“Lucky people appear to have an uncanny ability to be in the right place at the right time and enjoy more than their fair share of lucky breaks.” — Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire

What do these folks have that the rest of us do not?

To call someone lucky is usually discounts the significance of their hard work or talent.

It turns out that “ability” is the key word here. Beyond a person’s degree of privilege or the conditions they were born into, the luckiest people may have a particular set of skills that seem to attract chance opportunities. Somehow, they have learned ways to turn life’s odds in their favour.

Luck or Fate? — Can You Change It?

Wiseman examined the different ways in which lucky and unlucky people think and behave. The Luck Factor sets out some of his luck research, which included three years of experiments with over 400 volunteers.

Dr. Wiseman arrived at a fantastic conclusion: Luck is something that we can learn. It is accessible to anyone keen on paying attention to the four essential principles:

• creating chance opportunities
• thinking lucky
• feeling lucky
• denying fate

Wiseman’s Research Is Hilarious

After starting as a magician, Wiseman researched the more unusual niches of psychology. For example, his 2002 study, “An Investigation into the Alleged Haunting of Hampton Court Palace: Psychological Variables and Magnetic Fields published in The Journal of Parapsychology.

By the 1990s, Wiseman had taken on a unique project—running experiments on self-proclaimed lucky and unlucky people and trying to quantify their differences.

He takes individuals who self-define as lucky and not lucky. He then places a $20 bill in the street. Lucky people notice money and pick it up. Moreover, unlucky people do not.

His experimental design appears to be a superficial way of differentiating the lucky from the unlucky. However, Wiseman found similar results in several related experiments throughout the next ten years.

In one such study, Wiseman gave volunteers a newspaper. He instructed them to count the photographs inside. However,

• on half of the second page in large font — “Stop counting—there are 43 photographs in this newspaper.”
• halfway through the paper in large font — “Stop counting, tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $250.”

Overall, the self-identified unlucky participants just kept counting the pictures as instructed. The results suggest that luck could have something to do with spotting opportunities, even when they were unexpected.

The Luck School

Wiseman spun his findings into a “luck school.” He provided techniques based on the four main principles of luck: maximizing chance opportunities, listening to your intuition, expecting good fortune, and turning bad luck to good.

His luck school experiment investigated whether getting an individual to think and behave like a lucky person improves his or her luckiness. Groups of self-identified lucky and unlucky volunteers spent a month carrying out exercises including, using meditation to enhance intuition, relaxation, visualizing good fortune, and talking to at least one new person every week.

One month later, the volunteers reported on their experience. The results were dramatic: Eighty percent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, luckier.

Demystifying The Luck Skillset

“I thought if Wiseman can train people to be lucky, you can certainly teach those skills to our kids, and they have other outstanding side effects too like better social skills and a stronger sense of gratitude.” — Christine Carter

A sociologist, Christine Carter, UC Berkeley has worked on demystifying this luck skillset.

She developed a course for families on raising happier kids. Carter translated the research findings on qualities such as gratitude, mindfulness, and happiness into quantifiable, teachable skills. She fell upon a concept that luck was intertwined with all these skills.

“On the academic side of things, I’ve always been sort of skeptical of any concept related to luck. Because as a sociologist, it is like, Oh, so all those children in Darfur are just not lucky? We know that there are other things there.” — Christine Carter

Essential Strategies for Parents

Carter supplied with crucial strategies for parents to teach their children. Being more open to your environment both physically and emotionally was the common theme in all of the techniques. The techniques include:

• maintaining social connections
• being open to new experiences
• talking to strangers
• learning to relax

Lucky people wander along with their eyes wide open

You lose your peripheral vision the more anxious you are because your flight-or-fight mechanism creates a binocular view. So, if you are worried that you will not find a parking spot — you will likely be right, as your vision narrows.

It makes sense. The more attentive you are of your surroundings, the more likely you are to capture a valuable resource or avoid tragedy. Lucky people are not a magnet for new opportunities and good fortune. They wander along with their eyes wide open and are fully present in the moment.

This means that whatever affects our emotional or physical ability to take in our environment also affects our “luckiness.” So, anxiety shuts us off to the chance of seeing opportunities.

Anxious folks bias their attention to potential threats. They are indeed less likely to converse with strangers. Carter notes, “We teach our kids not to talk to strangers, and we teach them to fear other people, and that shuts them down to the opportunities that people might bring, but also creates anxiety.”

The idea is straightforward: reduce children’s fear and anxiety toward meeting different people, and consequently open them up to the beneficial connections that people can bring.

Carter discovered that merely opening parents’ minds this way to the idea that luck could be learned made an enormous difference. Carter herself admits coming from a long line of anxious women and learning these luck skills was not easy. However, once you do, you can begin to see the good in unfortunate situations. This approach will improve your reaction to misfortune.

 “My kids and I love to read Jon Muth’s book Zen Shorts, which includes an ancient parable about a farmer’s son who breaks his leg. When his neighbours say, ‘What bad luck!’ the farmer says only ‘Maybe.’ It turns out the broken leg saves his son from going to war….” — Christine Carter, Huffington Post

Three techniques to help you maximize good fortune

Respect Hunches

• Unlucky folks frequently fail to follow their intuition when making a choice.
• Lucky people respect hunches. They are interested in how they both think and feel about the various options, rather than merely looking at the rational side of the situation. This improves them because gut feelings act as an alarm bell — a reason to consider a decision carefully.

Seek Variety

• Unlucky individuals are creatures of routine. They talk to the same types of people at parties. These folks take the same route to and from work.
• Lucky people create variety in their lives. Their behaviour boosts the likelihood of chance opportunities by adding variety. For example, the next time function you attend, before arriving think of a colour. Then introduce yourself to people wearing that colour.

See the Silver Lining

• Unlucky people focus on the event and dissect the history of why it happened or what they should have done to prevent it.
• Lucky people see the positive side of their misfortunes. These folks imagine how things could have been worse. One of Wiseman’s volunteers arrived with his leg in a plaster cast. He d described how he had fallen down a flight of stairs. Wiseman asked him whether he still felt lucky. The man cheerfully replied that he felt more fortunate than before — “I could have broken my neck.”

Implications for Career Satisfaction

We all have a unique talent stack. Understanding how our unique combination of behaviour strengthens us better at things that need our strengths. If we are “lucky” we get the open opportunities that need our talent stack and grab them.

“The most successful among us are walking flaws which have maximized one or two strengths.” —Tim Ferriss

At Allenvision, we start with your behavioural traits and your passions and match you with a career that allows you to thrive. We use robust talent analytics to determine which of your 85 behavioural traits are strengths and which ones are challenges. We believe

CAREER SATISFACTION = CAREER SUCCESS

If you want career satisfaction, start with our career assessment, be open to what your behavioural DNA tells you and start getting “lucky.”