Lucky...

St. Patrick's Day is this Saturday!!  Don't miss the Luck of the Irish Sale from both BrankletsNBling and GirlieGals!!  Select items in each shop will be 20% OFF during the week of March 16 - 23!!  Also, make sure you sign up for our newsletters on the right to learn about special promotions and new releases!

In honor of the upcoming St. Patrick's Day - I wanted to ask this question "Do you believe in luck?" When someone is faced with a difficulty I catch myself stating, "Good luck" not realizing if I really believed in what that means.  Is there such a thing as good luck or bad luck or do we make our own luck??  I found an excellent article on the subject called Do You Feel Lucky? by Mike Ford.  Here is an exerpt dealing with this very question:

"Are some people in life lucky and others unlucky, or do we make our own luck? English psychologist Richard Wiseman, who conducted a study on the subject of luck, was interviewed by Fastcompany, an online magazine, about his findings.

For centuries, people have recognized the power of luck and have done whatever they could to try seizing it. Take knocking on wood, thought to date back to pagan rituals aimed at eliciting help from powerful tree gods. We still do it today, though few, if any, of us worship tree gods. So why do we pass this and other superstitions down from generation to generation? The answer lies in the power of luck.

Over a ten-year period, Wiseman kept track of 400 men and women volunteers. These people, of all ages, who "considered themselves especially lucky or unlucky," kept diaries, submitted to interviews, completed questionnaires, took tests, and participated in experiments. The results? Lucky people get that way "via some basic principles."

His results dovetailed with the "Positive Mental Attitude" espoused by a long line of self-help gurus from Norman Vincent Peale to Anthony Robbins. These proponents of proactive self-sufficiency advocate steps like taking advantage of opportunities that come one's way. As Wiseman points out, "Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they're too busy looking for something else." In other words, work hard, save money, utilize personal talents, and do not expect lottery winnings to fund life on Easy Street.

Wiseman also discovered a wide gap in the way they handled misfortune between those who perceived themselves as lucky and those who thought of themselves as unlucky. The "lucky" people looked at the bad things that came their way, and after a time concluded, "It could have been worse." The unlucky ones let problems and trials immobilize or even devastate them.

The bottom line in this man's study seems to be that a person makes his own luck. A lucky person does not blame others for the state he is in, and he works to improve his lot in life. He does not lay back and wait for his luck to change but takes steps to change it himself through work. Benjamin Franklin once wrote, "Diligence is the mother of good luck." In the same vein, comedian Bob Hope said, "I've always been in the right place at the right time. Of course, I steered myself there."

After reading this I discovered that I don't consider myself a "lucky" person, I consider myself to be a blessed person because I know that all my "luck" has come from the Lord and it all has a purpose.  What about you?  Do you consider yourself to be lucky? Unlucky? Blessed? Other??