Luck and Richard Wiseman

As a child, Richard Wiseman was fascinated with the psychology behind magic and why people were amazed at things that they knew could not possible be true.

This passion led Richard to conduct a study on luck, that would last for more than 7 years.

Richard looked for 400 of the most 'luckiest' and 'unluckiest' people alive and tried to find out why they had been so lucky or unlucky.

Richard found that of the lucky people, most were optimists and positive about life. He also found that most of the unlucky people were negative and only looked for the bad in everything.

After concluding his study, Richard thought of an interesting experiment that would prove his conclusion that out mental attitude is, in some way, linked with how lucky we are.

Richard took the unlucky people and asked them to start looking at the positives in life. He asked them to make a list of all of the positive things in their lives and to read them on a daily basis. He also asked them to make a list, on a daily basis, of all the good things that had happened to them that day.

Within a few weeks, Richard found that as the unlucky people began to focus more on the positives, they became more positive and their luck and their lives in general began to improve.

As humans, we have a habit of judging whether someone is lucky or unlucky. If they have achieved a great deal of success in their life, we assume that they have been very lucky to get where they are. Similarly, if someone has had great misfortunes, we assume that they have had a lot of bad luck in their life. Very rarely to we question why they were so lucky or unlucky and if the person themselves actually created their own good or bad luck. Richard Wiseman's study shows us that, to a large extent, we all create our own luck.