Richard Wiseman, a great street magician, psychologist and researcher, did a study with two groups.
One group of people thought of themselves as lucky and the other claimed they were unlucky.
In my favourite experiment, he placed a $20 dollar bill on the street.
The "lucky" ones noticed the $20 bill significantly more often than the "unlucky" ones.
Why?
It all comes down to openness.
Lucky people see more opportunities, especially unexpected ones.
They are happier and more relaxed, open to what may present itself.
So when they cross paths with a $20 bill - boom!
It catches their eye and they grab it.
What makes the "unlucky" people miss this freebie?
“The harder they looked, the less they saw... Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain type of job advertisements and as a result miss other types of jobs. Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. ” - Richard Wiseman, The Luck Factor
Do you get it?
Luck is actually a state of mind.
Your mind is so powerful.
As Oprah once said, "You become what you believe.
Not what you wish, not what you think or want, but what you truly believe.
Wherever you are in life, look at your beliefs.
They put you there.
Your focus determines your results.
Most people fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.
Here's a story a monk told me over a cup of tea in a Tengboche monastery in Nepal.
A man found an eagle's egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen.
The eaglet hatched with the brood of chickens and grew up with them.
All his life the eagle did what the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken.
He scratched the earth for worms and insects.
He clucked and cackled.
And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.
One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the sky.
It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.
"Who's that?" he asked.
"That's the eagle, the king of the birds," said his chicken friend.
"He belongs to the sky, we belong to the earth - we are chickens."
"I wish I could soar like him high in the sky."
All chickens roared with laughter.
"You?" they teased him.
"You are no eagle, you are a chicken, like the rest of us.
Chickens don't fly."
Each time the eagle talked about his dreams of flying high, he was told it couldn’t be done.
And that was what he learned to believe.
Over time, the eagle stopped dreaming about flying in the open skies.
He believed he was a chicken.
He lived like a chicken.
And he died like a chicken.
Tony Robbins once made the point that you get what you tolerate.
If you tolerate mediocre, that’s exactly what you’ll get.
If you act as if mediocrity is OK, then you’ll begin moulding your beliefs to fit that reality.
Life is a sum of all your choices.
Change your beliefs.
Change your reality.
Do not let others do the thinking for you.
How do you carry yourself?
Who do you believe you are?
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