Wanna get lucky?

Everybody loves talking about luck on St. Patrick’s Day.

Green beer. Four-leaf clovers. “Some people are just born lucky.”

Yeah… no.

When I started researching Wonderhell, I thought “making your own luck” was total BS, right up there with vision boards and manifesting your dream yacht. And then I actually dug into the science and had to eat my words (and not in the fun sheet-cake way).

Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied people who described themselves as lucky, and the pattern wasn’t magic. It was behavior.

Lucky people notice more.
They engage more.
They recover faster.
They act before certainty shows up.

In other words: they generate more opportunities because they create more contact with opportunity.

Not glamorous. Very effective.

I’ve seen this everywhere—in the research for Wonderhell, in the leaders I coach, and in my own life.

The people who look lucky from the outside are usually doing a few unsexy things on repeat:

They show up.
They speak up.
They ask.
They follow up.
They stay in the room a little longer than feels comfortable.

That’s not luck as a personality trait. That’s luck as a practice.

Because here’s what I know to be true this week. Luck doesn’t visit the people with the best vision boards. It finds the people who create a place for it to land.

That’s the real game.

And here’s where it gets more interesting: what we call “luck” is often just a higher tolerance for the awkward middle.

That space where you don’t know if the reach-out will work. Where you don’t know if the pitch will land. Where you don’t know if this version of you can actually carry the next level.

That messy in-between? That’s Wonderhell.​

It’s the moment after you glimpse a bigger life and before you know how to live inside it. It’s exciting. It’s disorienting. It’s where most people retreat and tell themselves the universe sent a sign.

It didn’t. You got uncomfortable.

Wonderhell, Luck, and That Awkward In-Between

When Limitless hit the bestseller list, when my TED talk took off, when the media calls started coming in, none of that felt lucky from the inside. It felt like reps, risk, and a frankly annoying amount of discomfort. It felt like saying yes before I felt ready. It felt like doing the scary thing while my inner critic ran a full PR campaign against me.

That’s what people miss.

The “lucky break” is rarely the whole story. The real story is whether you became the person who could meet it when it arrived.

For employees, this matters because waiting to be discovered is not a strategy. This week, stop asking, “What if nothing happens?” Ask, “Where am I refusing to create contact with possibility?” Send the email. Ask for the meeting. Put your name in the ring. Follow up on the loose thread you keep pretending is nothing. It’s usually not nothing.

For leaders, stop worshipping outcomes and then calling the winners “high potential.” That’s lazy. If you want lucky teams, build environments where people can take intelligent risks without getting punished for every imperfect swing. Reward curiosity. Reward initiative. Reward recovery. Don’t just celebrate the polished win—measure the behaviors that made the win possible. Agency creates engagement. Engagement creates momentum. Momentum is where so-called luck starts to look inevitable.

This is what I tell rooms full of executives all the time: people don’t need more inspiration. They need more consonance.

Because here’s the twist. You can create plenty of opportunities and still hate your life.

Don’t Leave Your Life to Luck

After two decades in executive search and more than 10,000 people through the Limitless Assessment, I can tell you this: luck without alignment is just a shinier trap.

You don’t only need opportunity. You need consonance:
​Calling — what matters to you
​Connection — whether your work actually ties to it
​Contribution — whether it fits the life you want
​Control — whether you have agency over any of it

When those four line up, opportunity energizes you. When they don’t, even a “lucky break” can feel like a cage with better lighting.

So here’s the move.

Don’t celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by outsourcing your future to a shamrock.

Create more surface area for luck:
Say yes to one thing that scares you.
Start one conversation you’d normally avoid.
Follow up on one opening before it goes cold.

Then go deeper and take the Limitless Assessment. It will show you whether you’re actually building a life that fits—or just getting better at chasing opportunities that look good on paper and feel terrible in your body.

The one thing I know to be true this week is… luck is rarely random. More often, it’s what happens when brave behavior meets aligned action.

Take the assessment. Then stop waiting to be chosen.

A Little St. Patrick’s Day Homework

If you want to get luckier this year, don’t buy another shamrock mug. Do this instead.

For the next 2 weeks:

1. Say yes to one thing that scares you (a little).
2. Start one conversation you’d normally talk yourself out of.
3. Notice one moment a day where things could turn into something more… if you followed up. Then actually follow up.

And if you want to go deeper, take a few minutes to walk through your own calling, connection, contribution, and control with the free Limitless Assessment.

Because you don’t need a four-leaf clover. You don’t need to wait for the universe to tap you on the shoulder.

You’re not one lucky break away from your big life. You’re a few brave, consistent behaviors away from being ready when luck shows up.

So this St. Patrick’s Day, don’t just wear green. Show up. Speak up. Stay in the room a little longer.

And when opportunity finally texts back? You’ll be ready.