Changing Your Luck

In this week's New Age Notebook, I am going to address a subject that often comes up in chat rooms: LUCK. Why is it that some people seem to be born with horseshoes up wazoo while others battle an endless string of disasters and setbacks?Is there such thing as being born under a lucky star? Is it karma or a curse? While some are eternal victims of Murphy's Law: "if something can go wrong, it will.", others seem to be able to get away with murder and suffer no consequences at all. Luckily, I came across a very interesting article in London Telegraph about this subject by Richard Wiseman, a researcher who has been studying extremely lucky and very unlucky people for past ten years. His goal was to find out if it was possible for anybody to become "luckier." Wiseman asked hundreds of people who felt they were either "very lucky" or "very unlucky" to fill out diaries and take part in questionnaires. I. Q. tests and experiments. The findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their malfortune. First he refers to what is called "chance opportunity" or "lucky break." We all know that lucky people consistently encounter them, while unlucky people do not. Wiseman performed a test in which he asked both fortunate and unfortunate people to search through a newspaper and find out how many photographs were inside. On average, unlucky people took about two minutes to count photographs while lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because second page of newspaper contained message: "Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper!" This message took up half page and was written in type that was more than five centimetres high. It was staring everyone in face, but unlucky people tended to miss it and lucky tended to spot it. For fun, Wiseman apparently placed a second large message halfway through newspaper: "Stop counting. Tell experimenter you have seen this and win $700£." Again, unlucky people missed opportunity because they were still stuck in past -- too busy looking for original 43 photographs. So it seems that being too obsessed or attached to pursuing one goal, tends to make you somehow blind to opportunity and somehow unlucky. Personality tests also revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice unexpected. The harder they looked, less they saw. Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. Wiseman opened a "luck school, conducted all kinds of experiments and in end concluded that lucky people generate good fortune by using following three techniques:

What Do I Need to Start Scrapbooking?

The best thing about scrapbooking is that although there are a plethora of scrapbooking supplies available on market, you really don't need a lot to make your very first scrapbook. Basically, all you need to scrapbook is an album, some glue, a pair of scissors, and some photographs or newspaper clippings. Any fabric, ribbon, or bits of leftovers from other projects can be used to embellish your scrapbook.

As you get more acquainted with scrapbooking, you will find products that save you time and frustration. Many of these products are well worth extra cost. At top of this list is an exacto knife. This strong and versatile blade allows you to cut almost anything into any shape. When blade is dull, end is simply broken off to reveal another sharp tip. Just be sure to place object you plan to cut onto a mat or wad or newspaper before using exacto knife. Otherwise, knife will cut right through your picture and into your scrapbook page or dining room table.