How to Be Lucky in 2004

Psychologist Richard Wiseman says, “Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune.” He says he’s found the answer.

Wiseman writes in bbcnews.com that he placed ads in national newspapers asking for people who felt they were always either lucky or unlucky to contact him, so he got lots of volunteers to study. He says, “The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune.” He found that lucky people consistently encounter chance opportunities, while unlucky people don’t. Since this doesn’t make sense statistically, Wiseman studied them and found that lucky people were the ones who were able to spot the opportunities that came their way.

He says, “I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying, ‘Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win ?250.’ This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.” He found that unlucky people are more tense and depressed, perhaps because they expect the worst, and this disrupts their ability to notice what’s going on around them. Wiseman says, “They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.” He says, “I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.” Here?s what Wiseman told them to do: “Listen to your gut instincts?they are normally right. Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine. Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well. Visualize yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Roger Leir has a new DVD/VHS out that shows actual implant removal surgeries from abductees who were lucky enough to get help from him. He warns: “This tape is not for the faint of heart!”

To learn more, click here and here.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.