Are You Lucky or Unlucky?

Just answer this in your head and remember the answer you thought of answer it as soon as you have read it as quickly as you can:

“You're in a bank, a masked gunman comes in and is demanding cash from the cashier, you haven't gotten to the floor quick enough, so they shoot you – in the leg # Are you lucky or unlucky?”

So the other week I watched the catch up of Derren Brown The Experiments – The Secret of Luck. And well, it got me thinking, am I lucky or unlucky?...

Generally I'd call myself unlucky, if its going to go wrong it'll happen to me, from rubbish jobs to broken cars, even to moving to uni and the house not being ready when I turned up with 2 car loads of stuff...

I'll give you an example. My first car, straight after I passed my test for instance, I had £300 to spend on a car and I bought the first thing I saw – because it was green, a Hyundai Accent Coupe Si.... yes! So called him Jimmy Alan, after Jimmy and Alan Carr. I can hear you 'oh God!' But I wanted it so for £275 I got myself a bargain really....until it broke.

First I needed new brake pads, then a clutch and then the stinker, driving to work one day the exhaust suddenly started making noises like a boy racer car. Yep, the bloody thing had come apart and broke! So we ordered a new exhaust from Hyundai, which had to be shipped in from Korea.

Mean while I borrowed a family friends car, a Vauxhall Nova, from one travesty to another!

While driving this car, which only had 4 gears, I cooked it, the radiator had broken and the thing cooked itself and burnt out. I had to drive it home, indicators broke and rather toasty!

By now we had been on and off the phone to Hyundai about the exhaust, to find out 6 months later the exhaust had been there the whole time but the people who worked there had a different code to what was on the box! So we picked it up and had it fitted!

Also when I bought the car the previous owners had told me that the electric windows were broken but wouldn't be hard to fix – Muppet. 2 mechanics later – windows still didn't work! For the whole 2 years I had Jimmy Alan I had to have a cigarette plug in fan for the summer, when it was hot!

About a month later I realised my feet were getting hot when I drove – the radiator was leaking, yep that's right, needed a new bloody radiator too. So after around £1000 after the £275 I originally paid I decided I needed a new car, sold Jimmy Alan to a dealer and bought a Ford Fiesta.

The Fiesta is another story altogether but in a snap shot – got £1000 from my nan to buy it as a 21^st birthday present – after driving it for about a month or so I realised the heating was constantly on! Then when someone eventually got into the back we realised the door shut oddly and didn't sit normally! But never mind!

So from just the stories above, without going into, being left behind in the airport with my family in Corfu, falling out of a wheel barrow and cutting my head open or being shat on by a bird twice in 1 week. It is plain obvious for everyone to see that I generally don't seem like a lucky person!

However from watching The Secret of Luck – I realised I am very similar to one of the people featured on the show called Wayne a Butcher. And maybe just like him, I'm missing the opportunities.

Derren had placed a scratch card through his shop letter box that if he scratched he would have genuinely won a plasma TV. Derren also put a £50 note in his path as he was walking along, but he walked straight past it. A street canveser was asking people to name 5 cuts of beef to win £20 (she didn't mention the £20 just asked the question), she caught Wayne and he said he would come back...But he didn't So maybe I am just missing opportunities rather than not being lucky.

It wasn't until the end of the show when he bet £1000 (his life savings) on the roll of a dice. Changing his state of mind must have worked because he won!

So since watching I have started to think more positively and take notice more of what's going on around me. And although some unlucky things have still happened in those weeks I have been able to brush them off and get on with it.

So whenever you think that life just isn't going your way just remember that your destiny is in your hands and your hands only, if you want it to change there's only 1 person that can make that happen and that is YOU! So if you feel like you're stuck in a rut and life is getting you down, get up off your arse and do something about it!