From the time I was a small child I’ve had what my mother has always considered to be uncanny luck. On a trip to visit my grandparents at the shore, in the surf I found a can of still good beer for my father and one for my grandfather. While playing in a river, I found a pair of sunglasses that I wore for years. Once, while cleaning tables at the restaurant I worked at, out of curiosity   I opened an envelope before throwing it out and found an $800 money order. (Fortunately, the money order was drawn on a local bank, traced, and returned.) There have been numerous times when I thought that having something would be useful, only to find it abandoned somewhere a short while after. I quip that it’s my Irish luck and have since jokingly turned it into a game called “I Win,” where the only rule is that I win.

Now that sounds pretty cocky but even though I’ve been saying I’ve been playing this game for years, I never thought about it until my girlfriend started making fun of me for it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the game wasn’t so much about me winning, per se, it was about my perspective.

One piece of literature that has always stuck with me was a scene in Ender’s Game that I read in middle school. In that scene, groups of small children are being trained to be warriors and tacticians by playing a battle game in zero gravity. The goal was to get five children from their starting gate to their opponents starting gate without getting frozen, similar to a game of Capture the Flag. The problem was that with zero gravity, people were getting confused about which way was up. Then the hero of the book, Ender, began to play and quickly surpassed everyone. In explaining his strategy, he said that they were holding on to what they thought up and down should be. It was trying to hold on to these notions that caused their problems. Instead, they had to reorient their perspective.

I actually don’t think that my luck is better than anyone else’s luck (my luck this past week has been pretty sub-par actually) but here’s where I admit that “I Win” is rigged. (As an aside, I hate zero-sum games, so the game is also rigged so no one loses.) The ‘rules’ are pretty simple. In any scenario you find yourself in, there are multiple different outcomes. Sometimes, the game is really easy where the situation has a good outcome and the win will seem obvious. But this game can be difficult, particularly when your luck appears bad. But after taking the time to change the way you think about the situation, you can still discover ways to come out on top, when taking the perspective that everything experienced previously provides the tools for coping with your present situation.

Last year I was preparing to move in with a girl I was dating. Before packing up though, I wanted to make sure I had a job where she lived. I found a listing for a job in silkscreening, and was incredibly excited over the chance to learn more from professionals. Unfortunately, they didn’t hire me and the resulting uncertainty over a lack of a job led to scrapping the plans to move and the eventual breakup of what had been my longest relationship. I stayed at home, working the same job I had wanted to move away from, but after having made a decision to try and get as much as I could from the job, I started to enjoy working there. I made a resolution to overcome my shyness, and tried to make friends with new people. I caught a bus into the city, went to my first lesbian club and introduced myself to strangers. I’ve since made numerous friends that I keep in touch with regularly. Instead of being heartbroken like I feared, I wound up having the time of my life and that period of time has some of my happiest memories, in part because I decided that it would be. Arbitrarily, I decreed that I win, and then set out to make it so.

Sometimes the game is just pure luck, but much of the time by changing my perspective, I still feel like I came out on top. Apart from finding a total of about 50 or 60 dollars, the finds listed previously represent all of my found items. “I Win” is a lot more about an outlook than it is about actual winning, but I believe that I am a lucky person, and I believe that I always win, a mentality that has given me both confidence and happiness.