365 Days of Luck

My name is Dmitri, and this blog is about the pursuit of good luck.  I have a wife named Belle and a Sheltie named Tiny Dog.  I love to read, spend time with my wife, play games, travel, and I work in the financial services industry.  I love life.  I wouldn't classify myself as chronically unlucky, but I could certainly be luckier than I am. 

It seems to me that luck is largely based on Perception and the Law of Large numbers.  Maintain a positive outlook (so you keep going and recognize your opportunities) and then make sure that you have enough encounters that chance works in your favor.   

The pursuit of good luck is important to me for a few reasons.  One is my job.  I work in a business that practically requires good luck to reach the level of success that I want.  Second is my social life.  I've not "had a lot of luck" meeting people socially in the last few years outside of my wife.  I'd like to be more socially lucky.  Third, I'd like to be able to find the good from the bad in life.  I think this will improve my quality of life and dramatically reduce my stress levels. 

I've read The Luck Factor by Dr. Richard Wiseman and meandered around his website. His book first describes the traits of the lucky, and continues to provide suggestions and exercises to practice becoming lucky.  The four main traits of the lucky are:

1.  A strong social/business network.  Lucky people routinely encounter chance opportunities and meet people that improve their life. 

2.  Making good decisions based on intuition.  They don't necessarily understand why. 

3.  Their people's dreams, goals, and expectations routinely pan out. 

4.  An ability to turn even bad luck into good fortune.

This, in turn, means that there are several areas in your life to work upon.

I'm going to begin by working on some of the exercises that Dr. Wiseman suggested.  First off, I'm going to try to enhance my perception of my blessings.  Simply put, I'm going keep track of my good luck and post about it every day for the next year.

Second, I am going to "Fix" my luck by making all unlucky situations into a lucky situation.  For example, if I get in a fender bender, I'll say, "We were lucky that nobody got hurt!" Instead of dwelling on my bad fortune, I will make it a practice to dwell on the positive spin.  I will also evaluate each situation and brainstorm constructive ways to avoid the bad situation in the future.

Third, I am going to play the lucky networking games.  These involve meeting a new person at random every week as well as connecting with someone that I haven't heard from in a long time every week.

I will do these things for the next 365 days.  Will anyone else join me?  What are your thoughts on luck?