How to Improve Your Luck

re: How to Improve Your Luck

paonessa — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:50:58 GMT

"Give and you shall receive", it does work whether your negative or positive.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

Susan Lee — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 04:03:31 GMT

I think this shows the advantages of respecting your intuition. "Seizing chance opportunities" and "Creating self-fulfilling prophecies through positive expectations" are just other ways of recognizing what Carl Jung called "synchronicity" - the accusal connecting principle of the Universe.

I have never heard that story about picking up a penny being good luck, for saving a child's life!

I do I Ching [the ancient Chinese Book of Changes] readings using three pennies, and I consider finding a penny a "call waiting" message from the Universe, and always do a reading as soon as possible using the penny I found.

I collect stories about lucky pennies. If you have an interesting story about a penny you found, please share it with me by visiting my website, bookofchanges.org, and sending an an email to susanlee@bookofchanges.org.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

Corelian — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 02:41:04 GMT

Technically, this study is not scientific, because Wiseman used volunteers rather than a randomly selected sample. Volunteers tend to already believe.......

re: How to Improve Your Luck

Andreas B — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:18:16 GMT

Luck is a result of good planning. If you have a contingency plan for possible bad events(bad luck) you can avert it. People that don't have contingency plans would get harmed and would chalk it up to bad luck. Read the book 'Art of the Long View'. It's great.

Also if you are on top of events in your life and have a good health with surplus energy you will be much more able to take advantage of a good opportunity when it happens. You will spot them and have the resources to do something about it. A depressed introvert pessimist on the other hand would probably never see the opportunity and consequently feel that there are never any good things happening to him. And even if he did see it, he may have to take action to reap the benefit and not everyone dares that.

If I recall correctly either Napoleon or Caesar looked at good luck in their army commanders as a personal quality of that commander. If you look at good luck as a result of good planning, it really makes sense.

I've noticed that in a very complex strategy war game I've played quite a bit that some people have a reputation of being extremely lucky. When I study their playing technique, I always see how very thourough they are and how they prepare for as many contingencies as possible, while the unlucky ones do litle and expect everything to happen on it's own. Luck? No, it's good old fashioned work.

But of course in standard statistical theory there are of course some extremely lucky persons that are lucky just by fluke of nature. That luck is however much rarer, imo, and few can claim that that is why their life is good or bad. The luck you create yourself by good planning and a good vibrant health is much much more important. Taking responsibility is the first step.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

xyzsch — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:26:40 GMT

This discussion makes me think of the current financial crisis. I am "unlucky" that my 403b retirement has lost one-third of its value due to the finacial crisis. But I have a reasonble financial plan. I am investing $25,000/year in high risk, high average return investments for the next five years (when I am sixty-one), then moving over to fixed assets. I am buying assets at low prices now, and will start to sell near retirement. In the event the market remains depressed for over five years, I have substantial fixed assets in my current portfolio.

I was appalled reading in Businees Week about professionals who, at retirement, still had all their assets in stock, and were buying houses at the top of the market cycle. They were "unlucky", but they also did not diversify, and went aginast sound money management advise to become liquid at retirement. If they had moved part of their assets out of stocks a few years ago, they could live on these funds without having to sell stocks in a down market. Then with their remaining stock holdings,if any, they could wait for a better market to sell.

There is bad luck out there, but with a little knowledge and common sense, you can make your own luck, or at least survive disaster.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

PatriSpain — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:12:01 GMT

There is no good luck or bad luck...we 'get' what we attract through our mindset, attitudes and yes, what our upbringing has molded us into...all changeable for the better or worse. We fullfill our own 'prophesies' all the time...thru our deepest expectations. Thoughts are energy...books I suggest to read on quantum energy, mind energy etc: Divine Matrix and "The Lost Mode of Prayer" (not to assume this has to do with religion) by Gregg Braden and another really great read by Bruce Lipton - The Biology of Belief.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

neilstewart — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:57:00 GMT

According to Branch Rickey, "Luck is the residue of design."

