Are you lucky or always stuck with bad luck? It turns out it depends on you.
Psychology says that people considered "lucky" are those who are more open to seeing and taking advantage of the opportunities that come their way.
BarcelonaThe Christmas Lottery, the jackpot, the Epiphany... At this time of year, more than ever, we gamble with chance, if it truly exists, and test our luck. And more than ever, we also ask ourselves—or often answer—whether we are lucky people or if we always fall butter-side down. Well, it turns out that being very lucky or being a harbinger of doom is something that psychology has also studied. The conclusion? It depends primarily on ourselves. Not on supernatural forces moving the pieces around us for or against us, but on our attitude towards life.
This is the conclusion reached by Richard Wiseman, a psychology researcher at the University of Hertfordshire and author of one of the most comprehensive studies ever conducted on luck. For ten years, Wiseman followed 400 volunteers who believed they were very lucky in life or, conversely, believed they had always had very bad luck. He studied them, tested them, and followed up to look for patterns that could explain it. Wiseman himself summarized his main conclusion to the ARA via email: "There are chance events, like an accident or a lucky win at the casino, that are pure chance. However, the fact that they are perceived and acted upon, and the way they are interpreted, is part of the mindset of someone lucky or unlucky." According to Wiseman, people who believed they were very lucky were the ones who were "more relaxed and open and, therefore, more aware of the opportunities that arose in their environment." Some of them even made an effort to introduce changes and new variables into their lives, such as breaking certain routines, trying to vary their route to work, or forcing themselves to talk to new people at a party, for example. In contrast, "the tests revealed that unlucky people are generally more tense and anxious than lucky people," he added.
In one of the exercises in Wiseman's experiment, a diary was given to several participants, and they were asked to count the number of photographs in the shortest time possible. Those who considered themselves unlucky took about two minutes, while those who believed they were lucky took only a few seconds. How could this be? Because on the second page of the diary was a message: "Stop counting, there are 43 photos in this diary." Those who didn't believe in their chances and who let themselves be carried away by the nervousness of thinking they wouldn't succeed didn't see the message, while the more open-minded ones read the hidden note.
"Luck is not a magical ability or the result of random causality, nor are some people born lucky and others not," Wiseman asserts, but rather, "thoughts and behavior are responsible for much of what is perceived as good luck." To demonstrate this, in one of his experiments, the psychologist even gave the participants supposed lucky charms. After several days, the test objectively confirmed that these objects "had no effect" on what happened to them.
"The Four Principles of Luck" and Free Will
According to his study, Wiseman defined the "four basic principles" that make a person "lucky": creating casual opportunities and recognizing them when they arise; listening to your intuition; having positive expectations; and dealing with bad luck in a positive way.
But to what extent does having or not having that mindset depend on each individual? David Bueno, a biologist specializing in genetics and neuroscience at the University of Barcelona, has not studied luck. per seBut he has analyzed the extent to which free will exists in the decisions we make in life. Ultimately, these decisions determine whether we will seize a good opportunity that comes our way or let it pass us by. "The main enemy of free will is stress, which makes us impulsive and prevents the brain from exercising this filter," Bueno states.
The topic of free will is still under discussion in neuroscience: some experts say it exists, while others think it doesn't. The latter argue that all our behaviors and thoughts are conditioned by the biology of our brain. David Bueno belongs to the first group. "I'm one of those who think that, although free will is very restricted by biology, learning, and the conditioning of our environment, there is a small margin that belongs to us," he states.
Bueno published the book in 2010 The enigma of freedomIn it, she argues that "the brain generates a series of possible responses to a situation, based precisely on these biological, genetic, and educational factors, but we have the freedom to block the responses we don't want and let the one we consider best flow." If stress doesn't overwhelm us, and if we don't convince ourselves that we're always incredibly unlucky, we can break free from our brain's biological and learned conditioning, escape what seemed predestined for us, and thus learn to see and seize opportunities. Ultimately, you can create your own luck.
