Ah relief…. After losing eleven straight games, many by only one run, my beloved Cubs reveled in a victory the other night.

It came against one of the league’s best pitchers, featured some great defense, and included the ground crew’s slip and slide choreography during a rain delay.

Baseball players are known for being “streaky.” If a team is on a roll, they seem to believe in being able to come from behind, and when a team is doing poorly, players seem to believe in their ability to snatch defeat from the “jaws of victory.”

But, you don’t have to be a sports fan to believe in streaks of luck or extended periods of misfortune.

If you’re driving on the highway after recently receiving a ticket, you expect a trooper will be waiting for you behind the nearest Gas-Food-Lodging sign. And damn if you’re not quickly sighted and cited.

Self-sabotage? Maybe. If you believe you are unlucky, it’s almost as if you trying to prove the inevitability of your misfortune. It’s like being right is more important than being happy.

While the Cubs have been on a devastating losing streak, I have been contemplating luck in a more personal way.

A friend recommended a podcast where psychologist Gay Hendricks was the interview guest. He spoke about Eight Secrets to Becoming the Luckiest Person You Know and his philosophy about consciously cultivating an identity as a lucky person.

While I consider myself lucky in many ways, there are probably two aspects of my life where I don’t feel lucky.

I don’t think of myself as lucky in love or lucky in my career.

As I contemplated Hendrick’s principles on building the mindset of a lucky person, one stood out for me, recognizing the roadblocks to accepting good fortune. And here, I have to talk about history.

It’s not easy to buck historical trends. The idea is taught in schools and reinforced everywhere; history repeats itself.

I could tell myself that just because something has operated a certain way in the past, it doesn’t have to continue that way, and yet I’ll look at recent history and conclude that outcomes cannot be different from a preponderance of data.

I know probability theory does not support the idea that if you didn’t get the guy (or girl) the last 20 times, you won’t succeed the next time you might be interested. I know that if your flip a coin, each time you flip it, there’s almost a 50-50 probability in seeing heads or tails.

It’s easy to give history too much power. We can usually take away lessons from history .History is compelling, but it’s not predictive. What we are used to can become comfortable, but it’s not inevitable.

Which brings me back to baseball. Doesn’t everything?

Why do they even bother to play the games? Why don’t they just run a computer simulation based on player stats and tendencies. (If you feel like answering “beer and hot dogs,” I think you only approach the issue.)

Each moment, each day, wants to be lived, wants to be experienced as it unfolds. There’s always a seed of hope that you can build on.

In each game, they keep score. They determine that one team wins and one loses. Most people keep score in their lives and often convince themselves that three cars in their driveway or two vacations a year, or some number of things or experiences will make them happy.

As I continue to contemplate being a VLP, a Very Lucky Person, I will keep looking for evidence that I can believe in a richer love life or greater success in career pursuits.

Meantime, allowing myself to experience what’s happening in the moment, letting gratitude and self-awareness guide and empower my decisions, brings me more confidence and happiness than simply reaching objectives which I track and count.

Knowing that happiness is about how you feel, not what the score may be, is no small thing.