Lucky You
By Nina Baruch
How to Use Luck
"Lucky people use many psychological strategies in order to turn bad luck into good", says Richard Wiesman, Professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. For ten years Wiseman studied the way people use luck in their life. The results of his research were published in a book, "The Luck Factor", which has become a bestseller.
"Psychologists had looked at luck before, but had found no science in chance, and abandoned their research," he said in an interview to the Guardian in March 2004. "It seems to me, though, that there are just too many people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky, for this to be a random phenomenon.
"I'm an extremely skeptical person, and when I began my investigations I expected to find that the differences between lucky and unlucky to be delusional; a matter of perception. Of course there were differences in perceptions of similar events, but it also became clear there was something else at work. By and large, lucky people were leading fulfilled, happy lives, while the unlucky were walking disaster areas. Somehow, lucky people were able to create opportunities for themselves."
Wiseman found out, that lucky people increase their chance opportunities by being open to different ways of achieving their goals; they are open to intuition and listen to their hunches; they expect to be lucky; they are able to see the positive side of bad fortune and are better able to deal with it.
During the years Wiseman put his theories to the test, and asked many unlucky volunteers whether they had gotten the relationship, the job or the deal they had wanted. After a series of conversations and sessions with these volunteers, many of them claimed their lives have been transformed.
"There are only two types of people who cannot become lucky, " Wiseman said to the Guardian. "There is the person who is happy to be unlucky, for whom misfortune is a central part of their identity. And there is the person who is not prepared to put in the work; there is a lot of effort involved in applying the principles."
Wiseman differentiates between luck and chance. "A lucky person is just as likely to win the lottery as an unlucky one; similarly, a lucky person is just as likely to be the victim of a car crash or a serious illness as an unlucky one. It would be wrong to think we did have control over every aspect of our lives, but my research equally indicates we might have more control in certain areas than some people imagine. We are all subject to chance events; the key is how we respond."
Improve Your Luck
Wiseman became involved with luck and chance when he was six years old. He had gone to the library looking for a chess book, and was misdirected into the magic section. "From than on I became obsessed with magic and would practice it every opportunity I had," he says. "I did endless children's parties and became a member of the Magic Circle. I left school, and made a living as a magician. But it seemed an awfully tough way to make a living for the rest of my life." Eventually he decided to study psychology, "because what interested me wasn't so much the magic itself, as the art of persuading an audience to like the person deceiving them".
Eventually he decided to search for the reason some people lead happy successful lives, while others face repeated failure and sadness, and whether unlucky people could do anything to improve their luck and lives. After a ten year study, Wiseman was able to identify four main factors which explained leading a lucky life, as opposed to an unlucky life. He was then able to show a group of people who considered themselves unlucky, how to think and behave like lucky people.
"Lucky people get lucky because they concentrate on what can be done. This could certainly be more productive than the alternative of complaining about what can't be changed", says Wiseman.
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