Choosing the Lucky Life
by Patricia F. Hare, M.A.T., M.A.
In Angels & Demons, Dan Brown’s “prequel” to his extraordinary bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, the heroine, Vittoria, finds herself in one of many very desperate situations. She has come to the Vatican to warn them of a terrible danger for which she is partly responsible, and urgently needs to communicate this to someone in charge who will believe her and take action to prevent the impending catastrophe of mammoth proportions.
She has reported this danger to Commander Olivetti, the chief of the Swiss Guard (the Vatican’s security division) and he doesn’t take her seriously. Not only that, with only a few hours left in which to save the Vatican from a terrible fate, he has had her (along with Langdon, the protagonist) locked in a room with a sentinel keeping guard outside the door.
Is she powerless? Does she panic? No. She has tools. She uses them.
“Tools, she told herself. There are always tools. Reevaluate your environment.
“Instinctively she lowered her shoulders, relaxed her eyes, and took three deep breaths into her lungs. She sensed her heart rate slow and her muscles soften. The chaotic panic in her mind dissolved. Okay, she thought, let your mind be free. What makes this situation positive? What are my assets?
“The analytical mind of Vittoria Vetra, once calmed, was a powerful force. Within seconds she realized their incarceration was actually their key to escape.” (Angels & Demons by Dan Brown. Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster: New York, NY. 2001, p. 138)
Way to go, Vittoria! You took some bad luck and turned it onto good luck! What a powerful role model you are! What an awesome place the world would be if every time each of us got into a pickle we focused on what made the situation positive! You rock! You absolutely rock!
Wait a minute…I hear the reader saying something. She’s not real, you say? She’s a character in a book? It’s easy to be an awesome, powerful force when you’re a make-believe character in a book?
Oh. Well, I know that. I know she’s just a character in a book. But you don’t have to be a character in a book to be able to turn bad luck into good luck. Just ask Dr. Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor: Changing Your Luck, Changing Your Life: The Four Essential Principles (Hyperion: New York, NY. 2003). His research, conducted at the University of Herfordshire in Britain, showed that luck is something that can be learned.
After 3 years, and over 400 interviews and experiments with people who considered themselves either lucky or unlucky, Wiseman came to the conclusion that good luck is available to anyone willing to pay attention to the Four Essential Principles:
1) Maximize Your Chance Opportunities: Lucky people create, notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their lives.
2) Listen to Your Lucky Hunches: Lucky people make successful decisions by using their intuition and gut feelings;
3) Expect Good Fortune: Lucky people’s expectations about the future help them fulfill their dreams and ambitions; and
4) Turn Bad Luck into Good: Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune.
Basically, these are the things he found that “lucky people” tended to do that “unlucky people” tended not to do. What he found was that luck had more to do with expectations—and the choices and behaviors that we demonstrate in our lives based upon our expectations—than with chance.
What he found was that luck had more to do with expectations—and the choices and behaviors that we demonstrate in our lives based upon our expectations—than with chance.
Let’s take, for example, Principle #1: Maximize Your Chance Opportunities. A demonstration of this was played out during the following experiment. Wiseman made appointments to meet with two participants in his study: lucky Martin and unlucky Brenda. The meeting place was a coffee shop close to the university. The experiment was filmed (discretely). Martin and Brenda were asked to go to the coffee shop at different times and wait there until they were met by someone involved in the research project.
Wiseman created a “chance” opportunity for both Martin and Brenda by placing a crisp 5£ note on the pavement directly outside the coffee shop. Would they notice the money? Also as part of the experiment, the coffee shop was “staged” with four people at different tables; one person was a very successful businessman. They were all instructed to behave in exactly the same way regardless of whether it was Martin or Brenda in the coffee shop.
Martin arrives, finds and pockets the 5£ note. Once inside, he orders coffee and sits down next to the successful business man and strikes up a conversation. He offers to buy the businessman a cup of coffee and they have a nice chat.
After he leaves, Brenda arrives. She walks straight over the note, not noticing it. She, too, orders coffee and sits down next to the businessman. But unlike Martin, she sits quietly and doesn’t say a word to anyone.
Later, when each is interviewed, Martin reports on his exciting morning where he found the money and met a successful businessman. Brenda reports an uneventful morning. “Same opportunities. Different lives.”
After taking a good look at what it was that lucky people did that was different from what unlucky people did and developing his “Four Essential Principles” of good luck, Wiseman developed a “Luck School.” Through this 4-week program, he offered participants an opportunity to learn to improve their luck. The results: 80% of the graduates reported that their luck had increased on average by 40%; unlucky people became lucky and lucky people became luckier.
What Wiseman has done through his research is demonstrate that good fortune is not the result of the gods smiling on us, or being born lucky. It’s the result of a way of “thinking that makes [people] especially happy, successful, and satisfied with their lives.” And who is in charge of our thoughts? Right—we each are. Each thought is a choice, each day an opportunity to look for new adventures, each problem a chance to look for the jewel in the knot. In other words, a lucky life is ours for the taking—if we are willing to make “luck-based” choices.
I’m especially pleased to report that the lucky people in Wiseman’s study often reported using creative visualization to increase their chances of success (pg. 127). When faced with an upcoming important situation—such as a job interview or special date—they would visualize themselves experiencing the good fortune they wanted. They focused on how they expected to be lucky and achieve their goals.
So, even though we can’t all be fabulous heroines (or heroes) like Vittoria and demonstrate each of these principles* under the most stressful of situations, we can increase our individual shares of good luck.
