Luck

To increase the amount of good fortune in your life it helps to take stock of your own attitude. Sitting with your arms folded and saying, ‘Nothing good ever happens to me,’ is a very negative message to send to yourself, and complaining about life means you’re less likely to attract the golden opportunities in life that we call luck.

Dr Richard Wiseman has made a 10-year study of luck. He believes that there are people who are blessed with especially good luck, but he is convinced that they themselves have made it happen. In his book ‘The Luck Factor: Changing Your luck, changing Your Life - The Four Essential Principles’ he explains how he first noticed how some people attract good fortune constantly while others seemed to always attract ill fortune. He concluded that luck could not simply be the outcome of chance events. Instead, he says, there must be something causing things to happen consistently well for some and consistently bad for others.

By exploring the differences between how ‘lucky’ and ‘unlucky’ people think and behave, Dr Wiseman has designed four major principles of good luck.

Lucky people…

1. Create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their life, have a relaxed attitude and are open to new experiences.
2. Make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings and always listen to their hunches. Lucky people take steps to boost their intuition.
3. Expect their good fortune to continue and their positive expectations for the future help them to fulfil their dreams. They attempt to achieve their goals even if the chances seem slim and they persevere in the face of failure.
4. Are able to transform bad luck into good luck, are convinced any ill fortune will, in the long run, work out for the best and take constructive steps to stop bad things happening in the future.

‘My research has led me to conclude that people aren’t simply born lucky,’ says Dr Wiseman of Hertfordshire University, England, ‘instead they appear to have these four factors going on within them to differing extents, thanks to their personality and upbringing. Without realising it they are using these principles to create good fortune in their lives. Understand these principles and you understand luck itself.’