When things go well we like to credit ourselves with the outcome, searching for an opportunity to remind ourselves that we are good and worthy.
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When things do not go so well for us, rather than this being attributed to ourselves, we turn to environmental factors and call in the concept of "bad luck" to explain how things turned out. This is the fundamental attribution error.
In her TEDx talk, Liv Boree, science communicator and games specialist, explores the concept of luck and what our thinking and beliefs bring to how things turn out.
A former professional poker player, she won multiple championship titles on the international poker circuit and has been ranked #1 female player. She reported when she had success she attributed it to her skill, and yet it was this thinking that prompted her to become overly risky in her play. The outcome was that her performance dropped.
Professor Richard Wiseman, psychologist and author of The Luck Factor, reports from his 10-year scientific study into luck. He revealed that people make their own good and bad fortune. The results also showed that it's possible to enhance the amount of "luck" that people encounter in their lives.
People who believe themselves to be lucky generate good fortune via four basic principles:
- They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities
- They make "lucky" decisions by listening to their intuition
- They create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations
- They adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad "luck" into good.
