Lucky and Unlucky

I was talking to a co-worker yesterday about how there are some really lucky people in this world.  He told me about a study that a newspaper reporter conducted to test a theory on luck.

He put out an ad on the paper, and recruited 600 people for the study.  He asked each one of them if they thought they were lucky or unlucky.  Then separated the group into a test and control group.  Everyone in the study were given a complete newspaper - and asked to count all the pictures they could find.


The spin on this was that inside the newspaper, the reporter added a customized photo ad that read:

"In this entire newspaper, there are 36 total pictures"

This picture was placed on the second page of the newspaper, shortening the amount of time it takes for people to complete the exercise.  The results were surprising.  The persons that marked themselves as lucky saw the picture and completed the test in less than a minutes.  The persons that marked themselves as unlucky actually went through the entire newspaper and took 5 minutes.

The reporter was still not satisfied, so he replaced the newspaper with a new ad that read:

"Thank you for participating in this exercise.  Once you finish finding the pictures, please mention this ad to me and you will be rewarded $20"

The results were similar as the first test.  More people that marked themselves as lucky, noticed the ad and mentioned the $20 ad after the test.

The conclusion of the test is awareness.  Luck doesn't necessary choose people and grant them good karma.  Luck sometimes needs to be found.  There may be opportunities that arise in your daily life that you are too ignorant to notice.  Either you are tunnel visioning a specific task you are working on, or just too lazy to be aware of your surroundings.

By being more of an optimist and being aware (alert) of everything around you, luck can be found.  There is that saying, "(Blank) was starring you in the face, and you didn't notice".