This is how you make your fortune

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Richard Wiseman (2014)

So you make your luck (subtitle How you become lucky with simple strategies ; in the original The Luck Factor , Four simple principles that will change your luck - and your life ) is a non-fiction book by the psychologist Richard Wiseman , which was first published in 2003.

Wiseman sums up eight years of research results with “lucky guys” - people who call themselves so because they feel that they are always lucky in life - and “unlucky people” - people who feel persecuted by bad luck - in popular science . For the experienced by him in interviews details, in experiments observed behaviors and from results of standard tests and questionnaires he heads "four principles of happiness" from: The self-perception of happiness mushrooms after that is not based on their intelligence , nor psychic abilities and not on the Personality traits compatibility and conscientiousness , but exclusively on their low neuroticism , in combination with high extraversion and openness to new experiences .

In the last part of the book Wiseman explains how you can learn from these results to "get lucky" and he reports with examples and supported by figures, which changes its volunteers after this "luck school" ( Luck School had).

Subject

In three parts, the book deals with Wiseman's research results regarding people who, according to their own statements (and verified through interviews), are primarily lucky - or unlucky. Information obtained from the interviews is summarized in order to provide a brief description of people in the two groups. Results of additional personality tests - shown as graphics - as well as other experiments with these people are used to determine typical characteristics of these two groups of people and to work out "four principles of happiness" (with a total of twelve sub-principles). In the third and last part of the book, Wiseman describes practical approaches how these four principles can be trained and implemented. The text is explained with 56 footnotes.

content

The content is divided into three parts.

First research

Before Wiseman explains in the first chapter (The Power of Happiness) what led him to research on the lucky and unlucky (and how he defines such people using examples), he suggests the reader to self-assess happiness and unhappiness with the help of twelve key questions . Another suggestion is for the reader to record this first result - and the results of further questions later in the book - in a separate "happiness journal" in order to be able to document any change.

In the second chapter (luck and bad luck in life) Wiseman describes preliminary experiments with his test subjects in order to rule out differences in intelligence on the one hand and even supernatural abilities as causes for "being (un) lucky" on the other hand : Several intelligence tests have shown that the three groups (lucky ones , Normal, unlucky) had a very similar IQ distribution. There were also no statistically relevant differences between the three groups when predicting lottery numbers, although - compared to the unlucky ones - twice as many lucky people expected a win.

The four principles of happiness

A chapter is devoted to each principle - and its sub-principles - derived from Wiseman's research. First the hypothesis that has been assumed is presented, then the type and method of questioning or the tests are specified, then the results are explained in the various groups using graphics and finally exercises on these principles are suggested, the results of which are documented in the "Glücks-Journal" should.

Wiseman first examined the personality of his test subjects using the five-factor model for tolerance, conscientiousness, neuroticism, extraversion and openness to experience.

  • Compatibility and conscientiousness can be excluded as lucky parameters, as the three groups (lucky, Normal and unlucky) approximately reached the same values at Wisemans studies in both areas.
  • Neuroticism , extraversion and openness to experience , on the other hand, show different values ​​in the three groups in such a way that lucky people (compared to unlucky ones) show particularly low values ​​for neuroticism and particularly high values ​​for extraversion and openness to experience.

These three personality parameters were further examined and Wiseman derived the following principles from them.

1st principle: Maximize your chances of chance

  • 1. Sub-principle: Lucky people make a strong "happiness network" and maintain it.
Lucky turn out in their extroversion and especially by its open body language as "social magnets" ( social magnets ): You attract other people to come and formally thereby contacts, discussions and information exchange. By making a lot of contacts and maintaining this "happiness network" (for example: repeating contacts and building friendships), the lucky ones are able to get pointers to information and options to choose from before they make important decisions.
  • 2nd sub-principle: lucky people have a serene approach to life.
Low neuroticism, i.e. H. a high tolerance for stress, low irritability, little insecurity, few "complaints" etc., allows lucky people to approach challenges more relaxed. Instead of only having a single goal in mind and also wanting to force this, they perceive potentially important, peripheral options in an almost playful way and use them. This scheme of action resulted repeatedly from several behavioral experiments.
  • 3rd sub-principle: lucky people are always open to new experiences.
In contrast to the unlucky ones, the lucky ones show around 40% higher values ​​for openness to experiences, for example curiosity about a change in the daily routine, trying previously unknown foods, in short: “A weakness for the charm of the unpredictable”. This tendency has also been confirmed with parallel experiments in everyday situations.

