Do You Feel You Are Lucky?

A study on luck in the 1990s by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, who later published a book on the topic, discovered that lucky people practised four basic principles.

He said lucky people 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.

If you think about it carefully practicing these skills require awareness and consciousness. We need to be alert to our external environment and listen to our intuition. Only then are we more likely to see the doors of opportunity open and act upon them in a timely manner.

Someone who goes around in a dull and numb state would probably shrug off a chance occurrence as meaningless and almost always lose out on valuable opportunities.

Their thoughts revolve around statements such as "I'm so unlucky", "I never get any chances", "Other people are so lucky" and more such self-fulfilling prophesies. They may even believe in the age-old superstition that a black cat crossing their path means bad luck.

Dr. Wayne Dyer describes it as having rusty and clogged up pipes, being unable to communicate with or receive anything from the universe. Manifesting, attracting, serendipity or synchronicity, call it what you will, all these principles have at their core the need for awareness.

When our thoughts are clear and senses unclouded we can see situations and events clearly. We are more open to looking for what we need and when we find it receptive to receiving it.

In NLP terms so-called unlucky people have limiting beliefs that they cannot attract luck or even that there is no such thing as luck. On the other hand lucky individuals tend to manage their state of mind and realise opportunities. They have winning mindsets, which enable them to practise a resilient attitude of being open to exploring the benefits of even challenging times and circumstances.

They can relate to these quotes, "The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself" by Douglas MacArthur, or this one by George Bernard Shaw, "The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want. And if they can't find them, create them."

This is not to say we should all go around with rose-tinted glasses and blindly spout positive affirmations. Believing in luck does not mean totally ignoring or blocking out the bad stuff that happens in life. It is about acknowledging our circumstances and situations; recognising what will work and what will not and taking stock of our choices.

Here is Sir Richard Branson's view on luck, from his book, The Virgin Way.

"Sadly the vast majority of people seem to view their chances of "getting lucky" in much the same vein as the likelihood of being struck by lightning, as if it is something over which they have zero control. Well, in my humble opinion they couldn't be further from the truth - anyone who wants to make the effort to work on their luck can and will seriously improve it."

Consider this proposition - what if there is no such thing as 'unlucky people' only 'unlucky attitude'. In my life I have often been called "lucky" but I know the hard work I have done to get to the place that is seen by others as a given.

In one of my earlier jobs I was a banker working in Treasury. A gentleman from the Senior Economist Department one day remarked that I was lucky as I had a cushy life in the bank. He pre-supposed this, as my natural disposition was friendly and light-hearted.

As fate had it the bank re-organized departments and he ended up sharing the same space as my department. It was then that he saw the Managing Director turn up often at short notice to ask for reports and saw me do my very intense job behind the scenes.

He apologized to me one day saying that he was very callous in his view of me. He could see that I had worked hard to create my own luck.

What about you? How do you feel when you think about your life? Do you consider yourself a lucky person? And if you do what is the one thing that has taken you to that lucky place?