As part of my search for increased positivity, I’ve been reading The Luck Factor (Amazon). I’ve come across Wiseman’s work online and and been interested in it. It turns out, that I’ve had one of his other books – 59 Seconds (Amazon) – on my Kindle for… ages. I’ve finally started it now.
I’ve never been a big believer in “luck”, thinking that for the most part we make our own. On a scale of being born in the West to a nice family, I think I’m lucky, but in smaller ways, not so much. I’m far too data-driven to play the lottery, for example. I am very anti-superstition; I’ll spill salt and walk under laders with impunity.
The premise of the book is that being “lucky” is perceived rather than real. “Lucky” people are different in 4 big ways – they create, notice, and act on opportunities, follow their intuition, expect good things to happen, and are more able to turn bad experiences into good ones.
For example, “lucky” people are more relaxed (less neurotic), and more open to new experiences. And they take a constructive approach to set-backs, whereas unlucky people are more likely to give up (and more likely to be superstitious). There’s a huge amount of difference in attitude, imagining a scenario where they were shot in the arm in a bank hold up, unlucky people see themselves as unlucky to have been shot but lucky people feel grateful that it wasn’t worse!
There’s exercises in the book (and on the website) to help improve your luck. I scored reasonably highly on all the quizzes, but the big thing I think I need to do better is overcoming setbacks. I’m not bad with one, or even two, but too many in close proximity and I get a bit “nothing ever goes right, damnit” which is not constructive. I also think I could be more open to new experiences – I’m very likely to say yes to something someone else comes up with, but not as likely to seek out new things myself.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading this book. It’s very interesting to read and quite insightful. Recommend!