Customer Reviews

The Luck Factor

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

All I can say is that we got this book, and things actually DID strart going better, including getting a better job, having more positive things happen, etc. Things literally turned around. And that was within one month. I liked the exercises - very practical and doable.

In regard to the idea that he didn't have any objective test for luck - Dr. W. had subjects go into rather lengthy descriptions of what in their lives had happened to support their perception of themselves as lucky or unlucky. By most people's standards, the unlucky people WERE having rather hard times. The lucky people were having a much easier time.

It's important to remember that Dr. W. is sort of professional skeptic - he's not into the paranormal. He got these principles out of hard-headed investigation. I learned in the lab - don't argue with the results you have gotten! He's gotten good results - try it for yourself and see!

The Luck Factor by Richard Wiseman is definitely one of the more interesting/entertaining books I have read in my lifetime. I am not much of an avid book reader, but I do know a good book when I read one. Throughout the book, the doctor details the data gathered from many people of various types who he studied to discover just what exactly makes one person "luckier" than another. One thing he found was that persons who exert themselves socially create more contacts and more opportunities for "lucky" events. He spent eight years doing many elaborate tests and comparing the data from these tests. And with the results, he compiled this masterpiece book that everyone should read--especially the unlucky!

This 10-year study with volunteers reveals that good fortune is not primarily due to talent, hard work or intelligence. The scientific investigation is based upon interviews and experiments with people who consider themselves lucky; the author concludes that luck is a state of mind that may be cultivated.

Wiseman identifies four principles that underlie a life of good fortune, adherence to which will draw good luck into the life of the individual. These are 1. The belief that you are lucky (lucky people create, notice and act upon chance opportunities. They also have a relaxed attitude to life). 2. Lucky people make success happen by using their intuition and gut feelings. 3. One must expect good fortune, hold fast to this belief and persevere in attempting to achieve your goals. 4. Lucky people have a knack for transforming back luck into good luck. One must affirm your good fortune and have a strong conviction that everything will work out for the best.

The text is illustrated by graphs illustrating the research results plus some black and white illustrations of playing cards. Overall the conclusions are quite impressive and I find the results of the study very convincing. There are plenty of exercises and the book concludes with notes that include bibliographic references. It is heartening to finally see scientific proof of the claims made by sages and esotericists down the ages

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I'd never really thought about luck before, but upon meditating on the principles in the book, I realized that there is more to luck than just chance. It's an asset that you can acquire and Richard Wiseman tells you how to acquire it! Don't just read it - when you're finished, enroll in "Luck School" and watch your life change! I'm astounded at all the things that are happening in only four days of "school"! It isn't just my outer world that is changing but my response to events as well - my awareness of these principles is changing me! It is all explained in this generous gift of a book - buy it quick!

I saw the author, Dr. Richard Wiseman, on television the day before yesterday and was intrigued, so I bought the book a couple of hours later. I've never particularly considered myself either lucky or unlucky. But I've always felt there was more to luck than mere chance. Wiseman posits just that point.

This book reminds me a bit of Dale Carnegie's classic, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. Carnegie's book was groundbreaking because at the time it was written there was hardly anything in the popular press about worryÑas opposed to today. Ha! Likewise, this may be a ground breaking book on the topic of luck. The author's style is similar to Carnegie'sÑeasy to read, upbeat, lots of anecdotes, and "principles" to follow. I especially enjoyed Dr. Wiseman's references to his earlier career as a magician.

I'm going to follow the author's advice and keep a "Luck Journal" for the next thirty days. Thus far, one hour after finishing the book, I've found one penny on the sidewalk.

Richard Wiseman heads a research unit in the psychology department at the University of Hertfordshire, so you'd think he'd know something about experimental methodology. Unfortunately, you'd never guess it by reading this book. Wiseman claims that his research has revealed that `the real explanation behind luck lies in four basic psychological principles'. The selling point of `The Luck Factor' is these principles to can be used to `make unlucky people lucky, and lucky people even luckier.'

The main difficulty with this claim is that at no point in his book does Wiseman present any sort of objective test for `luck'. Rather, his subjects classify themselves as `lucky' or `unlucky' (and he simply takes their word for it) or else they are classified by him as such based on their own subjective evaluation of the degree to which they share certain characteristics with people who see themselves as either `lucky' or `unlucky'. Since the `four principles' are based on data about people who feel lucky, rather than people who are lucky in some objective sense, the only honest claim that could be made based on Wiseman's research is that some people who follow his `four principles' might begin to think of themselves as luckier.

The problem with using people's subjective evaluation of their own luckiness is revealed in an experiment (presented early in the book) to determine whether `lucky' people have more psychic ability than `unlucky' people. Seven hundred volunteers who phoned in upon viewing a particular television programme (Random population sample? Why bother?) were asked to categorise themselves as lucky, unlucky or neutral based on how well they felt they matched Wiseman's `Lucky Description' or `Unlucky Description'. Here's the Lucky description for reference (complete with grammatical errors):

"Lucky people are people for whom seemingly chance events tend to work out consistently in their favour. For example, they seem to win more than their fair share of raffles and lotteries, or to accidentally meet people who can help them in some way, or their good fortune might play an important role in them achieving their ambitions and goals."

