Why Optimism Impacts Luck
What is the relationship between luck and optimism?
Or is there such a thing?
Neuroscience says that all human beings’ brains are hardwired for optimism, believe it or not.
In fact, according to a Psychology Today article written by Patty O’Grady, Ph.D., the more our brains build and broaden their emotional neural capacity, the more they can create positive self-fulfilling prophecies which, in turn, allows for more positive outcomes to occur.
Luck follows visualization, it seems.
The Scientific Connection Between Optimism and Luck
Per Dr. O’Grady, the brain turns positive memories into optimism. The more optimistic you are, the more likely you’ll take advantage of all of the opportunities that surround you. Being optimistic makes it more likely that you’ll be “in the zone” where you turn out positive results more often than negative ones.
But to get there, you have to focus your concentration on positive past events in the first place. Actually, you also have to focus on the circumstances that surround those positive past events, too. This isn’t just to cheer yourself up or even cheer yourself on to the next goal (although that doesn’t hurt).
Instead, it’s to show you what teachable moments are hidden within those positive past events.
Those moments become seeds that you can plant to ultimately harvest a new crop of positive outcomes, which eventually produce even more positive memories…which yield additional seeds for successive plantings and additional successful harvests…and so on….
Positive self-fulfilling prophecies are exactly the kind of cycle you want to be “stuck” in, right? How lucky would you be then?
Faith, Optimism, Trust and Pixie Luck Dust
Optimism is directly related to faith, which in the Bible is defined as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Of course, you don’t have to believe in the Bible to get the gist of this definition.
You do need faith to be optimistic at times, and you have to have positive visualizations that harness your positive expectations in order to sufficiently pre-frame your mind to enter the positive self-fulfilling prophecy cycle.
Of course, there’s more than just pre-framing and thinking to get you from Point A of wanting something to Point B where you’ve received something. But you won’t likely manifest your desired outcome if you’re marinating in misery and otherwise pre-framing your brain for defeat. You have to trust in your vision and your ability to deliver the outcome you desire…but when you’re occupying the proper headspace that’s well-seeded with optimism and faith, and a belief in luck, even if you simply view it as the residue of design and hard work.
James Altucher, an American hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, best-selling author and podcaster is credited as saying that “anxiety and gratitude can’t live in the same head.”
That’s true. You can’t live a positive life with a negative mind.
You can’t have positive results (or many of them) with a brain that’s hardwired and pre-framed for negativity.
So there really is a point to optimism that even outranks that of “feel-good” cheerleading–it’s the ability to prime the pump of our brains by increasing our emotional neural capacity so that our optimism is far stronger than our pessimism.
That’s when we get out of our own way, when we can have an increased capacity to believe and therefore an increased capacity to achieve…which in the end makes us lucky human beings, doesn’t it?
Grab our 43-page eBook, “The Woman-101 31-Day Life Reboot Guide” FREE, by joining the Woman-101 Hoot-Whoot! Club. Go to: www.woman-101.com and join us!
