The Differences Between Lucky and Unlucky People
by Lockup Doc
What separates the lucky from the unlucky in the world? Do people have control over their “luck,” or is luck an entirely random phenomenon?
I’ve often wondered about these questions. I have heard many successful people mention that an element of luck was one important ingredient in their success, but what exactly does this mean?
A couple of years ago I discovered a book called The Luck Factor. It was written by a British psychologist, Dr. Richard Wiseman. He carried out various research studies in order to better understand luck.
Here are some of his findings:
1. “Lucky people create, notice, and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives.”
The way that lucky people think and behave makes them more likely to experience good fortune. They expect positive results.
a. “Lucky people build and maintain a strong ‘network of luck.’” Generally speaking, lucky people are more social and more extroverted than unlucky people. They smile more; tend to like people and strike up conversations with strangers. They naturally develop networks of people. In turn, they increase their odds of coming across chance opportunities that more introverted persons might not. This makes perfect sense to me. While I believe people should be able to happily exist as introverts or extroverts, this point presents a great argument for why introverts might want force themselves out of their comfort zones occasionally and learn to network with others.
b. “Lucky people have a relaxed attitude toward life.” Dr. Wiseman found that people who tended to be uptight and therefore too focused on a particular task at hand were less likely to see opportunities that those with more laid-back approaches to life. He cited several specific examples to illustrate this point. Interesting!
c. “Lucky people are open to new experiences in their lives.” Those who crave predictability and sameness are less likely to come across new opportunities than those who like variety and unpredictability. Again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with existing with either mindset, but those who fear change might find new opportunities if they shake the humdrum routine up a bit.
2. “Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings.”
a. "Lucky people listen to their gut feelings and hunches.” A larger percentage of lucky than unlucky people used their intuition; their gut feeling of whether something was right or wrong; in financial decisions, career choices, business, decisions, and personal relationships. Of course lucky people use more than just intuition in making most decisions, but this was one important aspect.
b. “Lucky people take steps to boost their intuition.” Lucky people were more likely than unlikely people to use strategies such as meditation, returning to a problem later, clearing their minds, or finding a quiet place.
3. “Lucky people’s expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions.”
a. “Lucky people expect their good luck to continue in the future.” I think this is one of the most important points to emphasize from this book. Lucky people have lucky expectations. On questionnaires about their expectations of positive things manifesting and negative events not occurring, positive people expect the positive and do not expect the negative. The converse was true for the unlucky. I truly believe that what we put our attention on is what expands in our lives. I spend half of my professional time treating inmates, and every day that I work with them I encounter many who have such low expectations for their own lives that it’s no surprise that they fail to achieve what they say they want.
b. “Lucky people attempt to achieve their goals, even if their chances of success seem slim, and persevere in the face of failure.” Along these lines, both lucky and unlucky people create self-fulfilling prophecies. In other words, because of their positive or negative beliefs, they behave in ways that significantly increase the odds of the expected positive or negative outcome to occur. Although the author did not specifically mention that the positive and negative groups define failure differently, I suspect that they do. I personally believe that lucky people are more likely to see failure as nothing more than a negative judgment about a result that has been produced. It’s what one does with that result that matters. I suspect that many unlucky people are more likely to see the failure to produce a desired result as a personal failure.
c. “Lucky people expect their interactions with others to be lucky and successful.” This expectation often becomes another self-fulfilling prophecy: Lucky people behave in a manner that results in others responding to them positively.
4. “Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune.”
It’s not that lucky people never experience misfortune. However, when they do, they tend to approach it very differently than do those with an unlucky mindset.
a. “Lucky people see the positive side of their bad luck.” I think we all know that the concept of luck is relative. Whether or not we consider ourselves lucky in a particular situation really comes down to how we frame it. When involved in unfortunate circumstances, lucky people were far more likely than unlucky people to appreciate how much worse their circumstances could have been. Conversely, unlucky people tended to dwell on the negative any time that something happened that they didn’t like. For me personally, this point was the one I found most useful. While I generally have a ‘lucky’ mindset and expect good fortune, I realized that this was the one point on which I could most improve.
b. “Lucky people are convinced that any ill fortune in their lives will, in the long run, work out for the best.” Often when something happens that we didn’t expect and don’t like, we assume it is a negative. But in the bigger picture, we really don’t know—events that appear negative at the time often become blessings in disguise. Regardless of apparent adversity, lucky people hold on to their belief that in the end, everything will work out for the better.
c. “Lucky people do not dwell on their ill fortune.” This is an important point in our victim culture where people are often encouraged to bond to their wounds, forming an emotionally unhealthy identity tied to their misfortune.
d. “Lucky people take constructive steps to prevent more bad luck in the future.” When things don’t work out, unlucky people are more likely to give up and feel defeated whereas lucky people are more likely to persist and to try to learn from their mistakes.
This book was a fun and at times enlightening read. If you’re expecting a book filled with rigorous objective scientific tests, this isn’t it. But if you want to learn about some of the practical differences between those who are more successful and less successful in life, then I believe the book has some valid points. Personally I found it useful.
What do you think about this?
Photo by Greencolander
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