How to be lucky!

Unemployment in the UK continues to rise. Currently there are 1 million under 25s without a job and about 2 1/2 million other people also seeking work and those are just the ones we record officially. For some people these are really difficult times and the more they buy into the negative outlook presented by the media the worst it is going to be for them.

As implausible as it may seem, what you choose to think really does affect what you experience. Let's imagine that you are one of the unemployment statistics and right now you are without a job. If you think "gosh things are really bad, I have no money and no prospect of a job"; every day you hold this belief you experience this reality. Your mindset will present you from seeing any opportunities that present themselves to you.

To demonstrate this point, Prof Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire (2003) carried out some research into why some people get all the luck while others never seem to get the breaks they deserve. Prof Wiseman placed an advert in the local newspapers asking for people who consider themselves to be lucky to contact him. Hundreds of people volunteered. Prof Wiseman concluded that thoughts and behaviour were responsible for the good or bad luck that people experienced. Even when it came to chance opportunities “lucky people”, i.e. the ones who considered themselves to be lucky, consistently encountered such opportunities whereas the people who believed they were unlucky did not.

Prof Wiseman tested this by placing two large adverts halfway through a newspaper saying tell the experimenter that you have seen this and win £250. The message took up half the page and was written in a in a 2 inch font. In the experiment people asked to look for the newspaper and count how many photographs were inside. The lucky people saw the advert and claim their £250, whereas the unlucky people missed it completely. Being a scientist Prof Wiseman explained this result in terms of the affect of anxiety. Unlucky people are generally tenser than lucky people and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected. In other words their thoughts lead to feeling anxious which leads to them being less observant (the action) which causes them to miss opportunities (the result).

A negative mindset will also prevent you from putting 100% effort into what you do – it will show if you turn up for a job interview wearing the “there's no way they are going to give me this job” face.

Worse still if you believe that you do not have any money you will experience this too. Money has magnetic qualities. And the one thing that we all know about magnets is, if you put like poles together they repel each other. What this means is if you are thinking “I have no money” and you are actually experiencing having “no money” the two things act as repelling poles and you will find that what little money you have will rapidly be eaten up or simply slip away. Whereas being open to the abundance in the world/the universe, (as opposed to getting stuck in a lack mentality), acts as an opposite magnet pole to attract the opposite of what you are currently experiencing; increased money flow and abundance. Rather than your limited resources slipping away more is attracted to them.

Have you noticed that the moment you surrender to a situation that you are dreading, things immediately start to improve. This is because you are no longer projecting the energy of what you don't want. When you surrender and trust that what you need is available to you, then what comes to fill the space you have created by moving aside your wants is exactly what you require in that moment.

If you want the hard science, Prof Wiseman's research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles:

1. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, 
2. They make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, 
3. They create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and 
4. They adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. 

Thoughts-> feelings-> actions-> results.

Many people find it difficult to accept anything that they cannot see or explain and so are ready to dismiss these universal principles. It's funny how the majority of us have no idea how the money markets operates or what forces it uses to determine who profits and who loses. However for years we have blindly put our faith in this system, no questions asked. I see very little difference between the two positions; both require faith in something you cannot explain to deliver you what you require. However one is predicated on the idea of lack and a few having exclusive access to a limited pie, whereas the other has infinite possibilities to provide more than enough for everyone's needs.

What is your luck identity and how has this impacted your life? Please share your thoughts I look forward to reading them.