Do you consider yourself lucky?

I used to think I was a really unlucky person, and I had a lot of proof. I had never won anything in my life.

You know those people who always win party prizes over and over? That was never me.

No matter what drawing or contest I entered, luck never seemed to be on my side.

It started early. I used to spend summers on the Jersey Shore with my grandparents, and my grandfather loved entertaining my sister and me. He would take us fishing, play Skeeball in the penny arcade, and stroll the Point Pleasant boardwalk eating soft-serve ice cream.
 
One fateful day in 1984, we decided to play the roulette fortune wheel. My sister put her dollar on the word SON. And I chose the word BOY.

 

The wheel spun, and as it began to slow, tick, tick, tick… closely approaching… SON!

My sister won a Cabbage Patch Kid!

At the time, for a 10-year-old girl, winning a Cabbage Patch Kid was like winning a Ferrari.

If you didn’t have a Cabbage Patch Kid, you were a nobody.

The envy grew inside of me as my sister picked the cutest CPK I’d ever seen: a little baby boy with a bald head.

I immediately burst out in tears, and my grandfather said, “Let’s try again, Laura!” 

I was adamant about betting on SON, the lucky word. But my grandfather insisted I bet on a different word, so I agreed to choose the word DOG.
 
Would you believe, the word SON won AGAIN!?!
 
This time completely devastated, I cried even harder. It wasn’t fair that my sister won the best cabbage patch kid ever born. Plus, it was just my luck that the word I was talked out of actually won. It was like rubbing salt in a wound.

And so I went on in my life, never winning… ever. And I began to think I was just unlucky.

Then one day it hit me: the opposite of what I’d been telling myself was actually true. 

I had a good life! In fact, I was very lucky where it really mattered. I had a “great career,” a supportive community of family and friends, and my health. The constant self-talk about being unlucky dismissed all the good in my life.

So I committed to shifting my beliefs about my luck. Whenever I caught myself thinking I was unlucky, I changed it. I clarified what I really meant by declaring, “I have a very lucky life, but I just don’t win things.” 

A few years later I finally won something for the very first time!

I had entered an office Super Bowl pool just so people in my office wouldn’t think I was one of those people who didn’t like fun office activities. Guess what? I paid $10 and won $500!

I was over the moon, and literally (this is truly the proper use of the word literally,) the exact minute I learned I had won, I was involved in a snowy car accident heading home during halftime. The irony wasn’t lost on me. It was like Seinfeld’s Even Steven, and the $500 prize dissolved right into my car repair.

In that moment, I understood what was really important in life.

We often spend so much time wanting what we don’t have, that we miss what’s right in front of us. We can easily take for granted the things we have because we forget that health, community, and purpose are gifts.

Those are the true wins. I’m so convinced of that now, that when I say my new belief, it’s simply, “I have a very lucky life.” I don’t even need to add that I don’t win things. It’s not important to me anymore.

Last month, I was fortunate enough to join my friends, Dental Nachos, at their live event in Philadelphia. I got to spend time with “old” friends and make new friends.

This is what they do at Dental Nachos.

They value fun, support, and community– and it shows.

This weekend, they wrapped all those elements into a big prize raffle at the end of their event.

As it became time to raffle off the vendor prizes, I was finishing up a great chat with my new friend, Jason Milton, co-founder of Custom Capital.

Jason realized he had to run out to raffle off his prize in the conference room.

I hadn’t entered any of the drawings, and Jason gave me one, single raffle ticket for his contest.

As we were rushing to fill out my entry ticket in time, I said to him, “I have a story about winning. I used to never win anything in my life, and I always thought I was unlucky. Then I realized how lucky I am in life, and I reframed my messaging to myself. Instead of focusing on never winning contests, I focus on how lucky I am in the game of life. That’s why I don’t really care about entering drawings anymore.”

I thought I watched someone else win Jason’s really cool prize, a pair of Beats headphones.

Luckily, I didn’t cry this time watching someone else win my prize.

As we were almost done with all of the giveaways, I’ll just say it… I really had to pee. So I stepped out for two minutes.

Suddenly my Nacho friend, Ariel ran into the bathroom, and she exclaimed, “You just won a drawing, and you have to be present to win! We’re all waiting for you to win it, and we never wait for anyone if they’re not in the room.”

I charged out of the bathroom, into the conference room to see the entire community breaking the raffle rules… just so I could win.

I could have thought, “Well, as predicted, it’s just my luck that I’m in the room the whole time, and the minute I step out, I win… and therefore I lose.”

But the real win wasn’t the awesome Beats headphones I won.

The real win was the support of this amazing community.

Don’t get me wrong… winning is FUN! It feels amazing and exhilarating. But that feeling is fleeting. For true happiness in life, relationships and health and purpose are what matter.

In that moment, the win wasn’t the Beats. The win was the fact that this entire community had my back.

Having people in your world who want to see you win is the real win in life.

So stop focusing on what you don’t win and start focusing on the life’s true wins. I bet you’ll see your luck change before your eyes. Maybe you’ll even notice that your luck was there all along.