Can changing my attitude change my luck?

Dear Reader,

Here is an interesting research on definition of Lucky and Unlucky. A friend shared this.

Why some people have all the luck?

 

Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer.

Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men & women volunteered for my research & over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives & had them take part in experiments.

The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts & behaviour are responsible for much of their good & bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it & tell me how many photographs were inside.

On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message “Stop counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was over two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it. Just for fun, I placed a second large message half way through the newspaper. This one announced: “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.” Again, the unlucky people missed the opportunity because they were still too busy looking for photographs.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner & so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements & miss other types of jobs.
 
Lucky people are more relaxed & open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles:

-       They are skilled at creating & noticing chance opportunities,

-       make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition,

-       create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and

-       adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Towards the end of the work, I wondered whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think & behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned & described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives & perhaps most important of all, luckier.
 
The lucky people had become even luckier & the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor".
 
Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:

1.     Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right

2.     Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine

3.     Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well

4.     Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Here is a link to the full 5 page article by Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire.

May this article inspire you to invite luck by an altered attitude.

Tip #3 can be very well implemented by keeping a family JOY JAR at home. Do take a look at the blog I wrote early this year: Happiness jar - collecting moments of joy daily.

Warm regards,

Rohan