re: How to Improve Your Luck

microsvc — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 17:49:50 GMT

If there was no such thing as bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

Duparc — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:09:51 GMT

Acquisition of wealth or material objects is neither connected to luck nor happiness, come on wake-up! There would appear to be some people who regularly win on events of chance without knowing how or why but happiness can be elusive to them. Some of the richest people in the world lack happiness. There are also some who take risks, fall head long into the social mire, and come out with diamonds in every pocket while others get stuck knee-deep in it! What about combat men at times war who are killed or seriously injured yet during such periods of conscription the conscientious objectors survive; could this due to luck or caution or fear or whatever?

In the early 1950s when at a tombola game in which eight games were played with first and second prizes, one person won 7 of the 8 games and on the one he lost he came second! Now that sure is luck which the above article avoids addressing.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

Mariehelm — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:08:57 GMT

Yep. Some people are blessed, some are cursed it seems. Negative VS positive thinking.

I had a brain tumor. Bad luck? I was LUCKY they found it (quite by accident) when they did and that the removal of it went smoother than any case in history and I was back to work in 10 days. I could whine about the set back or be thankful it was found when it was.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

TWS500 — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 15:07:10 GMT

Ah, the luck of the Irish..... And, I wish all of you, the very best of Irish luck.....the best kind of luck.....

postscript..... The penny story (here) is not about saving children...it's about the wonderful message on the penny..... If we trust in God, what better 'luck' can there be..... Also, the 'antique auto crank story'....The man lost the crank to his car outside the garage, it became burried, and then was later found..... The luck was finding it again.....

re: How to Improve Your Luck

TiaIsWorried — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 14:46:52 GMT

The harder I work, the luckier I get.

Amazing little turn of events isn't it.

I've always liked to say I have "no luck" or "even Steven luck".

For every good thing that happens, there is a negative occurrance too. For every negative thing, a good one comes along.

My Grandpa taught me something when I was little, it has always served me well...

"Pray, like everything you do depends on God. Work, like everything you do, depends on you."

Amazing results from that.

Most people sit around bemoaning their "unlucky life", loss of job or foreclosure. But they do NOTHING to change their circumstances. I know people who have destroyed their lives and lost their homes over $300 a month in increased payments. $300 is a part time job. If your life isn't worth a little extra effort, no one can help you. They call themselves "unlucky".

I call them apathetic and lazy.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

bodyworkbywendy — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:38:05 GMT

It's interesting to see the Universal Law of Attraction becoming mainstream. There is a lot of printed and video information of the Law of Attraction and how to use it, Including some of the fluffier versions such as the movie The Secret. One of the best teachers on this subject is Ester Hicks.

Practice makes the process easier and easier. The more you practice, the better it works. I could fill pages and pages with stories of some of the incredible things I've gotten this way. My husband has become so good at it that some really interesting things have happened for him. I will share my favorite one:

He was helping an elderly friend try to get an antique automobile running, but they did not have the crank to turn over the engine, and this particular model vehicle needed a crank that has an unusually long rod to get all the way back into the engine. Most of the vehicles of that time used a crank with a rather short shaft which would make it much more difficult to locate one.

That same day, my husband stepped out of his workshop and noticed a piece of metal sticking up an inch or so in the lawn about seven feet straight out from the service door. Yep. It was a crankshaft of the exact type his friend needed. (Que the Twilight Zone music.....)

I have taught classes on The Law of Attraction. It really does work.

re: How to Improve Your Luck

monamie — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 13:06:04 GMT

Hey! They left out eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day! Everyone knows that's the way to become lucky..... :0)

re: How to Improve Your Luck

R Mann — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:43:09 GMT

I feel my luck increases every time I pick up a penny in the street. The superstition to that old adage is that when one does that a child's

life might be sparred from being run down by a automobile after running out and picking one up in the road. When momentarily unattended, children are attracted to shinny objects in the road. I do the same with nails in the road "save a life and a tire repair, pick up stuff on the trails

of life!"