Do you consider yourself a lucky person? Some people feel like things always go their way; others feel the exact opposite. The rest of us are somewhere in between. No matter where you fall on that scale, would you like to be MORE lucky?
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, wanted to know more about why some are lucky and some are not. He spent a decade studying “lucky” and “unlucky” people.
To get started, he put out an all-call for people who consider themselves either very lucky or very unlucky and then interviewed them looking for commonalities. He found people who felt like they lived “charmed lives,” where everything seems to go their way. And he found people who seem to have mishaps and long streaks of unfortunate events.
With a few ideas in mind, he then conducted several experiments, including this one:
“I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2 inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.”
I love this! The successful people in his study were noticing everything in the newspaper, the pictures and words, even though they were told to count just the pictures.
Wiseman proposed that “lucky” people tend to be more observant and more open to possibilities. First of all, they tend to notice all kinds of things around them, which allows them to recognize opportunities more easily. On the other hand, the unlucky allow opportunities to pass by unnoticed. Additionally, the lucky tend to be more open to all kinds of possibilities. An opportunity might not actually “fit” their need, but they are open to it regardless because it might lead to something else.
What a beautiful lesson! If you want to have more opportunities, then one easy step is to become more observant of the world around you. Walk with your head up. Talk to people you might not normally meet. See everything as a possibility. Be open instead of closed off. Allow things to go your way.
Maybe your luck will change!
