The fails listed here can fall into a number of categories, from mistakes due to inattention or particularly unwise decisions, all the way to such blatant bad luck that one should check for family curses. Either way, a very human reaction is to blame bad luck.

No matter how rational a person is, there is still an overwhelming amount of belief in ideas of “good” and “bad” luck out there. As Chip Denman has said, "luck is probability taken personally." Instead of accepting that some days will just be bad, certain people start to assemble logical structures that would “explain” why something improbably unfortunate happened to them in particular. 

The psychological games behind the scenes vary from person to person. People more susceptible to gambling addiction might treat most random chances with the so-called gambler’s fallacy, where they believe that a string of bad luck has to be followed by good. This is why a person can continue to dump money into a losing game or investment long past any chance of recovering it. 

In very extreme cases, when a person has a particular streak of bad or good luck, they start to attach significance to completely unrelated things that were happening at the same time. If a person wins at blackjack on two separate Tuesdays, they may now see Tuesday as their “lucky” day, causing them to behave more recklessly on this day, most likely losing them more money in the long run. Some people take this so far that they will only make major life decisions on “lucky days," which is probably the cause of a lot of "unlucky days" for others who need an answer now.

Other people deny luck and instead believe that a supernatural force caused them to drop their phone down a drain or something similar. In a sense, religion actually removes the necessity to believe in luck, as misfortune can be chalked up to punishment from the divine, and “good” luck is a reward for doing something correctly. Carl Jung described this idea as deriving explanations from "a meaningful coincidence".

It’s not all wistful thinking, however. If you believe in luck, this thought can function like a placebo, assisting with positive thinking. This can lower stress and make a person more hopeful, which allows for more mental resilience against negative events. Pessimism is by no means “more'' rational or unrealistic than optimism, and comes with none of the mental health benefits, besides a strange sense of superiority. 

If this all sounds too random, then there is at least some consistent, scientific evidence that by and large “Lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, making lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, creating self-fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations, and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good,” according to a ten-year-long study.

Other researchers have found that the perception of good luck and having a good mood do seem linked at some level. The inverse is just as true, that people who legitimately believe they are unlucky are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. 

Some “good luck” rituals do even have some positive effects, for example, in some places, blowing left and right before crossing train tracks is considered important. This, naturally, also allows people to actually see if a train is coming, increasing the likelihood of not being hit. Walking under ladders is a classic example of a thing you should not do according to superstition, but it does perhaps also help one not get crushed by a ladder. 

In some places, certain numbers are seen as lucky, so people take extra steps to get “lucky” phone numbers, license plates, and even addresses. While it perhaps goes without saying, there is basically no evidence that any number, particularly one chosen randomly or by an urban planner, is more lucky than another, although one could see how a landlord with a “lucky” plot number would be quick to capitalize on this.