Lucky You

For many years my friends regarded me as a very unlucky person: I got married much too young, and became a mother by the age of twenty-one, before I had managed to graduate from college. Three years later, with the help of my parents, I managed to go back to school and graduate, but just as I started working as a public school teacher, I got pregnant again, had to stop working for another year, and right after I got back to work, my husband, who always had a hard time keeping a steady job -- left me.

From than on I was struggling on my own. My humble parents couldn't help much and my ex-husband got married again, and never supported our two kids. Since my salary as a teacher was very modest, I was always looking for ways to increase my income. Eventually I became a successful editor in a daily paper, but had to work from morning till late at night, so that I could sustain myself and my children. Fifteen years later, when my kids left home, I thought I would be getting a well deserved break but then my editor in chief left. Unfortunately, the woman who replaced him didn't care much for me (and the feelings were mutual), and soon enough she got rid of me.

For the first time in my life I had to agree with my friends: I obviously had plenty of bad luck... And I was devastated. I cried my eyes out almost every night. Many times I wished I was dead. I was constantly cursing my bad luck, and praying for a miracle. Meanwhile I was exhausting my savings, and going bankrupt.

All this time, my best friend Hanna was having a ball. As an only child of elderly and well off parents, she went to the best schools and college, and when she graduated she took a job as a secretary in a public office. Her salary wasn't high, but it didn't bother her, because she lived on her own, and didn't have a family to support. Her parents were always there for her, so she never worried about her future. The only thing that did worry Hanna was the fact she hadn't gotten married yet, so all her energy was aimed toward this goal but to no avail. So, while I had always thought she was a very lucky woman, and wished I had half her luck - Hanna felt very unlucky.

When Hanna was forty-two, her parents died. They left her a steady but modest income that would last her for the rest of her life. Hanna, who hated her job, decided to quit, and live off her inheritance from then on. A year later, Hanna got pregnant by her boyfriend. He refused to marry her, and took off. Hanna decided to have the child anyway. She thought she could afford to, with the house she owned, and the money her parents had left her. She didn't go back to work after her child was born.

But soon enough she found out the money she had was not enough to support herself and her child. For a while she tried going back to work, but at the age of forty-eight no one would hire her. So she stayed at home raising her child with the little she had, and regarded herself even less lucky than before. When we meet she complains, and tells me she wishes she had half my luck. "It's bad enough that I never got married - now I have to live on the edge of poverty", she tells me.

The reason she thinks I'm luckier than she is, is because two years ago I pulled myself together, started a new and successful business on the internet, and now I make more money monthly, than I used to earn in an entire year working for others. I no longer have to work long and tedious hours, or to put up with abusive bosses. Now everyone, including myself, regards me as a very lucky woman.

Hell, sometimes when counting my blessings I think back to that wonderful moment when I was brutally fired. I imagine what would have happened had my last boss kept me at my job. I probably would have still been there, and like Hanna and many other folks I know; I would have still been feeling very unlucky.

How to Use Luck

"Lucky people use many psychological strategies in order to turn bad luck into good", says Richard Wiesman, Professor of Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom. For ten years Wiseman studied the way people use luck in their life. The results of his research were published in a book, "The Luck Factor", which has become a bestseller.

"Psychologists had looked at luck before, but had found no science in chance, and abandoned their research," he said in an interview to the Guardian in March 2004. "It seems to me, though, that there are just too many people who consider themselves lucky or unlucky, for this to be a random phenomenon.

"I'm an extremely skeptical person, and when I began my investigations I expected to find that the differences between lucky and unlucky to be delusional; a matter of perception. Of course there were differences in perceptions of similar events, but it also became clear there was something else at work. By and large, lucky people were leading fulfilled, happy lives, while the unlucky were walking disaster areas. Somehow, lucky people were able to create opportunities for themselves."

Wiseman found out, that lucky people increase their chance opportunities by being open to different ways of achieving their goals; they are open to intuition and listen to their hunches; they expect to be lucky; they are able to see the positive side of bad fortune and are better able to deal with it.

During the years Wiseman put his theories to the test, and asked many unlucky volunteers whether they had gotten the relationship, the job or the deal they had wanted. After a series of conversations and sessions with these volunteers, many of them claimed their lives have been transformed.

"There are only two types of people who cannot become lucky, " Wiseman said tothe Guardian." There is the person who is happy to be unlucky, for whom misfortune is a central part of their identity. And there is the person who is not prepared to put in the work; there is a lot of effort involved in applying the principles."

Wiseman differentiates between luck and chance. "A lucky person is just as likely to win the lottery as an unlucky one; similarly, a lucky person is just as likely to be the victim of a car crash or a serious illness as an unlucky one. It would be wrong to think we did have control over every aspect of our lives, but my research equally indicates we might have more control in certain areas than some people imagine. We are all subject to chance events; the key is how we respond."

Improve Your Luck

Wiseman became involved with luck and chance when he was six years old. He had gone to the library looking for a chess book, and was misdirected into the magic section. "From than on I became obsessed with magic and would practice it every opportunity I had," he says. "I did endless children's parties and became a member of the Magic Circle. I left school, and made a living as a magician. But it seemed an awfully tough way to make a living for the rest of my life." Eventually he decided to study psychology, "because what interested me wasn't so much the magic itself, as the art of persuading an audience to like the person deceiving them".

Eventually he decided to search for the reason some people lead happy successful lives, while others face repeated failure and sadness, and whether unlucky people could do anything to improve their luck and lives. After a ten year study, Wiseman was able to identify four main factors which explained leading a lucky life, as opposed to an unlucky life. He was then able to show a group of people who considered themselves unlucky, how to think and behave like lucky people.

"Lucky people get lucky because they concentrate on what can be done. This could certainly be more productive than the alternative of complaining about what can't be changed", says Wiseman.

Elana Shoval, a single mother who raised two daughters on her own, was a journalist and an editor in chief in two Israelis leading daily newspapers. Three years ago she became a web entrepreneur and an advisor. She has written several articles about life coaching, self improvement and leading successful life. Her website is aimed towards people who want to make life changes, and who are in the process of transforming the way they think and take action in their lives. The website provides valuable advice, free tools, useful information and resources.

Visit her website at http://www.life-coach-magazine.com

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