Luck= Preparation + Opportunity
Happy St. Patrick's Day
As St. Patrick’s Day winds down, I’m hoping the luck stays with you! Celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is filled with popular quotes about luck. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, may the luck of the Irish be there with you!” And, "May your heart be light and happy, may your smile be big and wide, and may your pockets always have a coin or two inside” are two examples.
Are some people naturally lucky?
Professor Richard Wiseman, an educator from the United Kingdom, studied the psychology of luck for more than 10 years. In 2003, his successful book, The Luck Factor: Change Your Luck and Change Your Life, outlined how to create luck in our lives.
Four steps in his book include actions anyone could take:
Have an open mind and embrace change.
Seek opportunities and create connections.
Develop a positive mindset.
Trust your intuition (your ‘gut’ instinct)
In his ten-year study, Professor Wiseman concluded optimistic, open-minded people are more likely to have opportunities work in their favor.
“He who says he can and he who says he can’t are both usually right.” —Confucius
Dr. Wiseman studied more than 400 volunteers and concluded luck is a learned ability. According to Wiseman, “unlucky people collapse under bad luck.” While lucky people treat bad luck “as a learning experience,” says Wiseman. He goes on to recount the story of Thomas Edison testing thousands of materials for the filament of light bulbs. After years of trying and failing, he discovered a carbonized cotton thread worked.
A man, not many people have heard of, Frane Selak, was considered ‘the luckiest man alive.’ He was a Croatian music teacher who had a life filled with close calls and lived through awful events including surviving a bus crash that landed in a river and a plane crash along with a train derailment. In total, he survived seven life-threatening experiences. Then, in the mid-2000s, Selak won 1 million dollars in the Croatian lottery (and gave most of the money away.)
No matter what happened to you on St. Patrick’s Day, there are 289 more days to make 2025 your luckiest year yet!
“Fortune favors the Bold” —Virgil