What it takes to catch a leprechaun
What fortunate people of history can teach us about how to consistently get lucky
Understanding what luck is
Lucky, clever, charming, smart… all of these words once connoted a kind magical property some people had that others did not.
Magical because those on the outside couldn’t understand it.
But if you look to history and examine people famed for their ‘luck’, you’ll find that just about all of them were people of action who took great—though calculated—risks.
Luck is simply the ability to capitalize on opportunity.
Julius Caesar suffered from epileptic seizures. Napoleon lost his father at 16. Theodore Roosevelt was a sickly child. Alexander the Great had a twisted neck.
Everyone encounters unfavorable and favorable circumstances.
What sets those known for their great luck apart from the rest of us is this: they made themselves ready to take advantage of the favorable and minimized or outright eliminated the unfavorable.
Caesar and Roosevelt both made themselves physically strong to compensate for their shortcomings. Caesar became a regular swimmer while Roosevelt took up boxing, weightlifting, and even Jiu Jitsu.
The Tao of Luck
Those who work with luck really well, who make it look completely effortless, appear to not be doing anything at all. This is because they did the right things at precisely the right times with the right amount of effort, so that their actions are masked by the greater flow of time and events. Such people embody the Taoist concept of Wu Wei or “not-doing”. Good things just seem to happen to them with barely any effort on their part.
And when things went wrong, they kept their cool and improvised ways out so that people afterwards forgot how close they came to catastrophe.
Years later, Caesar’s ship would capsize during a naval battle in Egypt and yet he was able to swim to shore in full armor. Roosevelt’s physical prowess allowed him to lead his rough riders to take San Juan Hill during a crucial moment in the Spanish-American War.
Opportunities come to all of us, the “lucky” are merely the ones who’ve prepared all their lives for it.
Getting lucky is a lot like getting rich and getting creative
There’s a reason the word “fortune” both describes people seemingly blessed by random chance as well as a vast sum of wealth. What it actually takes to attain both are actually the same.
Like muses, the leprechaun-catching process is actually quite mundane.
People like to imagine great works of creativity and great fortunes appear virtually out of nowhere. Mad inspiration strikes every writer like it supposedly did Jack Kerouac and days later you have a fully-formed masterpiece.
In reality, all great works of art and literature—yes, even On the Road—are actually the result of much editing and revision. They are the end product of people who turned up to their desks everyday and worked at their ideas—collaborated with their muses, until something decent took shape.
Likewise, men like John D. Rockefeller did not merely “get lucky” and strike oil with every random property he bought to amass one of the greatest fortunes in history. Warren Buffett did not throw darts at the Wall Street Journal to make his stock picks.
Napoleon didn’t just happen to become emperor of the French by showing up to battlefields faster than everybody else, even though it was a contributing factor to his scores of victories.
Instead, the truth about catching leprechauns, as with getting inspired by muses, is simply this:
Those who plan thoroughly, risk greatly, and adapt quickly are actually the ones considered the “luckiest”.
1. Plan thoroughly: Do you even know where leprechaun gold comes from?
Tradition holds that leprechaun gold is gold buried by people in wartime. In other words, even leprechauns don’t have some kind of magic gold-making machine. They merely repurpose assets left by extreme fiscal conservatives.
Given that Ireland hasn’t had any major military conflicts in decades, do you think these gold-hoarding fairies would still be there or would they take advantage of their EU status and globalization to ply their trade elsewhere?
As for lucky people: explorers, generals, and entrepreneurs who made it big all made big and comprehensive plans. Caesar was known for having contingencies for “every possible eventuality”. Leif the Lucky, viking discoverer of North America, talked with other sailors who had seen unfamiliar lands in the area but never stepped ashore, even going so far as to draw up maps.
2. Dare greatly: It isn’t enough to meet a leprechaun, you have to physically restrain him
Guaranteed returns tend not to be great returns. Even Warren “Buy and Hold” Buffett, whose been investing so long that his principles are cliches today, still seeks out assets that others deem worthless or overly risky. The difference is that the thoroughness of his research shows him something about his picks that others miss.
Daring greatly is the point of all those billionaire tech pioneers being college dropouts: finishing school is great if you want the same jobs everyone else has, it’s stupid if your ambition is to achieve something that has yet to be figured out, let alone taught.
It is a badge of honor because it showed they were willing to put it all on the line to carry out their plans.
As the old Roman proverb says, “Fortune favors the brave”.
3. Adapt Quickly: Convincing an immortal leprechaun to give up his gold is gonna take cunning
You can plan out every move of your big gamble but the ultimate decider of whether a person is truly ‘favored by the gods’ or just occasionally smiled-upon by chance is how they act when Murphy’s Law sets in.
Will you, as Napoleon did at the Bridge of Arcole, grab a flag and inspire your troops to cross? Can you direct them to remain calm and continue building barricades as Caesar did when his legions were ambushed on campaign by Gauls? Can you think quickly on your feet, or on your knees as William the Conqueror did after tripping on the beaches of England and coming up with two fistfuls of sand, turning what would have been a bad omen to his army into a gesture of seizing the land?
If you’ve followed step 1 correctly, then most of the “can go wrongs” will have been accounted for, freeing you up to conceive and execute a fix for the unplanned for on the spot.
Even if it all falls apart, you will have lived luckier than most
What so many of the greats have in common is that eventually, their luck catches up with them. Overconfidence causes hubris and neglect of the three ingredients to luck, resulting in their eventual downfall.
This principle is so ingrained in our collective psyche that few legends and sagas end on a happy note. With the possible exception of Perseus, nearly all the Greek heroes die tragically, as do most of the Celtic and Norse legends and the 108 heroes of China’s Water Margin.
Chasing the leprechaun often leads to overreach, which rarely ends well. Nonetheless, what so many of them felt during their lifelong pursuits is something those who hide from their destinies rarely get to experience: the exhilaration of a being firing on all cylinders at the height of their powers.
Luck feels so good because it’s the byproduct of the pursuit of excellence and achieving of one’s full potential.
“What sets those known for their great luck apart from the rest of us is this: they made themselves ready to take advantage of the favorable and minimized or outright eliminated the unfavorable.” Yes. The secret of life is not secret. Just hard to pursue.
A really inspiring article.