1. “Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for.”

2. “The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.”

I set out to examine luck, 10 years ago. Why are some people always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune? I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, have been interviewed by me. I have monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.

I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: ‘Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50′.

This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.

Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

I wondered towards the end of the work, whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.

The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, i had found the elusive ‘luck factor’. Here are four top tips for becoming lucky:

1) Listen to your gut instincts ^ they are normally right.

2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine.

3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well.

4) Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.

Have a Lucky day and work for it.

The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect

Well that’s quite hard practice isn’t it? How can we not feel angry when the boss comes and screams at us or the other driver cuts in front of us right (accept everything that god throws at us) or when we loose our job or house or heck we don’t get our favorite dinner (accept everything that god takes from us). God seems quite unfair that he demand such high order from us right? We all have gone through these quite familiar feelings multiple times and learned nothing. A song probably will not change anything. But who knows!

Devadeva: Lord of all lords.
Ganapati: He is the lord or captain of all the gana (workforce/devotee of Lord Shiva).
Vighnaraja: He is the lord of obstacles, he creates/maintains/destroys all obstacles to teach us to go towards that supreme reality.
Gajanana: Elephant lord. This is very symbolic. In scriptures it was depicted that Lord Shiva cut the original head and it was replaced by elephant head. Sounds cruel that a father cut his own son’s head. But Lord Shiva is all merciful. What he did was he destroyed the head full of ego and replaced with egoless head which is pure consciousness.
Vakratunda: Elephant trunk lord. The trunk symbolizes “Aum”, which is the most potent pointer to the eternal reality.
Musikvahana: Well he actually rides a mouse. This is very symbolic as well. The mouse symbolizes our ego. If you had ever encountered it then you would know how powerful it can be. It can sweep you like a over flowing river, it can burn you to ashes, it can drown you in the most deepest part of ocean. Try going against it and you can feel it’s power and here our beloved sweet lord rides it. How powerful and humble he is!

Jai Dev Jai Dev

- I am not hindu, or muslim or of any other religion
- I am not space/air/fire/water/earth
- So on an so forth

Bhagawan Ramana Mahirshi used to say to inquire into who is “I am” and hold onto that one thought and grace would fall one day. The message of the song is similar to that but in an interesting way. If you ever try to do the inquiry you would quickly come to a conclusion that it is the hardest thing to do in this whole world. In scriptures this layer (or veil) is called “Asmita” (or Aham Asmi) which literally mean I exist or pure “I am”. We somehow intuitively know that we exist right? Sages say, that is the root from which the whole samsara (our imaginary world) grows. You know the worst part, there nothing we can do. i.e. to know that we are NOT. Kind of stupid endeavor if you think about it. If i want to do or know something my presence has to be there first right? That’s the 1st order condition. So how can I know that I am NOT?

This is where every concept or theory or anything that the MIND can hold breaks down. All the great sages of the past says to hold steady (in the “I am”) and one day THAT (call grace or god or anything you like but remember all concepts are false?) will come and take over what IS. I say pretty tall order for mortal beings, but a Buddha, a Mahavir, a Ramana Mahirishi come and show us that it is possible.

I would say we enjoy this beautiful song and see if we can get a glimpse of this pure “I am”.

I am listening to them one at a time. They are quite long (close to 1 hour each). They are such a pleasure to watch. Just to keep myself alert while watching I am going to try to understand and post here the links between physical laws as described by Feynman and what some of Easter Mystics has to say. My knowledge in both are miniscule. This way, I am hoping to learn both a little bit better. There is a wonderful book Tao of Physics which goes very deep into this matter. I am trying to see if I could agree and understand Mr Fritjof Capra a little better.

An object in motion will stay in motion and an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external force – Newton’s laws of motion

Trent of The Simple Dollar published a to-the-point article “The Thought of Starting This Project Overwhelms Me”. It is very well said that we should concentrate on

• Important but not urgent thing and
• Discard the urgent but not important things

I think this is a nice scale to judge an activity.

Trent did not go into the technicalities (how) of doing this. A few things that has helped me start the ball rolling when I feel overwhelmed are:

• Stop thinking about the activities (stop breaking down into small chunks etc.)
• Stop planning (where to start, what to do, why to do etc.)
• Just start doing anything that first comes to mind

That always starts the ball rolling and things kind of fall into place. Recently in my job I had to write a big technical design document and there were so many things I had to put together that I felt the same way as Trent. Here is how I went about it. I Thought (planned, brood, worried) about it for a day. The more I did those the more overwhelmed I felt. Finally, I just put my foot down and just opened a template document and start typing whatever came to mind. At first it looked and felt weird. But after a few minutes the relevant ideas start showing up and in about 4 hours I could put down everything.

I think Newtonian principle is in work here. Once thinking/planning/worrying sets in, it has a tendency to generate more of the same. And once the actual doing sets in it attracts more doing. But the change does not happen automatically. You need to apply some force. So just apply the force (how much tiny it may seem) and see how the things just take care of themselves.

But Alas! I somehow know with the utmost conviction that I am not this laptop nor the printing paper nor the telephone nor the monitor nor the keyboard etc. So I go ahead and destroy anything I like and feel no remorse. How did I come to this conclusion with such conviction and Bob Randall was able to come to a such a whole encompassing conviction. Hope I am not the only one holding such twisted convictions. We all can use a little bit compassion towards things.
Help me God. Thanks Bob!