50 Incredibly Lucky People Who Are Probably Having A Better Day Than You

Can a person even be lucky or unlucky? Isn’t this just about chance and coincidence? Well, according to scientists that study luck, it isn’t as much of a phenomenon but more of a personal trait. That is because they have discovered that being lucky has a lot to do with your attitude. If you are in general an optimistic, open-minded person, you have more of a chance to be favored by fortune. That is often because these traits make you more likely to notice an opportunity and take a chance.

Richard Wiseman, author, speaker, and professor in the Public Understanding of Psychology at the University of Hertfordshire, has been studying luck for decades. In one experiment, he separated study participants into two groups—one that considered themselves lucky and another one that thought they are not. He gave people in both of these groups a newspaper and asked them to count the number of pictures in it. The people in the “lucky” group were more likely to find the text on the second page that read “Stop counting—there are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” Their luck, in this case, was all about them being open-minded.

When talking to The Washington Post, Wiseman emphasized how a positive attitude can impact your life. “If you are relaxed and happy, your world view becomes bigger and you see more opportunities,” he said. “If you’re a flexible person, when those opportunities come in, you’ll make the most of them. Lucky people know where they’re heading, but often they change the course depending on how the wind is going.”

He also noted that people that have a positive outlook tend to deal with negative situations better because of how they see the world. For example, if a slice of toast fell buttered-side up, the positive person will be relieved that it didn’t get ruined and think of it as a lucky accident. Those that are pessimistic will consider themselves unlucky simply because the toast fell in the first place.