the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behavior are responsible for
much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance
opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities,

whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to
differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both
lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: "Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win £250."

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was
more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face,
but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to
spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this
anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss 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 types of job advertisements and 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. My research eventually
revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles.
They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling
prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that
transforms bad luck into good.

Towards the end of the work, I wondered whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person.

Dramatic results These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities,
listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to

bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80% of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become
lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive "luck factor"

Here are Professor Wiseman's four top tips for becoming lucky:

1) Listen to your gut instincts - they are normally right
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well