The Four Principles of Highly Lucky People

I read a really interesting article about luck the other day, and unfortunately I can't find the exact article now, because I was hoping to reference it. Anyway, psychologist Richard Wiseman recently completed a study of people who described themselves as lucky or unlucky, with some interesting findings.

Apparently his study found that lucky people tend to do four things in particular. They're not too surprising, but it's interesting to see them laid out this simply:

1. Remain open to opportunity rather than focusing tightly on current goals. In an interesting bit of the study, "unlucky" participants asked to count photos in a newspaper completely failed to notice large messages telling them to quit the task and that they had won money...while "lucky" participants tended to do the opposite. Apparently, believing that you are a lucky person may actually contribute to this ability to notice unexpected opportunities.

2. Listen to your intuition or gut feelings. People who value their hunches even when they go against their rational interpretation of the facts tend to have "luckier" outcomes.

3. Deliberately expose yourself to new situations and information, even randomly, rather than sticking to a simple routine.

4. See the good side of whatever actually happens.

While there is an obvious potential for observational bias, the study also found that the "lucky" participants measured objectively differently in certain common goal areas such as relationships and careers. Luckily for all of us, these factors can apparently be learned and taught. I'm pretty happy to think about these four ideas for a while, but apparently this guy wrote a book and a website if you want to learn more.