Luck can help you get to the next level of success, and improving your luck comes down to believing that you deserve and can achieve great things.

Kanye West is a great example: People like Kanye have the mental resources to be their own biggest advocates and tolerate setbacks.

Life is largely random, and there are often external blockers that we cannot control, but it's actually in our best interest to overestimate how much we control, overall.

Once you accept that, and start thinking, "I got this. Why not me?" you may find more luck coming your way.

The following is an excerpt from "Can You Learn to be Lucky?: Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others" by Karla Starr:

Who hasn't dreamed of placing their MVP trophy in the corner office as their assistant enters to say, "The president's on the line...again"? Sure, we've all had dreams like this, but some people actually go for it.

Continuously leveling up to achieve such great heights requires you to be insanely optimistic and tolerate the inevitable bumps and failures along the way. You have to have a high overall sense of your self-worth, believe that you deserve and can achieve great things.

You need, essentially, to be like Kanye West.

The comedian Dave Chappelle explained how he knew that Kanye West was going to be famous before he was a known public entity: "He answers the phone, he goes, ‘Hello. Huh? What? Uh-uh, I can't. I can't. 'Cause, I'm at Dave Chappelle's show watching sketches that nobody's ever seen before.' And then he says, ‘'Cause my life is dope, and I do dope sh--,' and then he hung up the phone."

Having the confidence to focus on the rewards in front of us leads to luckier outcomes, because constantly pursuing good things (rather than avoiding bad ones) translates to taking more shots at life's targets. A subset of these people dream of rosier futures, keep setting the bar higher, keep swimming in bigger ponds, and are willing to do what it takes to get there.

They have the mental resources to be their own biggest advocates and tolerate setbacks. While the rest of us can learn from them, mastering this fine art requires a few lucky things that are easier for a lucky few.

If you want people to invest in you, you have to believe in yourself

Thinking that you deserve to be on top depends, in part, on how frequently you wind up there. Over time, these moments of rising to the top of whatever group you happen to be in can stamp in where you see yourself on life's totem pole, adding marbles to the "I got this" side of your scale.

In social groups, we typically follow the leader: a mixture of who has the qualities we generally associate with status and who has the specific, status-relevant traits needed for a particular task, or who we can easily imagine winning that variation of the Shape Game.

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That is, a group automatically defers to its members on the basis of how closely they resemble Elon Musk—tall, attractive, intelligent, white, male, famous, billionaire—unless the group has another, specific goal best served by someone with different qualities. (A situation that requires someone to discuss growing up poor, having ovaries, and never reaching the top shelf is the only plausible scenario in which I would ever triumph over Musk.)

Should it come down to myself and a similar-looking short, scrappy, ovary-brandishing human, the two of us would duke it out by flaunting the human equivalent of peacock tail feathers—demonstrating competence by way of confidence, dominance by way of assertive behavior and subtle physical cues—until the other backed down.

A particular subset of optimistic go-getters choose to become their own bosses.

Entrepreneurs who fit the mold of our stereotypical image of what start-up founders typically look like—Musk, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey— are lucky. They have had an expanded sense of options in life, guided by role models who look like them. It's easier to feel as if you belong at a tech conference in the Bay Area when you're a straight white guy, which influences not only how likely you are to throw your hat into the ring but how others rate your efforts: Thanks to the Charlie Brewer principle, they see you as a Shape Game natural. And when you get graded on a curve, you're more likely to be buffered from stress and rejection. What other people have said about us and how they've treated us shape our future aspirations, but some things end up getting in the way. To avoid this anxiety, we change whatever is easiest to change. Constraints become preferences.

"If you're able to change your attitude and get all of your attitudes in line to support that decision, then you're going to function better with it," says the researcher Cindy Harmon-Jones. So the world tells us that we're good at certain Shape Games and hands us a menu of possible life routes, ones that everyone will cheer us on for. Once we form a stable belief about who we might be—what our possible, future self consists of—we go with it.

While some see these as foolish dreams, some people who aim high luck out because rewards loom larger and seem more attainable. Some people get lucky because they have enough D2 receptors, and when your brain's "no go" switch works well, you're able to maintain a stiff upper lip in the face of brownies. Individual genetic differences play a role in our willingness to make more of an effort to get a bigger potential reward. Variations in the dopamine system influence our ability to keep approaching good things; for example, differences in people's D1 receptors— the brain's "Go" system— influence baseline activity in the behavioral activation system. Some people are more sensitive to the good things: Variations in one protein in the brain's motivational circuitry, DARPP-32, make it easier for some to learn from positive outcomes; higher DARPP-32 levels in the nucleus accumbens—the brain's "talking stick"— make some more inclined to choose high- energy, high-reward options.

Leveling up requires the resources to get there

Life is largely random (you didn't choose your parents, to start) but it's actually in our best interest to overestimate how much we control, because believing that you can't handle something is precisely what makes it stressful.

Over time, stress degrades our health, relationships, ability to think, act, and reach our full potential. Stress is a threat to homeostasis, the perception that we don't have enough resources to deal with whatever's upcoming. Reframing hardships as opportunities to rise (rather than threats) is easier when we put a positive spin on our ability to handle things. Perceived social support, how frequently we experience positive emotions, and sensing a purpose in life make us feel like we have more resources to actively cope with stressors, adding "I got this" marbles to our scale.

It's key behind ideas like mental toughness, resilience, hardiness, and grit, all of which refer to our capacity to bounce back and keep moving forward to what we want.

When our actions directly influence outcomes (studying for a test will reliably increase your grade), tokens of a so-called irrational mind like superstitions, good-luck charms, prayers, and other religious rituals actually improve performance by reducing anxiety and increasing confidence in our ability to accomplish whatever we set out to do.

Believing that you are lucky or destined for great things can be maladaptive if you think that all you have to do is wait by the phone for a great job offer or start thinking that games of chance are the way to go.

Believing that good things will happen to you becomes a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy only to the extent that it promotes motivation, a belief in your capacity to improve, and confidence during a performance.

The underlying theme here is adopting an approach oriented mindset—using your strengths to address and conquer your weaknesses, rather than ignoring them. Think, "I got this. Why not me?" People with a high internal locus of control— who fully believe that they are masters of their destiny—have better life outcomes.

While that positivity illusion known as the status quo bias protects our view of the present—that things are cool as is—the better way to be delusional is to be like Kanye West and believe that as long as we do everything in our power to make it happen, eventually, the future will belong to us.

Excerpted from Can You Learn to be Lucky?: Why Some People Seem to Win More Often Than Others by Karla Starr, in agreement with Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Karla Starr, 2018.