Intriguing. Received this article from a friend about a study done to find out why some people have all the luck. After reading it, this brings to mind some of books written about the law of attraction, books like “The Secret” have been a block buster sale because it appeals to us about attracting good fortune. The earliest publication for this article that I found was in 22/Dec/2003 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3335275.stm) and since then many other websites and blogs have republished it and commented about it.
Basically, if one is positive in his outlook there tends to be a positive aura about him and somehow like attracts like, and good fortune would soon follow him. Positive is nothing new but it is something to think about and even practice it. Hey no harm following the findings if it brings you more “luck”! Some of my church members don’t like to associate a situation to good luck as that seems to represent some random chance on a roll of dice that gave you luck and would prefer to attribute the good fortune to blessing bestowed upon by God. So they rather call it good blessing than good luck. That’s another way of looking at things that Someone up there favours you and decided to give you a boon!
Somehow I noticed that when you are in a negative mood, fatigue and grouchy, there is some tendency of attracting bad situation. Somehow the predators of evil will sense it and send thieves, angry people along your path causing some mayhem and havoc in your life.
Believe me, I have my fair share of good luck and bad luck and looking back at those situation, somehow the mood you are in at that time seems to carry through to that life situation. There are some things that cannot be explained. Even with this study on good luck it didn’t delved deep into the inner workings of luck like the listening to instinct part, where does the instinct come from? We Christians will refer it to the whispers and gentle promptings of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps a higher spiritual order is at work here rather than some scientific explanation, right?
Anyway I leave the philosophical questions for you to figure out while you read the Why Some People Have All the Luck article and see if any “good luck” can be improved upon in your life. After all we do need it to have a better outlook on life, yes?
Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves – Larry King
Everything in life is luck – Donald Trump
Luck is believing you’re lucky – Tennessee Williams
I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it – Thomas Jefferson
Why Some People Have All the Luck?
By Professor Richard Wiseman,
University of Hertfordshire
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 and women volunteered for my research and over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and 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 and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and 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 and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: ‘Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50.’
This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 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.
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 and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs. The lucky ones make the best of what they have and find ways to make it better.. Unlucky ones tend to find an easy way out and fail in life.
Lucky people are more relaxed and 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 and 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 and 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 and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.
The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky.
Finally, I had found the elusive ‘luck factor’.
Here are Professor Wiseman’s four top tips for becoming lucky:
- Listen to your gut instincts – they are normally right
- Be open to new experiences and find ways to make things work better.
Family and loved ones for a start. - Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well
- Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.
Have a Lucky day and work for it. The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.