I read a book called the Luck Factor a while ago and some of the principles have stuck in my head. The book tries to identify what are some differences between people who call themselves lucky and those who do not. Here is what the book say:

Lucky people
  • tend to be relaxed, open, happy, cheerful. They tend to notice and act upon chance opportunities. One interesting example was of a man who was extraordinarily good at finding lost money. He tried to figure out why that was so and realized that the days he was tense and preoccupied, he tended not to notice lost pennies on the streets! Another good reason why not to go through life being tense 😀
  • tend to listen to their gut instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, they dont go through with it. Unlucky people on the other hand are not so sensitive to what their gut is telling them.
  • are very positive in general. Its not as if bad things dont happen to lucky people. They just tend to look at the more positive side of the misfortune. They expect good things to happen to them and the good things do happen to them! Very common examples are when you meet someone for the first time, if you start the meeting being suspicious and defensive, the other person picks up on the feeling and returns the hostility and so your negative views of the world and people just keep getting reinforced. However if you trust people and are open and genuinely friendly to them, you will get many more smiles all around and people going out of their way to help you out. Iridescent is such an amazing testament of this principle. I sincerely believe that there is nothing to lose in life if you trust everyone. Maybe 0.005% of the time you will have a negative experience, but overall the world will trust you back!
  • are much more persistent. Unlucky people tend to give up at the first sign of failure and chalk it up to “bad luck”. Whereas lucky people just keep trying! One example was of a woman who had amazing luck in competitions. She seemed to win every competition that was offered until the author of the book dug deeper and found out that for every win she had, she would enter 100-200 other competitions that she didn’t win! She just kept trying!
Good luck!