Relaxed Presence

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

A state of relaxed presence is where we rendezvous with luck:

A U.K. psychologist ran experiments in which he divided self-described lucky and unlucky people into different groups and had each group execute the same task. In one experiment, subjects were told to go to a café, order coffee, return and report on their experience.

The self-described lucky person found money on the ground on the way into the café, had a pleasant conversation with the person they sat next to at the counter, and left with a connection and potential business deal. The self-described unlucky person missed the money — it was left in the same place for all experimental subjects to find, ordered coffee, didn’t speak to a soul, and left the café. One of these subjects was focused in a more stressed way on the task at hand. The other was in a state of relaxed presence, executing the assignment.

Comments

  1. Theophilus says:

    Richard Wiseman, right? I read his book about luck some years ago. Extremely interesting stuff.

  2. Isegoria says:

    Yep. I’ve mentioned Wiseman before.

Leave a Reply