What if working hard, setting goals and being talented actually didn’t work? Dr Richard Wiseman, a respected academic, has a shocking, subversive theory – success is not determined by any of the things we believe it is. In fact, success is quite often down to simple, dumb luck.
Read the Sunday Times Rich List and you can half guess it to be true. Why have these entrepreneurs, these financiers, made it – from a talented pool of millions? Yes, luck has made kings and ruined careers. It’s truly the ambrosia of the gods – sweet, bitter and wilfully capricious all in one.
“The Luck Factor” is a bold attempt to grab Lady Luck and wrestle her to the ground. It’s less a book than an experience – full of interactive exercises and opportunities to participate. Go with it.
Dr Richard Wiseman is no fly-by-night success guru. He’s a respected academic at the University of Hertfordshire and has catapulted himself into a TV career through his intriguing and radical psychological theories.
He cites the story of U.S. President Harry Truman, a bankrupt shopkeeper whose luck turned for the better in his late thirties. He ascended to the White House when the incumbent Roosevelt suddenly died, and became the victor-hero of World War Two. Truman then beat Dewey in 1948 in a result so unexpected that the newspapers had already printed the headlines “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Luck aided and abetted Harry Truman at every step of his political career.
Dr. Wiseman has a ruthlessly bipolar view of the world. You’ve either got luck or you ain’t. His rigorous scientific training shines through, as he strips away all the mysticism and superstition about luck to distil it to a set of core principles that anyone can learn. Here they are:
1. Maximise chance opportunities in your life. My favourite example here is of a man who keeps a jar especially for coins he finds on the street – and fills the jar to the brim regularly. Wiseman’s astonishing conclusion is that the more likely you are to choose a new dish at a restaurant, the more likely you are to succeed.
2. That old chestnut, intuition. I am reminded of a recent character in the U.K. version of “The Apprentice” whose intuition frequently led her miserably astray, so will not offer any further comment!
3. Expect good fortune. We have all heard of the “self-fulfilling prophecy”. How many times have you heard a friend say: “She’s in a relationship with X – he’s no good, but she doesn’t believe she deserves anyone better”. Without high self-esteem, luck will probably be elusive.
4. Transform bad luck into good. Everyone has obstacles and challenges, but it’s how we respond to them that really matters.
So what will you learn from this book? First - beliefs matter. He cites the Chinese-American death rate from cardiac arrest spikes on the fourth of the month, which many consider unlucky. There is no equivalent spike among other American ethnic groups. Wiseman cites an old German proverb: "No-one is luckier than him who believes his own luck”. Secondly, embrace the importance of the alchemy of transforming bad luck into good – of breaking the downward spiral and taking positive, concrete action to improve your life.
The Luck Factor is a revelation. You will never see the world in the same way again. If one day you start rolling dice to determine which new sport to take up, or begin chatting to complete strangers in the supermarket, just say the good Dr. Wiseman told you to do it... Time to luck out!
