Last week an old friend of mine began training at White Rock IF as a customer. We played Metro soccer together in high school and I remember him as a naturally gifted athlete. He was a year younger but played up in my division because he was highly skilled, stronger and faster than everyone else. Fast forward 7 years or so and he is now 24 years old and borderline obese.
During his first training session we had the opportunity to briefly catch up while he was on the bike. Over the past few years he has experienced his fair share of turmoil. In his words, it’s been a spell of bad luck: adversity such as being seriously electrocuted at work and experiencing a foot fracture amongst many other unfortunate occurrences. After reflecting upon the conversation I asked myself, what exactly is luck and why do some people seem to stand out as either very lucky or terribly unlucky? Consider the millionaire who wins the lottery or the poor chap who is struck by lightning twice. My intent in posing this question is not to cast judgment on his character or place blame but I wanted to dig deeper.
Luck can be described as the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person's life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities. It seems that most research on the concept suggests that we always have the opportunity to make choices which influence what happens, be it good or bad. Even in the case of freak accidents we make choices to put ourselves in vulnerable situations. For example, a cyclist who was struck by a car could have likely reduced the risk of an accident by choosing a road with a larger shoulder, wearing bright attire or avoiding streets with traffic altogether.
Professor Richard Wiseman, 37, is head of the psychology research department at the University of Hertfordshire in England. For the past eight years, he and his colleagues have studied what makes some people lucky and others not. After conducting thousands of interviews and hundreds of experiments, Wiseman now claims that he's cracked the code. Luck isn't due to karma or coincidence, he says. Instead, lucky folks - without even knowing it - think and behave in ways that create good fortune in their lives.
According to Wiseman, these four principles can create good fortune in your life and career.
1. Maximize Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing, and acting upon chance opportunities. They do this in various ways, which include building and maintaining a strong network, adopting a relaxed attitude to life, and being open to new experiences. How will you win the lottery if you don’t play? How will you receive the promotion at work if you don’t apply for the position?
2. Listen to Your Lucky Hunches
Lucky people make effective decisions by listening to their intuition and gut feelings. They also take steps to actively boost their intuitive abilities -- for example, by relaxing and clearing their mind of other thoughts.
3. Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are certain that the future will be bright. Over time, that expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because it helps lucky people persist in the face of failure and positively shapes their interactions with other people.
4. Turn Bad Luck Into Good
Lucky people employ various techniques to cope with, and even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes their way. For example, they spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, they don't dwell on the ill fortune, and they take control of the situation.
*** Please watch this 10 minute video when you have a chance. It reveals Wiseman's research and explains how we all can dictate our luck. Luck Video. ***
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