Oct

Are You Lucky or Unlucky?

I came across an article recently about luck that I found really interesting. The article was written a few years ago by Professor Richard Wiseman and relates to a ten year scientific study he carried out into the nature of luck – what makes people lucky and unlucky? The article is called The Luck Factor, and Professor Wiseman has also written a book with the same name.

Professor Wiseman carried out a scientific investigation into the concept of luck to find out why some people are (or seem to be) consistently lucky, and others seem to frequently suffer from bad luck. He studied people who considered themselves to be lucky or unlucky. Out of the research he came up with four basic principles that lucky people seem to use.

Chance Opportunities
Professor Wiseman noted that lucky people consistently encounter chance opportunities. One experiment that he carried out was to give both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper. He asked them to look through the newspaper and tell him how many photographs were inside. The unlucky people counted the photographs, which took, on average, around two minutes. The lucky people were able to give the answer in seconds. The reason – on the second page of the newspaper there was a message, which took up half the page and was written in type that was over two inches high. The message said “Stop counting – there are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Those people who considered themselves to be lucky noticed the message, those who considered themselves to be unlucky did not.

There are examples in the article, and in the book, of people who happened to meet someone or be in a particular place “by chance” and met someone or did something that had a major positive impact on their lives.

Unlucky people tended to miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else.

Listen to Intuition
Lucky people pay attention to their intuition. If they suddenly feel that it would be a good idea to drive a different way to work or do something completely different, they do it.

Through personality tests that were carried out showed that unlucky people tend to be more tense and anxious than lucky people. This tends to disrupt their ability to notice the unexpected – just as with the newspaper experiment – they are so focused on their anxiety or particular problem, that they miss possible easy solutions.

Positive Expectations
Lucky people have the expectation that things will work out okay, whereas unlucky people tend to think the opposite. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they expect things to work out exactly the way they thought they would, lucky people are not so attached to outcomes, it seems, whereas unlucky people can be so focused on achieving exactly what they want that they could miss something better that comes along.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open and they see what is there, rather than just what they might have been looking for.

Resilient Attitude
Lucky people tended to see what might be considered a negative event in more positive terms – you could say seeing the glass half full, rather than half empty. For example, one experiment the Professor carried out was to present people with unlucky scenarios to see how they would react. One of the scenarios was to imagine that they were standing in line at the bank when an armed robber enters and fires a shot. The bullet hits them in the arm. He asked them to consider whether this was lucky or unlucky.

The unlucky people tended to feel that this situation would be unlucky – just their bad luck to be in the bank when the robbery occurred. However, the lucky people focused more on the fact that they only got shot in the arm, when it could have been much worse.

One of the most interesting things for me was that, as a result of this research, Professor Wiseman decided to create “luck school” where he taught people to behave and think like a lucky person. He wanted to see if people’s luck could be improved in this way. He discovered that about 80% of people going to “luck school” felt happier, luckier and were more satisfied with their lives.

Although this information is not new – those of us who work with the Law of Attraction have been aware of this for a long time – it’s the first time I’ve seen it presented in this way. Some people respond to a more scientific approach and I am fascinated by the scientific studies that have been carried out.

So, are you lucky or unlucky – apply these four basic principles and you may become even luckier.

The Luck Factor, by Professor Richard Wiseman