Wanna Be Luckier? Tips and Takeaways from The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman

Описание: In this video, I'll share some tips on how to improve your luck from the book The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman.

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*** A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ***

Hi, everyone. This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll share some tips on how to improve your luck from the book The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman.

About a year ago, I read an article that referenced this book, the Luck Factor, and have thought about it pretty regularly since then. I just got around to reading the actual book and I thought I’d share my thoughts and takeaways with you.This book is about luck. Most people consider luck to be something that is entirely out of our control. Some people have good things that happen to them, some have bad.However, in his studies on luck, Wiseman find that people who consider themselves lucky have a lot of things in common. Note that this is people who consider themselves to be lucky -- which is important to differentiate from actual luck. He makes no attempt to determine whether people are objectively lucky or not. He simply asked them to rate themselves on a scale with very lucky on one end and very unlucky on the other.This is an important distinction because some people have rotten things that happened to them: illness, death of loved ones, injuries. In no way do I want to minimize or victim-blame those folks. In fact, it turns out that some of the people who have the worst things happen to them can also consider themselves to be lucky. See why the distinction is important?OK – just a note about the author. Richard Wiseman is a research psychologist, who was formerly a professional magician. In fact, he began studying psychology to figure out how magicians, con-men, and fortune-tellers use human psychology to get folks to believe them. In other words — the psychology of deceit. This eventually morphed into his current interest in luck. All that to say, he is a creative and interesting researcher -- as you'll see from the way he designed many of his unique experiments.So -- to start off, he asked people whether they considered themselves to be lucky or unlucky. He then has a bunch of profiles in the book that detail somewhat annoyingly the lives of lucky people and their great fortune in relationships, contests, employment, and finances. Likewise he has somewhat depressing stories of the unlucky and their numerous injuries, failed relationships, dwindling job prospects, and general unhappiness.After Wiseman used the self-rating to sort folks Into lucky and unlucky groups, he proceeded to put both groups through a series of experiments. For example, he put a 5 pound note on the sidewalk (he’s British) and had lucky people and unlucky people walk by it. Turns out, the lucky people noticed the money and picked it up, the unlucky people did not. He performed an experiment where he asked folks to count the number of photographs in a section of newspaper. On the second page in giant type he had written out “Stop Counting -- There are 43 Photographs in this Newspaper.” Just as before, the lucky people saw the notice and stopped counting, unlucky people continued on to the end of the section. How is this possible? Is good fortune just innate?It turns out, people who consider themselves to be lucky have some things in common. For one, out of the big five personality traits, they appear to share 3 of them. There are many ways of measuring personality, but the big 5 is the only one that is grounded in factor analysis. People who consider themselves to be lucky tend to be more extroverted, less neurotic, and more open to new experiences. Versus people who consider themselves to be unlucky who are more introverted, more neurotic, and less open. So, is is that it? You’re either born with those lucky personality traits or you’re not?I can’t help but conclude that some people ARE actually blessed with luckier personality traits, but Wiseman points out that you CAN strategically work to change just those parts of yourself that are most likely to bring you more luck. Based on his experiments, he has identified four ways that lucky people behave — he calls them luck principles. In addition, he has given some tips on how you can acquire these skills or traits. I'll go through each one and tell you a couple of ways he gives to enhance your skills in each area. . .