I've reviewed Rhonda Byrne's book, The Secret, and I found some gems of wisdom in it. But I think that Richard Wiseman's The Luck Factor - The Four Essential Principles (Compare Prices) is more to my taste. Read on to find out why!
How "The Luck Factor" Came About
Dr. Richard Wiseman loved performing magic as a child, and turned that passion, which demanded a keen insight into people's reactions to be able to fool them into believing the magic tricks, into a more adult role as a psychologist.Once, he was demonstrating a magic trick in front of an audience as part of a professional speech, and was intrigued by a woman who was totally unsurprised that his trick had worked - not because she saw through his sleight-of-hand, but because she was always lucky. Therefore, making the right choice had nothing to do with the way the trick worked, but with her own innate luck.
Dr. Wiseman decided to investigate the phenomenon of luck, and to study what makes some people lucky and others unlucky. The Luck Factor is the result of that research.
You Aren't Born Lucky
One of the first things that Dr. Wiseman wanted to test was whether luck was an innate trait - in other words, whether some people are just "born lucky."To test this theory, Dr. Wiseman polled a large number of people who considered themselves either lucky or unlucky, and who were planning on playing the lottery. If luck was an innate talent, then the lucky people should win more often.
The results, however, showed that luck is not a natural trait. Only a very few people who played the lottery won any money at all, and those few were evenly split between lucky and unlucky people.
So if being lucky isn't inherited... where does it come from?
You Can Control Your Luck
Dr. Wiseman spent years researching the question of what separates lucky people from unlucky people, and he discovered that the main difference lies with each person's attitude and outlook - which is fantastic news for those of us who feel like our luck could really use a boost sometimes! Each of us has the opportunity to become luckier by following the four essential principles.The Four Essential Principles
According to The Luck Factor, if you want to improve your luck, you should:- Maximize Your Chances
- Listen to Your Instincts
- Expect to Be Lucky
- Look on the Bright Side
How the Principles Relate to Your Life
The Luck Factor applies both to sweepstakes and to your everyday life.
- Maximizing your chances is one of the top pieces of advice for winning sweepstakes. Enter as often as you can, into as many sweepstakes as you can, and sooner or later you'll win. That advice also applies to everyday life. Dr. Wiseman recommends talking with people that you meet on the street and keeping up with old acquaintances as ways to create a network of luck - people who can support you and let you know about new opportunities.
- Lucky hunches are something that everyone has had, but lucky people tend to rely on them more. Your intuition is the result of subtle clues that your subconscious has put together. When it comes to entering sweepstakes, you might have the feeling that you'll win a contest because your subconscious is telling you that you have a great entry just waiting to win.
- Expecting to be lucky keeps you motivated to enter sweepstakes. If you're constantly telling yourself that you'll never win, why bother to enter? This is true in other aspects of life, too, like job interviews or dates.
- Looking on the bright side helps you feel lucky no matter what. Maybe you didn't win that trip, but you'll win a bigger prize while you would have been gone. If you tripped on the steps this morning, at least you didn't break your ankle. When you're not blaming all of the bad things that happen to you on luck, you're more likely to find ways to improve what you're doing. For example, maybe your lack of wins recently isn't because you're unlucky, but because you haven't been entering enough sweeps.
My Conclusions about The Luck Principle
I thought that The Luck Principle was a really compelling read. It was written in a friendly and approachable manner, the conclusions were well-supported with facts, and the steps to improve your luck were easy to understand and to implement. I'd recommend reading this book to anyone, but especially to people who want to win more sweepstakes.
