Copyright, 2003 by Kurt Nemes

As luck would have it, the host was interviewing a British psychologist named Dr. Richard Wiseman. Wiseman has done extensive research on luck for the past 8 years—studying the traits and behaviors of people who describe themselves as lucky or unlucky.

Dr. Wiseman believes that what most people consider luck can be boiled down to measurable and teachable behaviors. Indeed, he has developed techniques that he believes even the unluckiest person can learn. His findings were so interesting that I went right out and bought his book, which is called the “Luck Factor.”

And I would like to share these ideas with you today. But first, let me ask a question? By a show of hands, let me see how many of you think that you are lucky? How many people would consider yourselves unlucky? Finally, how many of you believe that luck has played some part in a major life event?

When Wiseman started asking people these same questions, he found that 64 percent of people described themselves as either lucky or unlucky—that is they believe luck, good or bad, plays a major role in their lives. Furthermore, people felt that if luck played a role in one area of their life, for example, money or romance, it also played a role in other areas.

He also found that many people believe they have no control over luck. One person described herself as being a jinx because on the day she was born three other relatives died and because of that her family always described her as unlucky growing up. Wiseman was fascinated by people who seemed to be lucky—those who’d won the lottery, those who’d been in the right place at the right time, those who succeeded in business.

So he designed some clever experiments to see if he could tell whether luck was some inherited magical property or something that could be explained in a rational way.

In one experiment, he got two groups of people—those who described themselves as lucky and those who didn’t. In London, he gave them a map with a route charted out for each of them to follow through a neighborhood from a starting point to a café where the subject was to wait for the researcher. Along the path, Wiseman had placed 5-pound notes in noticeable locations. In the café, he had placed a successful businessman at one of four tables. What he found led him to some interesting conclusions.

The people who described themselves as unlucky or not particularly lucky simply followed the route along the path and arrived at the café. When asked how their walk was, they described it as “not out of the ordinary.”

However, among those who said they were lucky, he found quite different outcomes. When they were asked how their walk was, they told how they had the good fortune to find all this money along the way. What’s more, when the researchers arrived, they found the subjects chatting away with the businessman, some of them even having started working on business deals with the person. For some reason, they had been drawn to the successful man.

Wiseman concluded from this and other research that lucky people have three traits. They are more extraverted, they tend to believe that things will turn out for the best, and finally, they trust their intuition. In this experiment, the lucky ones were actively interacting with their environment. They paid more attention and were willing to interact with other people, sometimes even complete strangers.

Dr Wiseman figured that a person’s “luck” probably had more to do a with person’s personality or some set of learned behaviors than anything mystical. Being a psychologist, he knew how much a person’s opinion of how things will turn out affects how they actually do turn out. We’ve all heard of self-fulfilling prophecy. It is the basis of cognitive psychology and countless self-help books.

Over the years, Wiseman has identified four traits of lucky people. Based on these, he has come up with a series of exercises and even training programs to teach people how to develop these traits. In effect, how to improve their luck.

Principle One: Maximise Chance Opportunities

Wiseman has found that lucky people are teriffic networkers. They often start up conversations with complete strangers in line at the grocery store, for example. What’s more they keep in contact with those people. Think about this—the more people you meet, the more chances you have for finding someone who has a bit of information or knows someone who could help you reach a goal you might have. Wiseman also found something almost ridiculously simple about lottery and contest winner. People who win such contest enter lots of contests continuously. You can’t win if you don’t play. It’s almost too simple to be true.

Principle Two: Listening to Lucky Hunches

Dr Wiseman also found that really lucky people listen to their intuition and gut feelings before taking action. A lot of people learn to ignore those feelings and think of them as irrational. However, we’ve heard of many examples where the brain works out problems while we sleep. It is a lot more powerful organ than we think, and Wiseman suggest we listen to it more. Wiseman has found that many lucky people increase their intuitive abilities by using meditation and relaxation techniques.

Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune

Lucky people believe that their luck will continue into the future. Also, they believe that if they are lucky in one area of their life, it carries over to other areas as well. These feelings become self-fulfilling prophecies. But also, they are a great psychological coping mechanism and they help lucky people to keep their goals in sight and persevere.

Principle Four: Turn Bad Luck to Good

According to Wiseman, lucky people are able to play mental judo with ill-fortune and setbacks. When bad things happen to them, they tend to think how much worse it could have been or think of people who are unluckier than them. They also believe that they are in control of their destiny and that they can take action to change the situation. You don’t tell a friend he or she is a failure, when they have a setback. Why would you tell yourself that?

Now, I know I’ve been brief, but if you’re still not convinced that you might be able to change your luck, let me leave you with one other interesting story from this interview.

Wiseman is so convinced that luck is something that people can learn to develop that he has formed a consulting firm to teach individuals and staff in organization how to develop their luck. In one case, he trained the employees of a firm to use his techniques. In one year, the company increased its profits by 33%. Is it too far-fetched to attribute this to the training?

Wiseman doesn’t like to boast but he did bring up an interesting insight. Suppose that you were a client thinking about choosing to work with one of two firms. In the first firm, were neither overly friendly or overly rude. However in the next, the employees were optimistic about their company, believed in its success, and seemed to take a real interest in you as a client. They were interested in connecting with you and how they could work with you. Which one would you choose?

In conclusion, luck is probably the result of a certain set of behaviors and attitudes that a person has. According to Wiseman, these are 1) maximizing opportunities for luck, 2) trusting your intutition, 3) expect good fortune, and 4) positive self talk. I hope that if you’re lucky that you continue to do the things that make you so. And if you think of yourself as unlucky, why not take a look at this book and see if there isn’t something you can do, to change your luck?