How to Make Your Own Luck

Luck isn’t easy to measure or study, but those who have managed to do it discovered it’s not the work of fate – it’s a skill you can cultivate and improve. So, how do you go about it?

- By Genevieve Gannon

We all know that person: the one who happily skips through life with amazing opportunities constantly falling into their lap. Perfect husband? Tick. Great job? Tick. Fabulous friendship circle? Tick, tick, tick.

And there’s another person we all know too. The one who cannot catch a break. Whose tales of woe come one after the other, leaving behind a trail of tears.

But what if you could choose which one of those people you’d want to be?

‘People are not born lucky,’ says Prof Richard Wiseman in his best-selling book The Luck Factor. ‘Instead, without realising it, lucky people are using four basic principles to create good fortune in their lives.’ The British experimental psychologist became engrossed in the mechanics of luck and spent many years trying to understand why fortune smiles on some people and not others. ‘Certain people seemed to attract good luck consistently while others were a magnet for ill-fortune,’ he writes.