We’ve all used the word, “luck” before in everyday conversations. For example, “I’ve had a really lucky day today” and “How could such a coincidence happen? It must be luck!” So, what IS luck? How has it become so widespread? Are some of us born with more luck than others? And, most importantly, how may we turn our luck around, if at all?
There are four types of luck: blind luck, luck from motion, luck from awareness, and luck from uniqueness.
What is Luck?
Luck is defined by the occurrence of improbably beneficial or harmful occurrences. There are four kinds of luck: blind luck, luck that occurs as a result of pure coincidence and requires no additional luck-inducing actions; luck from motion, which comes as we push ourselves to take part in as many activities as possible and expose ourselves to many different environments and people; luck from awareness, which takes place in those with more experience in a certain field, who more easily spot beneficial, chance opportunities and act quickly to seize them; and luck from uniqueness, which comes about when those with a never-before-seen set of hobbies and talents are given once-in-a-lifetime chances for being themselves.
How Has Luck Become So Widespread?
Superstitions around luck have helped enormously in spreading the belief of luck.
Superstitions around luck, widely-recognized but unproven beliefs that supernatural forces will cause one action to multiply or take away a person’s luck, have played a prominent role in spreading the belief in luck. Throughout history, we have relentlessly tried to control how lucky we are. For centuries, civilizations have used charms, amulets, and talismans to improve one’s luck. “Knock on wood” evolved from ancient pagan rituals, which involved touching wood to gain the help of tree gods. Other superstitions include the beliefs that bad luck branches from a black cat crossing your path, the number thirteen (there were thirteen at Christ’s last supper), walking under a ladder (the ladder against a wall forms a triangle, which resembles the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), and smashing mirrors.
A 1996 study by the Gallup Organization, a management consulting firm which asked a thousand participants whether or not they had superstitions, found that seventy-eight percent believed in them. The result instigated various other investigations into the nature of luck, some of which tested the integrity of the most well-known modern superstitions. In one experiment, participants first played a coin tossing game to test their luck; then, both black and white cats were persuaded to walk across their paths; finally, they played the coin-tossing game again. In others, subjects walked under ladders and smashed mirrors. In yet another, conducted by Richard Wiseman, the holder of a doctorate in Psychology from the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, England, and whose research makes up most of this article, volunteers were given lucky charms to carry around for a few weeks. No matter which superstition was tested, the results were the same: no superstition bears any effect on the amount of luck an individual has.
In addition to having earned a Ph.D., Richard Wiseman is a professor of Public Psychology at the University of Edinburgh.
Richard Wiseman’s book, The Luck Factor, describes his experiences in uncovering the mysterious nature of luck.
Why Do Some People Seem Luckier Than Others?
In 1993, Dr. Wiseman began a ten-year scientific study into the reasons behind why some individuals seem luckier than others. In 2003, The Luck Factor, a short book describing all of his findings and the methods he used to reach them, was published.
To conduct his study, Dr. Wiseman placed advertisements in national newspapers and magazines and gathered four-hundred willing volunteers. The participants were of a multitude of ages (eighteen to eighty-four) and professions (businessmen to factory workers to teachers to doctors to housewives).
To start, Dr. Wiseman defined a lucky person and how they differ from an unlucky one. He found that lucky people often find themselves “in the right place at the right time” and receive miraculously-beneficial opportunities. For instance, Barnett Helzberg Jr., the former chairman of Helzberg Diamonds, became so successful all because he, by chance, heard a woman call out Warren Buffett’s name as he was walking by and took the opportunity to introduce his company to Mr. Buffett, who later invested in Helzberg Diamonds.
After a series of scientific procedures, Dr. Wiseman concluded that luck is not supernatural. Humans are not born into fortune or misfortune, and whether a person defines themselves as being lucky or unlucky depends entirely on how they view a situation (if they see it under a positive or negative light) and their actions (whether or not they step out of their comfort zone and create new experiences and potentially-helpful opportunities for themselves). Although Dr. Wiseman presented a set of high-quality results, the strategies and processes he used to produce them are a noteworthy representation of the beauty of rationality and are more than worthy of the time it takes to read them.
To answer the question of why those who considered themselves lucky were given so many rare, life-changing chances, he asked each participant to count the number of photographs in a newspaper. On the second page of the paper was a large message (each letter was over two inches high) which said, “Stop counting – There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” On average, luckier participants took mere seconds to finish counting, since they had spotted the evidence, while unluckier participants needed minutes because they, evidently, had not. Halfway through the newspaper, another message was printed, “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250,” which none of the unluckier participants spotted.
According to personality tests conducted by researchers, those who consider themselves unlucky tend to be more tense and anxious than those who do not. To discover how that relates to lack of the ability to spot many opportunities, participants, in one experiment, were split into two groups. Those in one group were told to follow a dot as it moved on a screen. At times, large dots were flashed at the corners of the screen, which were noticed by almost everyone. Those in the other groups were given the same instructions but offered a large sum of money if they could follow the dot at all times and, thus, were made more anxious. Again, the larger dots were flashed, but over a third missed them. Thus, it was concluded that unluckier individuals miss many opportunities partially due to their undivided focus on finding one chance opportunity, which prevents them from seeing others. Luckier individuals are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there, rather than what they are searching for.
