Are you lucky?

One of those days you sit in the park with a friend that clicks with you, and you start talking like Plato (or Plato-wannbe) .  My mate and I were talking about what makes people lucky.  It reminded me of a scientific research I have read and it’s a fascinating finds – there are actual significant differences in personality traits that contribute to people’s perception on their luckiness.

So this psychologist, Richard Wiseman, devised an experiment to test his two groups of people – one group consistently counts themselves as lucky, and the other group as unlucky,

I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2in 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.

It is shocking to see that the ‘lucky’ group tends to remain oblivious to the ‘lucky’ opportunities right in front of them.  I like how Wiseman puts a positive spin to the research outcome – being lucking is actually a *skill* that you can learn:

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches. Lucky people are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than simply looking at the rational side of the situation. I think this helps them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell – a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. They tend to take the same route to and from work and talk to the same types of people at parties. In contrast, many lucky people try to introduce variety into their lives. For example, one person described how he thought of a colour before arriving at a party and then introduced himself to people wearing that colour. This kind of behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by introducing variety.

Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune. They imagine how things could have been worse. In one interview, a lucky volunteer arrived with his leg in a plaster cast and described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. I asked him whether he still felt lucky and he cheerfully explained that he felt luckier than before. As he pointed out, he could have broken his neck.

So the keys are ICP: Listen to you Intuition/Instinct, be Creative, and stay Positive.  Wish you all luck and please do share with friends who find themselves lucky and more so those who don’t!

Special thanks to another good friend of mind who builds this MiniMotivation hack: keep refreshing it for more positive vibes.  I feel lucky already.