How often do you find yourself feeling lucky?
When you can’t catch a break, do you wish you could wrangle a streak of good luck?
It turns out that we can dramatically improve how lucky we are simply by shifting how we view our lives and what unfolds each day.
When we are tense and anxious, we narrow our field of awareness. We narrow our choices and become very specific about what we are looking for as a direct result. We honestly believe there is only one solution.
If we only had that one thing, we’d catch the lucky break. Our streak of bad luck would change.
This is another example of the arrival fallacy. We tend to believe that when we get that “one lucky break”, everything will fall into place. We will get back on track.
We narrow our choices, we focus so much on what we are looking for — that we miss the plethora of other opportunities that are readily available.
You may notice this when you shop for groceries and are looking for a specific item. If the brand of yogurt or type of cheese you specifically want is not in stock, chances are you’ll be chagrined — and fail to notice the many other brands and options that are actually available to you. You simply turn away and do without – rather than exploring something new. You miss the opportunity to try something different and make new discoveries.
It turns out being open-minded and looking at the many options often available to us dramatically increases our “good luck”.
In his book, Rise Above, Scott Barry Kaufman, points out that “you can become a lucky person, just by acting like one.”
You can generate more good luck by putting these simple methods to work:
- Notice chance opportunities and create more choices for yourself. Tap into your social connections to network and brainstorm creative ideas.
- Heed your intuition. (Scott Barry Kaufman reminds us that our intuition isn’t a magical knowing; it is more about using our past experiences and what we’ve learned about ourselves that informs our decisions.)
- Set yourself up for success with positive self-fulfilling prophecies. Cultivate a greater belief in yourself about making the most of golden opportunities and chance meetings.
- When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. Deepen your resilience and flexibility.
The pitfall that most of us fall into when we are running into obstacles in our life, is we tend to focus on all that is going wrong. Our brain’s natural negativity bias goes on high alert and delivers us the “dog pile” – a big brain dump of everything that’s awful.
We need a pooper scooper to shift how we perceive and react to what’s going on in our world. We need to reframe so we can get a fresh perspective and clear the air.
Psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman who researches the correlation between gratefulness and good luck, notes that “lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.”
Dr. Ellen Langer, author of the Mindful Body, offers us the remedy to set us up for more lucky streaks. She tells us to use our wild imaginations to come up with several possibilities for any situation. She urges us to “get into the practice” of opening up to endless scenarios.
If Dr. Langer were given lemons, she would not only make lemonade, she would set up a cute stand, promote the heck out of it and spark more imagination than sales. Her happy customers would be fortified by her magical lemonade and skip off to start businesses of their own.
Lucky people see possibility where others see only limitations.
In Rise Above, Scott Barry Kaufman points out that when we are wearing “sludge-colored” glasses, it is extremely hard to see clearly.
How can we rise above obstacles and challenges if we can’t see a ray of sunshine and a small footpath that leads to more options?
When you are stuck in the mud and can’t catch a break, pay attention to what you are looking for; note if you are narrowing your perspective and missing golden opportunities.
Change your luck by shifting your perspective. Reframe your current situation by stepping back, opening the aperture of your view and looking for possibilities. Ask for help. Chances are strong that you know someone really good at making lemonade.
