2. Your luck will improve
Psychologist Richard Wiseman studied the attitudes and behaviour of people who considered themselves exceptionally lucky or unlucky. His book ‘The Luck Factor‘ documents his findings that the ‘lucky’ group actually made themselves lucky by creating and noticing chance opportunities, listening to their intuition, and creating self-fulfilling positive expectations.
Of course random events will still happen, but on average, people who live life in an appreciative way will be luckier, because they have created the conditions that allow luck to enter their lives.
3. You will feel better – and your abilities will improve as a result
When you look at events with an appreciative eye, you feel better about whatever happens. Feeling good is pleasant in itself, and it turns out that it has many benefits to your personal effectiveness.
Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s research into the value of positive emotions shows that people who feel positive are able to think more strategically, they are more compassionate, more creative, more socially connected, more resilient, they make better decisions, and have better health. She has summarised some of her findings in this readable article: The Value of Positive Emotions
4. Easier goal-setting and knowing what you want
The positive reference experiences that we discover when we look at what is working well in our lives make it easier to clarify our vision of the future, and give a firmer, more realistic grounding to our goals.
Steve Andreas’ excellent book ‘Transforming Your Self’ shows how important positive reference experiences are in forming our expectations and even our sense of self. As you uncover and build on more of your own ‘positive core’, you will enable the self-fulfilling effect of positive expectations, and create still more reference experiences to build on.
Next – how to live more appreciatively…