What Is Luck? External Force or State of Mind?

Do you have that person you know that is just always winning things? They always seem to have their name drawn more times than it should. Entering a competition for them normally involves winning. Which begs the question: "Why do some people seem to live a life full of luck whilst others seem to just not?" There seems to be something that separates the lucky from the unlucky.

For a long time, Luck was considered to be an external force only controllable through ritualistic behaviours. These ritualistic behaviours formed the development of the concept of superstitions. This is the reason why some people try to not step on cracks or walk under ladders. In contrast, this is actually far from reality. The reality is far from any external force or act of the divine.

Researchers such as Richard Wiseman have been performing studies into the nature luck for over a decade. Wiseman wanted to ascertain what helped someone to be lucky or unlucky. He studied over 400 people over a 10 year period looking into what they did to create the luck or lack of luck. The crazy thing was that he found, for the most part, people made their own luck, good and bad. While he was interviewing the participants, he found that unlucky people tended to be more anxious and would focus on the specifics of the situation. Lucky people, on the other hand, always seemed to be more relaxed and ready for opportunity to come knocking. There was a definite difference between the two groups!

There is a system in the brain known as the reticular-activating system (RAS) which calculates the importance of incoming data through the senses. We are unable to process all information so some of it is deleted, distorted or generalised to filter out unimportant and unwanted information. When people's attention and intention are on their misfortune, they will filter out situations for them to be lucky. They just won't see it!

The researchers concluded that lucky people were generating their fortune through four key principles:

• Creating and noticing change opportunities

• Made lucky decision by intuition

• Created self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations

• Adopted a resilient attitude

Seneca, a famous Roman philosopher, once said "luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." Be open to opportunity and fortune because it will come knocking. This is not based on belief, this is based in hard science!

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