Luck, Coincidences & Synchronicity

[Cheng]

Hey people, this will be our lucky thread! Tell me how lucky you are and be thankful!
I am lucky because I have so many experts guiding me along in life and in investments. I am also happy to be happy.
It is also proven that luck can be learnt. See the article below.
I also wouldn't mind if everyone can tell me how lucky they are everyday.

The loser's guide to getting lucky

Last Updated: Monday, 22 December 2003, 13:23 GMT
By Professor Richard Wiseman
University of Hertfordshire

Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer.

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.

I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and, over the years, I have interviewed them, monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments.

The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune.

Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities.

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.

Anxiety

It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else.

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.

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.

My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles.

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

Towards the end of the work, I wondered whether these principles could be used to create good luck.

I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person.

Dramatic results

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.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky.

Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor" .

Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:

* 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

* Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call. Luck is very often a self-fulfilling prophecy

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3335275.stm

[iam802]

Nice article.

The 'lucky break' always happen when you do something against the norm.

Hence, that is one of the tips.

[winston]

Hi Cheng,

A long time ago, I read somewhere that most of your luck come through other people.

Therefore, it's important to have a good personality if you want to receive "good luck" from other people.

Example:-

It's not likely that we will go out of our way, to help a person who has a bad attitude or big ego. Some people may even want to teach such a person, a lesson.

Take care,
Winston

[Cheng]

Hi Cheng,

A long time ago, I read somewhere that most of your luck come through other people.

Therefore, it's important to have a good personality if you want to receive "good luck" from other people.

Example:-

It's not likely that we will go out of our way, to help a person who has a bad attitude or big ego. Some people may even want to teach such a person, a lesson.

Take care,
Winston

Thanks Winston, will keep that in mind.

[Cheng]

Nice article.

The 'lucky break' always happen when you do something against the norm.

Hence, that is one of the tips.

Lucky break sounds good!

[winston]

Don't Take a Chance on Luck By Harvey Mackay

Luck seems to have a peculiar attachment to work. I'm sure that you have heard the Dave Thomas quote: "It seems the harder I work, the luckier I get."

I would tend to agree with that statement, but I think there are a few other conditions that affect your "luck" -- things like instinct, timing, market conditions, and public opinion, to name a few. I know plenty of folks that have worked their heads and hearts off, but for some reason or another, they just aren't successful in what they accomplish.

On the other hand, I have witnessed others who seem to have fallen into a bed of roses -- businesswise or financially. Predictably, most of their friends are totally amazed and can't figure out how or why this person made it. Pure luck? Probably not. More likely, they were in the right business at the right time. Oh, we should all be so "lucky."

Call it whatever you like, but I prefer not to rely on luck when it comes to business. I leave that for Las Vegas.

I'll admit, I've been "lucky" on many occasions, such as the time I was in London many years ago and was late for a play. I started to step off the curb without looking to my right. I pulled back for a reason I still can't explain. Being in London, where they drive on the "wrong" side of the road, a big bus almost wiped me out. Go figure it! Had I taken that step, I would have been dead within a nanosecond. I would bet that most of us could tell a similar story.

What is the correlation between luck and success? Frankly, I think Dave Thomas, who founded the Wendy's chain, had it right. As for my business life, I prefer to do everything in my power to make my own "luck" -- long hours, clear goals, calculated risks, good hires, expert advice, and a reasonable amount of fear have guided me.

I've had plenty of incentive too, like putting my name on my product. Nothing makes you try harder than putting your identity on the line.

Was it luck that led to the creation of so many well-known products? I think not. Rather, it was creativity and the courage to redevelop already invented products. For example, Post-it Notes originated when a 3M inventor created bookmarks for his prayer/Coca-Cola started out as a headache medicine. g book. Levi jeans -- with rivets instead of buttons -- were made out of leftover tent canvas when miners needed pants.

Speaking of leftovers, that's how the Swanson TV dinner was created. It was Thanksgiving 1952 and the Swanson Company had 260 tons of leftover turkeys. The company filled 10 refrigerated boxcars and let the frozen turkeys ride around the country until they figured out what to do with their fowl problem. A salesman developed a three-compartment tray for the frozen turkey and two side dishes because he remembered from his Army days how he hated when his food ran together. Management gobbled up the idea. So did Swanson's customers.

Ice cream sodas were invented not so much by luck as by necessity. In 1874, 16 years after the first soda fountain opened, Robert M. Green was mixing his popular drink, consisting of sweet cream, syrup, and carbonated water. When he ran out of sweet cream and there was no way to get more that day, he started substituting vanilla ice cream, hoping no one would notice. Everyone noticed -- and he went from grossing $6 a day to $600.

Yo-yos were used as weapons in the ancient Far East. Sixteenth century hunters in the Philippine Islands tied wooden disks together with a long piece of rope or twine. They would sit in trees and fling the weapon at prey. If it missed, they would pull it back quickly and try again. Donald Duncan saw the yo-yo in action in the early 1920s, changed the design, and created a child's toy, my grandson's favorite possession.

Even Avon Cosmetics got its start when a door-to-door book salesman named David H. McConnell decided to offer a small sample of perfume to women. Soon the perfume became more popular than the books and McConnell established the California Perfume Company, which changed its name to Avon Products in 1939.

Lucky? No. Good business. Taking risks, being creative, and reading and reacting to markets will trump luck every day. You can bet on that.

Mackay's Moral: Good luck usually depends on good judgment.


Source: ETR

[Cheng]

Another excellent article! Thanks Winston!

[winston]

[kennynah]

I'll admit, I've been "lucky" on many occasions, such as the time I was in London many years ago and was late for a play. I started to step off the curb without looking to my right. I pulled back for a reason I still can't explain. Being in London, where they drive on the "wrong" side of the road, a big bus almost wiped me out. Go figure it! Had I taken that step, I would have been dead within a nanosecond. I would bet that most of us could tell a similar story.

this i can relate and indeed have a similar lucky experience ..

not too many years ago, i was happily having some drinks with friends at boat quay...at the end of the session and having sufficiently been intoxicated...we departed company...

i walked towards North Bridge road (where the arch bridge is situated) and was crossing the road... it was a Fri night and traffic was especially heavy... before attempting to cross the road, i looked right, which in singapore is normal since we are right hand drive. The moment i caught a traffic break, i successfully ran across to half way dividing the 4 lanes..then, i started looking left. This again is normal, considering i assumed traffic was 2 ways... little did i know that at north bridge road, all 4 lanes were single directional; ie. cars were traveling from my right !!!

seeing that it was clear, or so i thought, i dashed no more than 2 steps acrossed the 2nd half of the road and into some very fast approaching vehicles .. somehow, intuitively, i turned my head to my right...in a nick of time to realize my almost fatal mistake and double stepped back, as i felt the car whisked by me...

that was really a close call...and indeed very lucky for me to be alive today... thank God !!!

we sometimes forget the enormous gift of life we have all been endowed with... we forget to count our blessings... we mustn't..

some call it luck...i call it God's mercy !!!

thanks Cheng for starting this thread....nice

[Cheng]

Haha... you are welcome.