HOW TO GET LUCKY

Live a Charmed Life 

• Lucky people, I found, get that way via some basic principles -- seizing chance opportunities; creating self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations; and adopting a resilient attitude that turns bad luck around.

Open Your Mind 

• The lesson: Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they're too busy looking for something else. Lucky people see what is there rather than just what they're looking for.

Relish the Upside 

• But research suggests athletes who win bronze medals are actually happier. This is because silver medalists think that if they'd performed slightly better, they might have won a gold medal. In contrast, bronze medalists focus on how if they'd performed slightly worse, they wouldn't have won anything. Psychologists call this ability to imagine what might have happened, rather than what actually happened, "counter-factual" thinking. To find out if lucky people use counter-factual thinking to ease the impact of misfortune, I asked my subjects to imagine being in a bank. Suddenly, an armed robber enters and fires a shot that hits them in the arms. Unlucky people tended to say this would be their bad luck to be in the bank during the robbery. Lucky people said it could have been worse: "You could have been shot in the head." This kind of thinking makes people feel better about themselves, keeps expectations high, and increases the likelihood of continuing to live a lucky life.

Learn to Be Lucky 

• One unlucky subject said that after adjusting her attitude -- expecting good fortune, not dwelling on the negative -- her bad luck had vanished. One day, she went shopping and found a dress she liked. But she didn't buy it, and when she returned to the store in a week, it was gone. Instead of slinking away disappointed, she looked around and found a better dress -- for less. Events like this made her a much happier person. Her experience shows how thoughts and behavior affect the good and bad fortune we encounter. It proves that the most elusive of holy grails -- an effective way of taking advantage of the power of luck -- is available to us all.

SOURCE:  Richard Wiseman | Reader's Digest Magazine (September 10, 2010)