HOW TO CHANGE YOUR LUCK

on Friday 13th!

Your interview goes brilliantly and it feels like your dream job is in the bag. But that evening, when a friend asks how it went, you find yourself playing it down.

‘I think it went OK, but it’s hard to tell, isn’t it?’ you shrug.

After all, however confident you might feel on the inside, you don’t want to ‘jinx’ things by being over-confident, do you? It’s a superstition many of us share: the fear that if we talk about some expected good fortune before it happens, whether exam success or an anticipated proposal of marriage, the thing in question won’t come to pass.

But can just talking about a hoped-for outcome really stop whatever it is from happening? Richard Webster is the author of The Secret to Attracting Luck: 50 Ways to Manifest Abundance & Good Fortune (£12.30, Llewellyn). ‘We’re told from a very young age to keep things secret,’ says Richard. ‘When you blow out the candles on your birthday cake and make a wish, you don’t tell anyone what your wish is. And I think there’s a lot of sense in that.

‘Fate has a rather strange sense of humour. If you get a little bit too cocky and know in advance what’s going to happen, the universe may have a way of bringing you back down to Earth!’

But what exactly is going on when it seems as though we’ve ‘jinxed’ an event? Why is voicing a desired outcome out loud any different to quietly hoping for it?

Firstly, Richard points out that there are often earthly pressures at play when we announce grand plans, for example the envy or expectations of others.

‘If you say you’re going to do something, friends may be envious and that can create negativity,’ he explains. ‘A common example is if someone says they’re going to give up smoking. Friends often don’t like that because the person is doing something they’d secretly like to be able to do themselves. Consequently, they’ll encourage the person to “just have one cigarette, it’s not going to hurt...” and then the attempt to quit fails.’

But what about the idea of ‘tempting fate’ with our words, for example you reflect out loud how you’ve never had a car crash, only for someone to shush you. ‘Don’t tempt fate!’ they warn, horrified, insinuating that you’ve somehow made a prang more likely with your words. Have you really invited in some malignant force that will work against you next time you’re behind the wheel?

‘A jinx only works if you believe it will happen,’ says Richard. ‘So you can say those things if you’re not superstitious or don’t believe in those things because it won’t affect you.

‘If, however, you feel you’ve been jinxed by making a comment like that, you might be waiting for the bad luck to occur and lose confidence, which could have an effect...’

So whether you believe bad luck comes in threes or a broken mirror has brought you seven years of misfortune, those beliefs might cause you to act differently and it’s that which may change your fate rather than any kind of jinx? ‘Absolutely,’ says Richard. If simply believing you’re due some bad luck can have an impact in the real world, is the opposite also true? Can believing you’re lucky make you more fortunate? Yes, according to Richard.

‘Many top sports people have lucky socks or lucky underwear and do play better when they wear or carry whatever their lucky thing happens to be,’ he says. ‘Because they believe they’re “lucky” they take more chances, which pays off...’

What about the belief that good fortune has some kind of limit – for example you win three coin tosses in a row but then quit so as not to ‘push’ your luck?

‘There’s no limit to the amount of luck one person can have,’ believes Richard. ‘In the coin toss example, I’d keep going until I lost and then cash in my winnings!’

If luck can be limitless, is there any truth in the saying that ‘some people have all the luck’?

‘There’s a popular belief that some people are born lucky, while others never have any luck,’ acknowledges Richard. ‘But I think we basically make our own luck with our attitudes and our approach to life. Someone who is optimistic and positive expects good things to happen and, by and large, they will. And that person will be described as being lucky.

‘See the glass as being half-full rather than half-empty. Because if you’ve got a negative outlook on life, all gloomy and glum, bad or not particularly pleasant things will happen – or you’ll pay particular attention to the negative things. If you’re focusing on the positive, you’ll pay more attention to those.

‘I’ve got a friend who every day writes down five positive things that happened to him that day in a diary, and he seems to be a very lucky man! Because he’s always looking for five different things to write down each day, he’s actively looking for good things to happen.

‘I have another friend who’s always got something that’s bothering him, whenever I see him. Someone treated him rudely or some other small annoyance has occurred and he dwells on it. He thinks about it and thinks about it. And it’s a total waste of energy and time.

‘I’m sure if you looked you could find five aggravating factors to write down each day, where you were insulted by people or a car didn’t stop to let you across the pedestrian crossing, but I know which one I’d rather be. I’d rather be on the positive side.’