Why Some People Seem To Have All The

Why Some People Seem To Have All The Luck

Richard Wiseman

Why do some people have all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? I set out
to examine luck, 10 years ago. Why are some people always in the right place at the right time,
while others consistently experience ill fortune? I placed advertisements in national newspapers
asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years,
have been interviewed by me. I have monitored their lives and had them take part in
experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the
causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and
bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently
encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their
ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked
them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a
large message halfway through the newspaper saying: ‘Tell the experimenter you have seen
this and win $50’.

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two 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.
Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their
ability to notice the unexpected.
As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something
else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to
make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job
advertisements and miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just
what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good
fortune via four principles. They 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.
I wondered towards the end of the work, whether these principles could be used to create
good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to
help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them
spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to
bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The
results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives
and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, i had
found the elusive ‘luck factor’.

1) Listen to your gut instincts — they are normally right.
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine.
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well.
4) Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Why Some People Seem To Have All The Luck Page 1 of 2

Have a Lucky day and work for it.
The author of ‘The Luck Factor’ teaches at the University of Hertfordshire. This
article is in circulation as an e-mail forward.

Government of India has an online Grievance forum

Government of India has an online Grievance forum at http://www.pgportal .gov.in/ Can you imagine this is happening in INDIA? The govt. wants people to use this tool to highlight the problems they faced while dealing with Government officials or departments like Passport Office, Electricity board, BSNL/MTNL, Railways etc.

Many of us say that these things don't work in India. Couple of months back, the Faridabad Municipal Corporation laid new roads in his area and the residents were very happy about it. But 2 weeks later, BSNL dug up the newly laid roads to install new cables which annoyed all the residents. A resident used the above listed grievance forum to highlight his concern. To his surprise, BSNL and Municipal Corporation of Faridabad were served a show cause notice and the guy received a copy of the notice in one week. Government has asked the MC and BSNL about the goof up as it's clear that both the government departments were not in sync at all. So use this grievance forum and educate others who don't know about this facility. This way we can at least raise our concerns instead of just talking about the 'System' in India. Invite your friends to contribute for many such happenings. PLEASE SPREAD THIS MESSAGE IF U WANT OUR INDIA TO HAVE A BETTER TOMORROW & FORWARD THIS MAIL TO AS MANY AS POSSIBLE.