If you want to become a luckier person, crossing your fingers will only take you so far. But if you want to improve your chances of good fortune, in your life and in the casino, one researcher has discovered the magic formula. At a minimum, Richard Wiseman, a professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, can get you on the right track.
His study started with asking a simple question: How is it possible for certain people to be in the right place at the right time over and over again? These people benefit repeatedly from good fortune while others seem to attract only bad luck.
Wiseman set out to seek an answer to the question by developing a number of experiments. By surveying a number of volunteers he first noted how lucky they felt they were. Then he had them participate in a series of specially designed tests.
There was one test that was particularly interesting: the volunteers were asked to count the number of photos they saw in a newspaper. Seeded within the test and plainly visible was a short message that read: “Tell the researcher that you have seen this sign to win 250 pounds.” Participants who thought themselves to be lucky stopped counting the photos and read the message out loud to claim their money. That’s all there was to it. However, those who had previously thought of themselves to be unlucky became confused and doubtful and in some cases said nothing at all.
This result inspired a new central theory to the research: Luck is a question of attitude. “The majority of people simply aren’t aware of things in their environment,” says Wiseman. What’s more, in his opinion, only 10% of our existence is random, the other 90% is defined by how we handle the things that happen in our lives. In other words, this is good news. If we want to be luckier in life, we need to start with ourselves, and change the way that we think.
In a related study of gamblers that frequent Las Vegas, much of the same results that Wiesman discovered in his study was verified using the survey method. The attributes of lucky gamblers verified in that study was used as the bases for widely viewed Travel Show on cable TV. So there’s not much debate about the fact that lucky people, gamblers or otherwise, think differently than those that are less fortunate.
The good news is that anybody can enhance their luck by simply changing their attitude. The way they think. Now let’s take a look at what makes luck people so lucky and how you might benefit from this research … >>> Read More
