Think yourself lucky. You really can.
We can create our own good and bad luck by how we think and behave.
I am lucky to have come across the work of Professor Richard Wiseman. It was nearly 20 years ago but I’ve never forgotten it. Wiseman is Professor of the Public Understanding of Psychology at Hertford University. He published his first book The Luck Factor - The Scientific Study of The Lucky Mind in 2003 after 10 years of scientific research.
How do you see yourself? Lucky or unlucky?
Here’s a story Wiseman tells. Depending on your response to it you’ll know how you identify. You might already know of course.
OK - so imagine you go into a bank and suddenly a bank robber charges in wielding a gun. The robber fires one shot and it hits you in the arm. Imagine your response.
The person who sees themselves as lucky says ‘Thank God it didn’t hit my heart or my head.’ In the experiment some people went on to imagine they could sell their story to a newspaper and make some money. Getting shot in the arm actually became a lucky event.
The person who sees themselves as unlucky says ‘Well it would happen to me wouldn’t it. One shot fired and I get it. Typical.’
This isn’t a judgement of one type of person or another. But if you want to feel better about life and increase your likelihood and opportunities to feel satisfied and happy then adopting a lucky mindset will help.
The problem of the unlucky mindset.
An unlucky mindset comes with a narrow perspective on the world. Wiseman calls it a narrow ‘attentional spotlight'. The person with the unlucky mindset just doesn’t notice as much. An experiment demonstrated this.
People taking part were given a newspaper and asked to count the number of photographs in it. Those who identified as lucky stopped counting after a few seconds as they spotted a half page message in the newspaper that read “Stop counting - there are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” The self identified unlucky people didn’t spot that. They also didn’t spot another half page message further on that said “Stop counting. Tell the researcher you have seen this and win $250.” These people took around 2 minutes to finish counting. When they were told about the messages you can imagine the reaction - ‘Trust me not to spot it…..’ and so on.
In trying so hard to do one thing, unlucky people don’t spot the opportunities for other things that could be really good for them.
Personality tests showed that unlucky people tended be more tense and anxious than their lucky counterparts. They also tended to stick to routines and patterns of behaviour. It’s a sort of unconscious living with an illusion of safety in it. It could be about controlling the risk of disappointment.
Wiseman didn’t suggest that. That’s me thinking about my own experience. You might know the self talk that says '‘If I don’t try I wont fail. So I’ll be OK because I really don’t know how I’ll cope if I fail and feel stupid and useless and well - like a failure.”
The person who sees themselves as lucky is more relaxed, less self judgmental and just wouldn’t see it like that. The story they would tell themselves would be completely different. It might be something like "I’ll have a go. It might be interesting and fun and if it doesn’t work out - well it’s not the end of the world is it.”
The brilliant thing Wiseman discovered, and proved, was that we can change our luck. We can become lucky.
“.....lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles.
They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities,
make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition,
create fulfilling prophecies via positive expectations,
and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”
It’s possible to do simple things to adopt a lucky mindset and live with more opportunities for happiness and fulfilment.
Wiseman coached his participants in things they could do on a daily basis to change. They might be simple things like taking different routes to work or any place you go to regularly, doing one thing a week that you wouldn’t normally do, break a daily routine that you usually do without thinking, before you go to sleep write down at least one thing you are grateful for that day, and if something bad happens that you perceive as unlucky (and let’s face it bad things do happen completely by chance) just imagine it being even worse. Imagining what could have been worse - but that didn’t happen in reality. - is a key tool to support the resilience of lucky people.
This is powerful stuff. It’s woven into Stoan Method because the sessions encourage you to think and see your life and possibilities for you with more openness. From that perspective you can choose things you can do to make positive changes in your daily life. It works.
Another great book is coming to mind. It’s about living more creatively and openly. It’s called The Artist’s Way - A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron. It was first published in 1992. She recommends and describes a 12 week course to get in touch with creativity and feel better. It became a phenomenon. In one of the weeks she recommends - just like Richard Wiseman - simply taking different routes to places you habitually go. In another week she encourages doing at least one thing you have never done before. Again, very much like the lucky mindset practice.
I really do feel lucky to have come across these people offering such useful resources that can make our lives so much better. Hope they are good for you too.
If you’re reading this and you suffer from chronic anxiety that means you simply cannot live with the flexibility of thinking and doing described here, then maybe it would be worth seeking advice from your GP to investigate what could help you. A good doctor will be able to suggest a range of possibilities that could be right for you.