All of the volunteers entered the same draw of the National Lottery, buying an average of three tickets each. None of the subjects won more than £56 pounds (that amount was won by two participants, one `lucky' and one `unlucky'). On average both `lucky' and `unlucky' participants lost about £2.50. Wiseman's conclusion: `The results indicated that luck wasn't due to psychic ability'.

The results indicate something entirely different to me. The description of `lucky' specifically talks about winning lotteries. Yet people who classified themselves as `lucky' according to this description didn't do any better at the lottery than those who classified themselves as `unlucky' (though `lucky' people's expectations of winning were more than twice as high as those of `unlucky' people). This would seem to indicate that the `lucky' people who participated in this experiment were anything but. They may have been more optimistic, unrealistic, or self-deluding, but they weren't luckier.

Wiseman comments:

"When it comes to random events like the lottery, such expectations count for little. Someone with a high expectation of winning will do as well as someone with a low expectation. However, life is not like a lottery. Often our expectations make a difference. They make a difference to whether we try something, how hard we persist in the face of failure, how we interact with others and how others interact with us."

That's all very true, but when Wiseman admits that expectations `count for little' when it comes to `random events' he is more or less admitting that they have nothing to do with luck.

Wiseman goes on to analyse the characteristics of `Lucky' people (i.e. those who think they are lucky, but probably aren't any luckier than the rest of us) and finds that they have several things in common. Unsurprisingly, they expect good fortune and they see the positive side to random events (for example, having just broken her leg in a freak accident, an `unlucky' person would say `It was bad luck' whereas a `lucky' person would tend to say `I'm lucky I wasn't killed').

Much of the evidence given in this book is anecdotal and many of the anecdotes intended to illustrate someone's luck or lack thereof fail miserably. Women who end up in successive abusive relationships are described as `unlucky in love', though choice, not luck, determines who we marry; and a person who gets involved with someone she doesn't fully trust is better characterised as `desperate' than `unlucky'. Similarly, we hear anecdotes about `lucky' people who enter contests and win prizes. We later learn that entering contests is their hobby and it's only because they enter so many that they win. Statistical probability is involved here, not luck.

But Wiseman doesn't hesitate to extract `ways to improve your luck' from these instances. The women who are `unlucky in love' are meant to show how we can improve our luck by trusting our intuition. (Despite the fact that they had blatant, as well as intuitive, indicators that their men were jerks). The contest winners supposedly illustrate that we can improve our luck by being more persistent-- though I fail to see how increasing one's chances of achieving something through deliberate, persistent and calculated effort has anything to do with `luck'.

I'm sure some of the clichéd suggestions in this book (e.g. positive thinking and networking) will help some readers (those who haven't heard it all before) to improve their chances of achieving their goals. I doubt any of them will help readers to improve their luck. My opinion of this book would have been much higher if the author had straightforwardly framed his findings in terms of `How to make the most of your opportunities.' I really would like to read some properly conducted scientific research which addresses the question of whether some people are innately luckier than others and, if so, what characteristics they share. Unfortunately, Dr. Wiseman seems to have different interests.

This book is about the parameters of luck you can account for. Chiefly the ability to recognize opportunity when it presents itself. Wiseman has shown through excellent research that "Lucky" people see opportunities in newspapers in their environment more so than "unlucky" people. He talks about making yourself open to this. Some people get this. Some don't. Some people don't want to hear that. They want a magic explanation or a kook theory. Wiseman validates things that have been obvious to people like Benjamin Franklin and others who promoted a positive attitude and industrious behavior.

I always thought that I was "unlucky". So after I saw this TV show featuring Dr. Richard Wiseman (the author), I bought his book. Normally I'm a skeptic, but after reading his book, I really believe his principles are true, and that if I follow the advice in his book, I can become a "lucky" person!

He doesn't just give his opinions about the topic of luck. He actually performed numerous SCIENTIFIC experiments to test lucky and unlucky people. So the book is based on science, not superstition.

After reading this book, I will never buy another book about luck -- I don't need to! This is the one and only book I will ever need to be a "lucky" person!

Although the concept of taking concrete steps based upon scientific data to improve your luck seems strange, Dr. Wiseman has developed a few core concepts that allow anyone to increase the amount of good luck they experience. If you are looking for tabulations of double-blind studies on luck, this isn't the book for you. If, however, you want to find out what the average lucky person does that you might be overlooking, this book is a must read. The author adopts a simple workbook/diary approach that allows the reader to improve chance opportunities and develop the tools necessary to capitalize on those opportunities.

Having read the reviews and recently only having read the book myself, one cannot help but think that this book is a good thing. It is light reading, anecdotal and not full of all the psycho nonsense and political correctness we seem to have forced down our throats these days. To the wingers out there, of course, there is always room for further experimentation when it comes to scientific research, this is only one perspective. This is a positive book, having a good attitude can only help in times of adversity and it appeals to all people from all walks of life to lighten up and look at life in a more positive (but not dillusional) light. So what if it doesn't meet some people's scientific elitism. It satisfied me because it was direct and simple and full of common sense - something that isn't common these days.