Luckier participants attempt all sorts of behaviors so their lives become less monotone. For example, one volunteer follows a different route to work every day, while another chooses a color before attending a party, and talks only to invitees dressed in that color, to increase his chances of meeting new people. In this way, such people are exposed to an even greater amount of chance encounters.
To illustrate the logic behind such a statement, Dr. Wiseman provides this example:
“Imagine living in the center of a large apple orchard. Each day you have to venture into the orchard and collect a large basket of apples. The first few times it won’t matter where you decide to visit. All parts of the orchard will have apples and so you will be able to find them wherever you go. But as time goes on it will become more and more difficult to find apples in the places that you have visited before. And the more you return to the same locations, the harder it will be to find apples there. But if you decide to always go to parts of the orchard that you have never visited before, or even randomly decide where to go, your chances of finding apples will be dramatically increased. And it is exactly the same with luck.”
Those who consider themselves lucky also hand many decisions off to their intuition, the feeling that dictates whether or not we have made a sound decision. A survey of more than a hundred volunteers revealed that most unlucky participants tended to ignore their intuition and later regret their decisions, while lucky participants typically gave way to their intuition and were greatly rewarded. Luckier individuals also enhanced their intuition by clearing their mind, performing meditation, enjoying some peace and quiet, and delaying stressing out about a problem.
Another trait of luckier people is confidence that their good fortune will continue in the future. After asking participants to give possible probabilities for a wide range of different favorable events to take place, results showed that those who consider themselves lucky usually have high expectations that every event will occur, no matter if they are general, specific, inside their control, or outside of it.
Those who are luckier have higher hopes for the future.
Individuals who see themselves as lucky typically expect all the misfortune they experience to be temporary and believe their good luck will return in no time, while those who think themselves unlucky expect all good luck to be short-lived and believe they will return to having bad luck sometime soon. Due to the fact that our expectations can largely influence our thoughts, emotions, and actions, it is vitally important for us to hold high expectations for the future so we are encouraged to persevere through the greatest of challenges, no matter our chances of succeeding.
It is important to note that having positive views towards others is just as important as holding high expectations for the future. Those who consider themselves lucky often form successful relationships with many others because they believe everyone they meet will be interesting and talkable and are, consequently, enthusiastic to meet strangers. On the other hand, those who consider themselves unlucky expect to meet less-interesting and less-relatable individuals, and behave accordingly to strangers; as a result, they tend to form fragile relationships with others.
Can We Turn Our Luck Around?
To answer this question, it is important to note why luckier people keep their luck. The answer to that can be explained through a small questionnaire centering around Olympic medalists.
Scientists conducted a survey with Olympic medalists that explains counterfactual thinking, the tendency we have to imagine what could have happened, rather than what did.
Scientists found that bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists, even though they hold a lesser medal. Such an unexpected outcome is entirely reflective of the large impact our thoughts have on our emotions. Silver medalists take on a negative view, thinking they were one step from gold, while bronze medalists, having a more positive outlook, are satisfied with having earned something and being one step up from taking nothing home.
In a similar way, counterfactual thinking, the tendency we have to imagine what could have happened, rather than what did, differs greatly between individuals who are usually luckier and individuals who don’t: luckier people often imagine worse outcomes to unfortunate events and consider themselves lucky; by contrast, unluckier people imagine better outcomes to unfortunate events and deem themselves as having been unlucky.
To reach those conclusions, Dr. Wiseman directed an experiment in which he asked participants to imagine working as a banker, being a victim of a bank robbery, and taking the only bullet fired during the robbery in the arm. Luckier volunteers looked to the bright side, with one commenting, “It’s lucky be- cause you could have been shot in the head – also, you could sell your story to the newspapers and make some money,” while unluckier volunteers considered it to be enormously unlucky that they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
To test all of his theories (that those who are lucky seize opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect their good luck to continue in the future, and can transform their misfortune into good luck), Dr. Wiseman carried out a series of experiments called “luck school.” During it, he first conducted tete-a-tetes with participants that gathered information on their luck and their satisfaction with the six major areas of their lives: Physical Health, Family and Relationship Fulfillment, Work and Career Prosperity, Wealth and Money Satisfaction, Spiritual Wellness, and Mental Strength. He then taught them his theories, which he called, “the four main principles of luck,” steps to take to create good fortune, and techniques to use to behave like a lucky person. Afterwards, the volunteers practiced all that they had been taught for a month, came back, and summarized their experiences. In the end, eighty percent of participants gained satisfaction with their lives and felt luckier, no matter the degree of luckiness they were at previously.
Conclusion
All in all, luck is not distributed unevenly among individuals. Our luckiness depends on four things: our ability to notice once-in-a-lifetime chances, our willingness to trust our intuition and gut feelings, our readiness to trust that we will persevere through the toughest of challenges, and our perception of all that happens to us: whether we view them from a positive angle or a negative one. With that said, it is absolutely possible for us to change our fortune; all we need to do is act.
To download The Luck Factor for free, click here.
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