Page 26 - April 2005 • Southern California Gaming Guide

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
The Luck Factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman Reviewed by Jen Franco
A Ten-Year Study about the Nature of Luck Reveals People Make Their Own Good
and Bad Fortune!
Most of the people who get to review books and gaming materials in this column are casino players and authors. I am a student — a business school student — and therefore, I tend to regard research highly. But for sheer entertainment, I also occasionally go out to casinos with my friends. Gina, one of our group, is exceptionally lucky and always seems to win, no matter what we play. So we all speculated one day, are some people just born lucky?
is is part of the focus of e Luck Factor, written by Dr. Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist, who has conducted several studies regarding the nature of luck. Whilethismaynotseemalogicalsubjectforscienti cevaluation,it’ssurelygottobe something most casino players want to nd out more about.
First,whatisluck?Sometimesde nedasgoodfortune,chance,randomgoodness, fortuitous events can exert a dramatic in uence on our lives. Luck has the power to transform the improbable into the possible and on occasion, to make the di erence between life and death, reward or ruin, and happiness or despair.
Based on a ten-year study of 400 men and women, Dr. Wiseman determined that people’s thoughts and behaviors were responsible for much of their good luck. In his book, he says “My research revealed that lucky people generate their own good fortune via four basic principles. ey are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-ful lling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”
According to the author, unlucky people are generally more tense and anxious than lucky ones, and that anxiety disturbs the ability to notice the unexpected. And furthermore, he says he noticed that lucky people went to lengths to introduce variety and change in their lives. He cites one example of a participant who would
constantly alter his route to work before making an important decision!
But a lucky life is not just about
creating and noticing opportunities,
but also about how people deal with
adversity: for in every life, some rain
must fall. Dr. Wiseman says, “Lucky
people tend to imagine spontaneously
how the bad luck they encounter could have been worse ...and feel much better...” In essence it is how they perceive what has occurred that is the key!
is book is fascinating, and I became a fast convert from thinking that luck was some ethereal substance that someone was born with to understanding that people can indeed attract and create their own good luck.
e book is a little over 200 pages and full of wonderful anecdotes (the stories of lucky events are amazing), as well as substantive information, plus a section called Creating Luckier Lives. It even includes a chapter called Luck School!
So toss your rabbit’s foot and your troll away, and start realizing that how you think a ects your life and luck!
e Luck Factor is published by Hyperion, New York.
Page 26 April 2005
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