watch tHe skies

The other day I was talking with a mate about luck. My view is that luck is an opportunity to blame somebody or something else for what has happened to you in the past. In other words it is a way of absolving responsibility for your current situation.

Why do I think that?

Because only people who believe that they are unlucky harp on about other people being lucky. So they blame their bad luck or lack of luck on their situation rather than doing something to improve their position.

Dr. Richard Wiseman, head of psychology research at the University of Hertfordshire in and author of “The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life: The Four Essential Principles”, was curious about people who are consistently blessed with good fortune. For eight years he studied 400 people who considered themselves either particularly lucky or unlucky. As a result, he has proved scientifically that luck isn’t a coincidence.

Lucky people think and act with specific behaviors that open the way for good things to happen.

Lucky people expect success, moving beyond the “glass-half-full” power of positive thinking. They are skilled at noticing and more open to new possibilities. One way Wiseman measured this was by asking all 400 subjects to count the number of photographs in a newspaper. At the third page was a large advertisement that boldly declared, “STOP COUNTING! THERE ARE 43 PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS NEWSPAPER.” Lucky people noticed, laughed and asked if they should keep counting. Yes, they were told, keep counting. Further along there was another advertisement that read “STOP COUNTING! TELL THE EXPERIMENTOR YOU’VE SEEN THIS AND WIN 150 POUNDS.” Once again, the people who considered themselves lucky consistently noticed the advertisement. In contrast, the ‘unlucky’ ones flipped right past them. What would you have done?

Brian Tracy suggests “If you want more luck, take more chances”, and this is really the crux of luck. Another adage, “Fortune favours the bold” suggests that those that have a go get the chance. A good example here is uberthickie Jade Goody. I took a real dislike to her when I saw in one of those trash celebrity magazines that she has a Porsche Boxter. I told myself that she was just lucky; after all she is thicker than many amoebas and yet she is a millionaire off the back of getting on Big Brother.

The fact is, she took a chance and it paid off. Lucky or bold?

Believing in luck, particularly bad luck, is simply an excuse for not taking responsibility for who you are, where you want to go and how you are going to get there. Unfortunately I think that it is becoming a public malaise, thanks to the likes of the Lottery. I stopped doing the lottery when I noticed that I was daydreaming about what I would do with the money if I won. Basically instead of focusing on what I should be aiming at, my goals, that I should be working towards all of the time, thinking about the lottery takes your eye off the ball and leaves you waiting for the world to act on you rather than you acting on it.

So I have resolved to disbelieve in luck and believe in taking opportunities. Perhaps you should to.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 26th, 2006 at 7:38 pm and is filed under nlp & hypnosis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.