Are you Lucky or UnLucky ..?

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 behavior 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 £250."

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.

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.

1) They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
2) Make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition
3) Create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations and
4) 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:

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. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy

Have a Lucky day