quite wonderful. It creates a positive feedback loop and they just do things.

As a child, I'm sure I just simply stared at walls and giggled at them, imagining the various things that I could see in the patterns of the wall. My emotional set point for happiness is just a little bit higher than average. I'm generally just a happy person and I see good things everywhere around me.

Now, that doesn't mean I'm incapable of identifying truly good things. When I meet someone amazing or I encounter something truly good, I recognize and appreciate it. But it also means that for me to say something is amazing or wonderful, truly great, the bar is a little bit higher. Because everything's pretty good, I'm pretty satisfied with most things. My base level of satisfaction is higher, so for me to really be amazed, it's got to be actually amazing in the literal sense of filling me with amazement.

That's my superpower--being really lucky. Of all the superpowers you could pick, I wouldn't swap that one for anything else. Maybe occasionally, I would think of swapping it for 10 out of 10 in charisma or looking really good, but I'll still take luck in those circumstances[2] So there you have it: Luck, 10 out of 10.

Footnotes

1. Well, that's not entirely true; if you're close to me, I do like to talk about it, so if you're close to me, you're probably reading this and laughing.

2. The luck that someone will misunderstand what came out of my mouth and interpret it as what I really meant, or that someone will look at me and they will see in me just the right things for them to think I am absolutely stunningly beautiful to them.