I read some research on luck – and more importantly how lucky people have certain traits that can be identified scientifically. As an NLP Practitioner this lead me to research whether those traits could be accomplished with using NLP techniques for those that didn’t already posses them.
If you would like to know more about what I found then you may wish to view the video I shared with my Facebook profile and the link to some scientific evidence below. I will also list the traits for those of you who aren’t into watching videos.
So the traits of luck people are –
1 IDENTITY – lucky people identify themselves as lucky. They believe they are lucky and deserving of good fortune.
2 ACTION TAKERS – lucky people are action takers. They act even when there is not 100% certainty that things will work out exactly the way they want or expect. They are willing to take some risks to move forward. They don’t procrastinate too much and just get on with it.
3 OPEN MINDED – being flexible and adaptable, being able to go with the flow is a great attribute to have if you want more luck in your life. When weighing things up they may ask “what’s the worst that can happen?” but will also ask “So how would that really effect me?” and then they take action. They are generally willing to accept some short term pain for long term benefit.
4 SPECIFICALLY VAGUE – this may seem to go against the grain of some law of attraction advice but people you identify themselves as being lucky don’t put too many specifics on what they want. This leaves them open to more possibilities. To demonstrate the point – If I wanted to be a surgeon I could say “I want to be a surgeon that helps a lot of people working at a great hospital”. That is specifically vague. Unlucky people would say “I want to be a leading cardiac surgeon doing 2 operations a day and I work at St Patricks’ hospital in Los Angeles”.
Now it doesn’t mean that if you are that specific you can’t have it – but how do you feel if you got to be a surgeon only doing 1 operation a say, or worked at a different hospital? Or if you have the chance to work in a new / different area of surgery? Being less specific gives you more opportunities.
5 LUCKY PEOPLE ARE KIND TO THEMSELVES – we all do things that don’t work out. We all face challenges, make mistakes and maybe sometimes don’t perform at our best. Whilst many of us go around beating ourselves up (often for years) lucky people realise that the past is the past, take the learnings from the experience and move on. They hit setbacks but rather than quit they keep moving forward.
6 OUTGOING PERSONALITY – not necessarily extrovert but lucky people are willing to put themselves out to the world so the world can reach back to them. They are the type of people that are willing to speak to anybody because you never know where that connection can lead. Being confident to put yourself out there is a big deal.
Is those are the luck traits what are the unlucky ones?
Well there was one major attribute unlucky people seem to have and that is a level on anxiety. When given a task to do it is easy for them to lose awareness of what is going on around them as they worry about one particular element. Will they get it wrong? What if they don’t do it right?
An example is the experiment I mention in the video above. 2 groups of people, one who classed themselves as lucky and the other as unlucky were give the task of counting photographs in the same newspaper.
Both groups were asked to count the number of photos in the newspaper.
The newspaper was printed especially for the experiment though and had an advert in large text early in the paper that told the reader to stop counting and gave the number of photographs in the ad. The lucky people without exception saw the ad, whilst the unlucky people totally missed it.