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Sep
26
We make our own luck
Filed Under Choices | Leave a Comment
Luck according to Webster’s dictonary is defined as the seemingly chance happening of events that affect someone. It is also defined as good fortune. Therefore, if you say that someone is luck it means that they’ve had good luck.
On the other hand misfortune is referred to as bad luck or something bad that happens just out of chance.
But is luck really something that happens by chance? To some degree it may be such as a person winning the lottery jackpot, but even then it isn’t totally chance as they must first buy a lottery ticket. The odds of someone winning are astronomically stacked against them; but it is the rare chance of winning large amounts of money that keep people buying lottery tickets. Who wins the lottery is purely driven by random chance. The good luck or the misfortune that accompanies them afterwards of winning the lottery however is not chance but is based upon their actions and attitude.
According to Professor Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind, a significant portion of one’s good fortune is not random, but rather due to one’s state of mind and behaviors. He concludes that luck is an artifact of psychology, where a person is lucky not because of cosmic accidents, but because one achieves a particular mindset which precipitates and amplifies “lucky” events.
According to experiments done by Professor Wiseman lucky individuals pay more attention to their surroundings. He has found that “lucky” individuals usually posses many intersecting qualities, including extroverted personalities, a lack of anxiety, open-mindedness, and optimism. Each of these play an important role in one’s luck production.
Bad luck often comes from acts of carelessness, recklessness or willful abandonment of rules. One must be careful where they tread in life and the crowd with whom they associate as well as other behavior in order to avoid events that may be considered bad luck. Bad luck can basically be blamed on a bad attitude about life and looking at things in a pessimistic fashion.
Professor Wiseman found some interesting traits of people who were considered lucky or rather “fortunate” and factors surrounding these people. Foremost among these factors is that the more opportunities one encounters and the more receptive one is to those opportunities, the “luckier” one is. According to Wiseman’s studies lucky people smile twice as often as others, and engage in more eye contact than unlucky people do. Therefore it can be determined that outgoing, extroverted behavior exposes a person to more opportunities due to the increased social interaction. Similarly, open-mindedness allows one to encounter a greater number of unique prospects, and makes one more apt to embrace new opportunities.
Here are four principles Professor Wiseman has come up with to help you increase your good fortune:
Principle One: Maximize Chance Opportunities
Lucky people are skilled at creating, noticing and acting upon chance opportunities. Networking, adopting a relaxed attitude to life, and by being open to new experiences are various ways in which you can do this.
Principle Two: Listen to Lucky Hunches
Make effective decisions by listening to your intuition and gut feelings. In addition, take steps to actively boost your intuitive abilities by, for example, meditating and clearing your mind of other thoughts.
Principle Three: Expect Good Fortune
Lucky people are certain that the future is going to be full of good fortune. Expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies by persisting in the face of failure, and shape your interactions with others in a positive way.
Principle Four: Turn Bad Luck to Good
Employ various psychological techniques to cope with, and often even thrive upon, the ill fortune that comes your way. For example, spontaneously imagine how things could have been worse, do not dwell on the ill fortune, and take control of the situation.
Unless someone suffers from mental illness one’s mindset is entirely within one’s control. Even then a person can make choices that affect them in a positive way. An unlucky person who resolves to change their luck can become more social; they can make a conscious effort to be optimistic and make the best of any situation; and they can be more open to new ideas and experiences. In the final analysis whether a situation is considered good luck or whether it is considered bad luck and how a person arrived at the situation is due to the state of mind that influenced their arrival.
Technorati Tags: fortune, misfortune, unlucky, lucky, luck, state of mind, choices, attitude, good luck, bad luck
Sep
19
How do you treat people?
Filed Under Choices | Leave a Comment
This story was from an email forwarded to me by a friend. I don’t know if the story is true or not and as it is one of those stories that gets forwarded around the Internet via email the author of it has become anonymous. But it definitely does strengthen the point that a wise man once said every society is judged by how it treats it’s least fortunate amongst them.
What would you do? You make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?
At a fund-raising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: ‘When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?’
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. ‘I believe that when a child like Shay, physically and mentally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child.’
Then he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, ‘Do you think they’ll let me play?’ Shay’s father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay’s father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, ‘We’re losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we’ll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning.’
Shay struggled over to the team’s bench and, with a broad smile, put on a team shirt. His Father watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father’s joy at his son being accepted. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay’s team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay’s team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.
At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn’t even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball…
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay’s life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay… As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman’s head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, ‘Shay, run to first! Run to first!’ Never in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, ‘Run to second, run to second!’ Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball … the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher’s intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman’s head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
All were screaming, ‘Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay’
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, ‘Run to third! Shay, run to third!’
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, ‘Shay, run home! Run home!’ Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
‘That day’, said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, ‘the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world’.
Shay didn’t make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
I encourage any of you reading this to use the ShareThis button at the bottom of this post to forward this story to your friends and family. Thank you.
Technorati Tags: choices, relationships, life, encouragement