2nd principle: Follow your lucky inspirations

  • 1st sub-principle: lucky people listen to their "inner voice".
Wiseman uses case studies and experiments to explain the meaning of the “inner voice” and investigated decision-making through intuition for the areas of life financial decisions , business decisions , professional opportunities and private relationships . Compared to the unlucky ones, lucky ones make more use of their unconscious / subconscious knowledge in all four areas.
  • 2. Sub-principle: Lucky guys help their intuition on the jumps.
This result was followed by the question of why lucky people act intuitively more often (and successfully). Wiseman asked how and how often the subjects of both groups practice “intuitive” techniques. It was confirmed that the lucky ones are in front of the unlucky both in meditation / "liberation of the mind", in postponing a problem solution to a later ("right") time and in "retreating into the quiet little room". The control group of normals was closer to the unlucky ones in this aspect.

Principle 3: Count on a happy future

  • 1st sub-principle: lucky people expect that their luck will continue in the future.
Questionnaires on expectations regarding general, but also very specific, positive events in the future yielded the result that lucky people have consistently more positive expectations than normal and unlucky people. In addition, the assessment of potentially negative future events was also asked, and here the reverse picture emerges: Unlucky people generally consider such events to be more likely, in some cases twice as likely, than is considered probable by lucky people who have more positive future expectations and consider short-term bad luck to be short-lived (unlucky birds, on the other hand, consider lucky cases to be the exception).
Wiseman comments on this finding with an exposition on self-fulfilling prophecy .
  • 2nd sub-principle: lucky people try to achieve their goals even when the chances of success seem low.
Wiseman describes experimental arrangements with which he was able to show that lucky people pursue challenges more persistently than unlucky ones and are twice as likely to be convinced that they can still solve these challenges - even with currently proven (i.e. still existing) failure.
  • 3rd sub-principle: lucky people assume that their interactions with others are positive.
A positive expectation could be proven not only for future projects, but also for acquaintances or newly made contacts: lucky people - compared to unlucky ones - are twice as likely to believe that newly made people are “pleasant, friendly and helpful”.

4. Principle: Turn your bad luck into luck

  • 1st sub-principle: lucky people recognize happiness in unhappiness.
Lucky people have a special view of misfortune: They practice counterfactual thinking , for example by imagining that an unfortunate situation could have turned out much worse. In this way, they deal more positively with their temporary unhappiness: In such situations, lucky people compare themselves with people who were even more unlucky, while unlucky people compare themselves with people who were less unlucky than themselves.
Wiseman uses the example of Olympic winners examined in research to explain: Silver medalists are often more dissatisfied than bronze medalists because the former see it as bad luck to have missed the small difference to the gold winner, while bronze winners are aware that they were lucky, just barely to get into the medal ranks.
  • 2nd sub-principle: lucky people are convinced that bad luck will have a positive effect in the long run.
Wiseman explains this principle with the Daoist parable luck in unhappiness - unhappiness in happiness and gives further examples from personal experience and interviews with the test persons who explain this point of view.
  • 3. Sub-principle : Lucky people don't constantly brood over past calamities.
While the lucky ones are able to see past unfortunate situations as closed, unlucky ones brood over such situations and accumulate them as a never-ending series of unfortunate events: the mental closing of past, unpleasant events on the one hand, or the failure to lock on the other hand, determined for a long time View the respondent's mood positively or negatively.
  • 4th sub-principle: lucky people actively prevent future bad luck.
The behavior observed among the lucky ones to prevent future bad luck includes lateral thinking in order to experience situations alternatively, largely renouncing superstitions and “ lucky charms ” and early attempts to “get the situation under control”. Unlucky people, on the other hand, twice as often preferred vertical thinking and belief in lucky charms as lucky ones and more often gave themselves up to the feeling of being at the mercy of the situation - again effects of the inner attitude.

You make your own luck

In the first chapter of the third part, Wiseman summarizes the four principles of happiness in a compact way. In the second chapter, he provides the methodical approach on how to learn to be a lucky guy. In the third and final chapter, he reports on the experiences of his test subjects who have implemented this method in their everyday life.

