We often talk about luck the way we talk about the weather, like it’s something that just happens to you. You either get sunshine or you get rain, and there’s not much you can do about it.
But that isn’t how luck actually works.
Dr. James Austin, a neurologist who spent his life studying how creativity and serendipity collide, discovered something far more interesting: luck isn’t one thing. It comes in four different forms. And three of them are completely within your influence.
This matters.
If you don’t understand how luck works, life becomes guesswork. You’ll miss opportunities sitting right in front of you—opportunities you might have recognized if your mind had been trained to see them.
So today, let’s break down the four types of luck, and more importantly, how to stack the deck in your favor.
This is the version we all know: totally random, completely uncontrollable.
You step on a winning lottery ticket.
A meteorite narrowly misses your house.
That’s blind luck. It exists, but you can’t plan around it. You can’t optimize for it. You certainly can’t count on it.
Fortunately, this is the least interesting kind of luck.
This is the luck that belongs to people who are in motion. The people who mix things up, meet new people, try new ideas, and constantly expose themselves to the unexpected.
If life were a petri dish, this is the luck you get from stirring it up… stuff begin to collide, and inevitably in your favor.
You see this most clearly in someone like Jesse Itzler. In his twenties, he was basically sprinting around New York City—hustling, knocking on doors, meeting anyone who would listen. He didn’t wait for opportunity; he bumped into it.
Luck from motion is simple:
When you increase the number of collisions in your life, the probability of something interesting happening skyrockets.
You can’t get lucky sitting on the couch.
This is the rare kind of luck that only appears to the trained mind.
When most of us walk past an opportunity without even noticing it was there, others stop, tilt their head, and say, “Wait… something’s happening.”
The difference is awareness.
The best example of this is the scientist, Alexander Fleming. When he returned from vacation and found mold growing in one of his petri dishes, he didn’t toss it out. It reminded him of a strange experiment years earlier, when his own nasal mucus had accidentally contaminated a dish, and the bacteria around it stopped growing. That discovery was too weak to be useful, so he set it aside.
But this time, Fleming recognized the pattern immediately. The mold was killing the surrounding bacteria again—only far more powerfully. This discovery became what we now call penicillin, the world’s first true antibiotic.
Most scientists would’ve seen contamination. But Fleming’s prior experience had primed his brain to connect the dots and make this groundbreaking discovery.
Luck from awareness is all about:
Specific knowledge
Pattern recognition
Curiosity
The more puzzles you’ve solved, the more you’re able to recognize the next one. You can synthesize from one area to an entirely different one.
The final type of luck is the one that finds you.
It’s the luck that emerges when you become so uniquely yourself, so singular in your interests, your story, your obsession—that opportunities have no choice but to orbit around you.
Take Jesse Itzler again.
At a 24-hour relay race, Jesse Itzler noticed a guy running the entire event solo. No team. No crew. No gear. Just a folding chair, a bottle of water, and a box of crackers.
That runner was David Goggins, long before anyone knew his name.
Itzler felt something. This guy is different. I need to meet him.
That moment led to Living With a SEAL, the book that first put Goggins on the map.
If you’ve never heard of Living With a SEAL, here’s the quick version:
Entrepreneur Jesse Itzler invites an unknown Navy SEAL (David Goggins) to live with him for 31 days and train him. The rules are simple: whatever Goggins says, Jesse does. No negotiation. No excuses.
The month becomes a relentless series of physical and mental tests—ice baths, midnight runs, brutal workouts, and challenges designed to break Jesse’s limits. The book is funny, intense, and strangely inspiring. More importantly, it’s the first story that introduced Goggins’ philosophy and discipline to the world.
Years later, Goggins released Can’t Hurt Me, which launched him fully into the spotlight.
This point is this: Goggins wasn’t chasing luck or fame. He was simply being himself, and what an incredibly unique guy he is. The opportunity came to him because he was uniquely positioned for it. He was the best man for the job.
As Naval Ravikant puts it:
“Escape competition through authenticity. Nobody can beat you at being you.”
Your uniqueness isn’t a quirk, it’s a magnet.
So How Do We Cultivate Luck?
Marc Andreesen has a great blog post on this, which I will attach HERE. Here are my takeaways.
1. Move a lot.
Action produces information.
Information produces insight.
Insight produces opportunity.
Aim for as many “swings of the bat” as Andreessen calls them, and you will generate more collisions with the unexpected.
Life (and business) has no truncated outcome. Baseball has a truncated outcome. No matter how far you hit the ball, the highest amount of runs you can score is 4 (a grand slam). In life, you can hit a home run worth 1000 runs; there is no limit. And one home run can pay for 1000 unsuccessful attempts. So go to bat as many times as you can.
2. Collect dots so you can connect them later.
The magic happens at the intersection—that place where two unrelated ideas collide and produce something original.
If you want a phenomenal, simple guide to this, read The Medici Effect. It explains how breakthroughs come from combining disciplines that were never meant to touch.
3. Become unmistakably yourself.
“Escape competition through authenticity. No one can beat you at being you.”
- Naval Ravikant
When you build a life around the intersection of your quirks, interests, and obsessions, you create something no one else can replicate. Opportunities start showing up that are perfectly calibrated to you.
That’s luck from uniqueness, and it’s the most powerful form of all.
And if you want to go even deeper, start with my breakdown of the nine most powerful mental models used by history’s greatest thinkers—it’s the most-watched video on my channel, and for good reason.
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