The Luck Factor

Are you a lucky person?  Or are you someone to whom misfortune often happens?  According to Professor Richard Wiseman in his book The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles, you can become luckier through changing your thoughts and behaviour.

Professor Wiseman conducted research with 400 volunteers from a wide range of backgrounds. He explored why some people seemed to lead charmed lives full of lucky breaks, while others experience one disaster after another.

He found that lucky people generate their own good fortune. He used the principles he found as the basis for a Luck School. 80% of those who participated increased their level of luck, happiness and success.

According to Professor Wiseman, there are five characteristics lucky people demonstrate.

How to Increase Your Good Luck

1. Resilient Attitude

Lucky people adopt a resilient attitude that transforms “bad” luck into good. They find the good in a bad situation, realizing how a circumstance could be much worse. More than that, they see opportunity coming out of a negative experience. These attitudes help them to keep their expectations about the future high, and increase the likelihood of continuing to live a lucky life.  This is very true in sales; being resilient is critical and necessary, especially when making cold calls.

2. Intention

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” – Seneca

Consider what you really want for yourself. Positive expectations lead to self-fulfilling prophesies.

Cultivate the language of positive expectation. Get away from talking about how bad everything is, and anticipating the next disaster in life’s soap opera. Assume that good will come from the most difficult of events. It will. In time.  Visualize: imagine the best outcomes you wish to take place. Expect the best.

3. Intuition

“Luck is when opportunity knocks and you answer.”  - Unknown

Make lucky decisions, based on your intuitive guidance. Listen to, and evaluate what you hear inwardly with an open mind. With practice, you may discover that spontaneous decisions are well rewarded. It is possible to fulfill a very good life based on the inner resource of your intuition.

“A person does not seek luck; luck seeks the person” – Turkish Proverb

4. Openness

Be available for chance opportunities; a new business venture, your life partner, the journey of a lifetime. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities because they are open to them. Anxiety and tension decrease your vision, in every sense.

Learn to relax, notice and enjoy the world around you. Be amazed. Listen to music that you love and to motivational speakers.  Let go of attachments to life having to be exactly the way you want. Allow the space for what you envisage to evolve into something much better than you could ever have imagined. This saying opens the way to the best outcomes:

Celebrate the beauty of the present moment.  Right now, you could be blessed with an idea that transforms the quality of your life, and the lives of others.

5. Action

Good luck does not necessarily just happen. You may not know that a person who is “lucky” has been applying themselves to an objective for some time.

Have you been blessed with good fortune?  Do you know lucky people?  What does “good luck” mean for you?  I would love to hear from you!

4 Responses to “The Luck Factor”

1. Mark says:

   February 23, 2010 at 6:56 pm

   Agree with luck, you have to open the door. Everyone has luck knocking on their door, they just need to know when to open it and persue it.

   Reply
2. Ann Barr says:

   February 24, 2010 at 2:56 pm

   And as Thomas Jefferson said: “The harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

   Reply
3. Giuseppe says:

   February 24, 2010 at 4:30 pm

   “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Early Roman Quote , I totally agree with it …..Giuseppe

   Reply
4. Ann Barr says:

   March 11, 2010 at 12:35 am

   Thank you, Giuseppe. And I love this quote: “Luck has a peculiar habit of favoring those who don’t depend on it.”

   Reply