Most of us know someone who seems incredibly happy. First of all, they hear about renting a new apartment. They wander into situations that suddenly turn them into a new job or a new project, or they buy an underperforming stock and it suddenly goes up a lot. And when enough of these seemingly random, positive outcomes happen to someone we know, we think some of us are luckier than others. But what if luck isn’t what we think it is? What if the way luck works can be explained by a set of rules rather than the randomness of life?
One of the leading researchers in the study of “happiness” is Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer. Back in the 1970s, Langer was recognized for his work on the “illusion of control,” our tendency to believe that we can influence outcomes that are controlled by random chance. Langer’s research found that people tend to overestimate their ability to influence random events, such as choosing lottery tickets, as if the criteria for their choice actually mattered. (1) We tend to roll the dice harder when we want a higher number and softer when we want a lower number. We act as if random events are under our control, even when they are not.
According to Ellen Langer, how mindfulness can increase luck
This may sound like bad news for someone who is down on their luck. Langer’s later research is said to present more interesting findings. When he turned his attention from imagination to practice mindfulness-not mindfulness in the meditative sense, but mindfulness as an active process to notice– he revealed a rule that anyone can follow to become “happier”. This is the rule. Most of our lives are spent thinking about what we’re doing while we’re doing it, like an airplane on autopilot. We do routine tasks, spend hours with people we already know, and act like we already know everything we’re going through. When we do this, we don’t notice what is really going on around us because there is nothing to notice. Why worry? It’s all the same routine. But it shouldn’t be. Instead, we can be mindful of what we are doing at any given moment. Being alert to Langer means making ourselves aware of the opportunities that were always there, but we missed because we weren’t paying. attention. And when we pay attention, we automatically have a greater number of opportunities that are likely to turn positive. And there you have it – a rule you can follow to become happier.
Langer’s research lays a good foundation for the work of another researcher, British psychologist Richard Wiseman. (2) Since the 1990s, Wiseman has studied people who described themselves as happy or unhappy. His findings were surprisingly consistent with Langer’s conclusion. Happy people do not enjoy a life full of many positive outcomes. What they did that made them happy was noticing the opportunities in others. They were more open to new things. They mostly talked to strangers. They took action on the largest number of long-term opportunities. And most importantly, they recovered from negative consequences and setbacks faster than people who described themselves as unhappy. Basically, they experienced more positive outcomes because they focused on more opportunities.
All of this seems to beg the question: When people are more aware, do they somehow create luck, or do they simply notice “more luck” (meaning more opportunities for positive outcomes) that was already there? In a sense, the answer may be that it is entirely within our control to be happy or unhappy. As humans, we have a limited attention span. Moment to moment, our senses and brain are taking in and processing more information than our conscious mind can focus on. The brain, shaped by our life experiences and personal tastes, is one of our most important filters, emphasizing what is important to us and neglecting what is important to us.
If you decide tomorrow that you want a green BMW, a well-known phenomenon will occur. Within days, maybe even hours, you’ll see green BMWs everywhere. They suddenly appear on the freeway, in the parking lot, next to you at traffic lights, and in your neighbor’s driveway. Of course, the number of green BMWs in the world hasn’t changed because you wanted it to. what changed your attention is on them. Your mind puts your new desire at the top of the list to pay attention to, and visual information that was previously ignored is now noticed. But what if something else is at play? What if something we know about physics works alongside the behavioral sciences, which has been proven time and time again?
Quantum Physics and Luck: Is There a Connection?
In quantum physics, systems exist in many possible states until an observation leads to what physicists call a wave function breakdown. Before “measuring” (or in the case of luck, “noticing”), the only thing that exists is the probability of one outcome or another occurring. But after measuring/finding, there is a specific result that we experience.
It is important not to express this idea more than what physicists have in mind. There is currently no scientific evidence that human intention directly results in quantum events as popular culture suggests. But the idea is compelling. Every day we stumble upon numerous opportunities for positive outcomes. Most of these are never realized because our brain’s attention filter ignores those who are not interested in us. But when we consciously decide that something is important, we begin to observe/find reality differently. New opportunities are everywhere. New relationships seem to happen effortlessly. And the new information suddenly becomes useful to us when it was not before. Whether this can be explained by behavioral science or whether consciousness in the context of quantum physics plays a role in shaping what we experience as reality is an open question. Science supports the first explanation. We never know if the second explanation has any role. Obviously, focus is important. Importance is intent. Identifying things. People who are more actively aware of the world around them are exposed to more opportunities, and those opportunities sometimes lead to positive outcomes, and those positive outcomes are labeled as luck. So maybe the physics of luck isn’t really about luck.
Maybe luck starts with a simple decision about what we choose to observe/find. Whether you’re seeing new possibilities because you’ve updated your brain filters or whether your conscious attention is somehow playing a role in creating the certain realities you want, we don’t know. What we do know is that the world holds more opportunities than any of us can handle at one time. And the things we choose to notice tend to show up in our lives more often. This may not be a complete theory of luck. But it’s a good place to start for happiness, and anyone can start at any time.
