Think you have no control over how lucky you are in life? Psychologist Richard Wiseman says think again. Turns out you can learn to be a luckier person just by changing how you look at the world around you.
Photo by superfantastic.
Wiseman studied the lives of 400 people over the course of 10 years and watched for any lucky breaks or chance encounters—both good and bad—they had along the way. He discovered that some people are prone to worse luck than others, but it may be possible to create your own good fortune by tweaking your perspective on things.
In interviews with the study's volunteers, he realized that unlucky people are typically more anxious and tend to more hyperfocused on the specifics of a situation. Lucky people, on the other hand, are more laid-back and open to whatever opportunities present themselves.
My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic 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.
Wiseman says by honing skills like listening to your intuition and simply expecting to be lucky, you can actually increase the chance good fortune will find its way to you. In fact, 80% of the volunteers in his study group who tried this approach, ended up feeling like their luck had changed for the better.
What's your take on creating your own luck in life? Do you think it's possible to break out of a pattern of misfortune, or are we pretty much destined to just deal with whatever life has in store for us? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn [Telegraph.co.uk]