Quote

“Luck was not a magical ability or a gift from the gods. Instead it was a state of mind: A way of thinking and behaving. People are not born lucky or unlucky, but create much of their own good and bad luck through their thoughts, feelings and actions. "

“Happiness, it was now clear, is not a magical power and not a gift from the gods. It's a state of mind, a particular way of thinking and behaving. People are not born under a lucky or unhappy star; they are the smiths of their own luck - or bad luck - and their thoughts, feelings and actions are their tools. "

- Richard Wiseman, Part 3, Chapter 1; Translation by Till R. Lohmeyer and Christel Rost

reception

The original English edition has been translated into twelve languages.

The subject of the book has been discussed in newspapers and specialist literature. In addition, Wiseman's research is also related to other popular science topics in books.

Web links

literature

  • Richard Wiseman: The Luck Factor , Random House (2003), ISBN 0-7126-2388-4
    • German edition: Richard Wiseman (author), Till R. Lohmeyer (translator), Christel Rost (translator): How to make your fortune: How to become lucky with simple strategies , Goldmann Verlag (2004), ISBN 978-3-442 -16650-3

References and comments

  1. ↑ The English word luck means luck in the sense of 'to be lucky', while happiness can be described as 'the state of happiness'. Wiseman's research does not refer to “happy and unhappy people”, but to “people who - according to their own perception - are often lucky and those who are more often unlucky (“ bad luck ”)”. In the German translation of the book, the terms "lucky mushrooms" and "bad luck birds" are used for this.
  2. ↑ These questions are derived from the twelve sub-principles of the four principles of happiness that Wiseman explains throughout the book.
  3. ↑ For the unlucky ones, it was more likely: "The harder they looked, the less they saw." ( The more committed / laborious they looked for something at night, the less they saw and found. )
  4. ↑ Wiseman explains with references to the literature the importance of an (unconscious) familiarity with certain perceptions or situations, an effect that advertising also uses when it uses familiar and positive set pieces or its statements in different media and slightly modified, but still offers recognizable form.
  5. ↑ For example: "Your next vacation will be just great." Should be assessed with a personal assessment of 0 to 100%.
  6. ↑ For example: “You will be the victim of a robbery.” Should be assessed with a personal assessment of 0 to 100%.
  7. ^ V. Medvec, S. Madey, and T. Gilovich: When less is more: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction among Olympic Medalists , In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, D. Kahneman (Ed.), Heuristics and biases: The Psychology of intuitive judgment (pp. 625–635). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.
  8. ↑ According to WorldCat : Chinese, German, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Croatian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish .
  9. ^ Marianne Power: Feeling lucky? The scientific proof that you DO make your own luck , Daily Mail, October 28, 2012.
  10. ↑ Paola Emilia Cicerone: Psychology: The secret of lucky mushrooms , Spiegel-Online, February 11, 2005; accessed on December 2, 2014.
  11. ↑ Do You Have the Luck Factor? , Association of Psychological Sciences, March 17, 2011.
  12. ↑ Christine L. Carter: Raising Happiness , Psychology Today , March 17, 2010; accessed on December 2, 2014.
  13. ^ Society for Psychical Research (Great Britain): Journal of the Society for Psychical Research . Society for Psychical Research., 2004.
  14. ^ David R. Mandel, Denis J. Hilton, Patrizia Catellani: The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking . Psychology Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-415-32241-6 , p. 145.
  15. ↑ John Maltby, Liz Day, Ann Macaskill: Personality, Individual Differences and Intelligence . Prentice Hall, 2010, ISBN 978-0-273-72290-8 , p. 496.
  16. ↑ The Atheist . Atheistic Center, 2003.
  17. ↑ Laura Vanderkam: Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues . McGraw Hill Professional, November 2006, ISBN 978-0-07-147933-2 .
  18. ↑ Ken Robinson, Lou Aronica: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything . Penguin Books Limited, February 5, 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-191125-0 , p. 41.
  19. ↑ Ben Sherwood: The Survivors Club: The secrets and science that could save your life . Penguin Books Limited, June 25, 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-104120-9 , p. 125.
  20. ^ Peter Sims: Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries . Random House, May 5, 2011, ISBN 978-1-4090-3803-0 , p. 121.