Why are Some People Lucky and Others Unlucky?
By Richard Wiseman
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I published advertisements in national newspapers and asked people who felt lucky or unlucky to contact me. Hundreds of people volunteered to participate in my study, and over the years I interviewed them, observed their lives, and asked them to participate in my experiments.
The results showed that, although these people are completely unaware of this issue, the key to their good or bad luck lies in their thoughts and actions.
I gave both groups of “lucky” and “unlucky” people a newspaper and asked them to turn the pages and say how many pictures were in it.
I secretly placed a large ad in the middle of the newspaper saying, “You will be rewarded £250 if you tell the supervisor of this study that you saw this ad.”
This ad filled half of the page and was printed in very large letters. Although the ad was quite stunning, people who felt unlucky mostly didn’t see it, while most lucky people did.
My study showed that unlucky people are generally more nervous than lucky people, and this nervousness impairs their ability to notice unexpected opportunities.
As a result, they miss out on unexpected opportunities by focusing too much on other things.
For example, when they go to parties, they are so engrossed in finding the perfect match that they miss great opportunities to make good friends. They flip through the newspaper with the intention of finding specific jobs and miss out on other job opportunities.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, so they see what’s around them and not just what they’re looking for.
Lucky people create opportunities for themselves based on four principles.
First, they are skilled in creating and finding suitable opportunities.
Secondly, they listen to intuition and make positive decisions based on it.
Thirdly, because of positive expectations, every good event is satisfactory for them.
And fourthly, their flexible attitude turns bad luck into good luck.
In the final stages of the study, I asked myself if these principles could be used to make people lucky.
I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month doing exercises that were designed to create the mood and behavior of a lucky person in them.
These exercises helped them find the right opportunities, rely on their intuition, expect luck, and show flexibility in the face of adversity. A month later, the volunteers returned and described their experiences. The results were astounding: 80 percent of them said they were happier, more satisfied with life, and perhaps most importantly, luckier.
And finally, I discovered the “luck factor.”.
Richard Wiseman (Psychologist, University of Hertfordshire)
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