Merry Christmas From All at Outsource Ten

Outsource Ten would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We would also like to thank everyone who has supported our business in 2011 and especially those who have believed in the cause from day 1. We wish you all the same success in 2012.


Brett and the gang

You make your own luck!

Some people are successful in matters of love, in their careers, in their finances etc. Yet these people don't seem to work particularly hard. Others repeatedly fail despite their efforts and talents.

Why do some people are lucky and others never get the breaks they deserve? Why do some people are always in the right place and at the right time, while others consistently experience bad fortune? 

Darren Brown in his show 'The Experiments' asked what makes some people lucky and others attract only misfortune. He got a rumour about the lucky powers of a town's statute to see if it changes the lives of local residents. Many psychologists did similar tests and what they discovered was that people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviours are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. 

Darren Brown showed that lucky people consistently encounter opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not, due to the differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. Psychologists showed that unlucky people are more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the opportunity. They miss it because they are too focused on something else. 'The Experiments' established a well known quote by American writer Tennessee Williams who said: 'Luck is believing you're lucky'. Darren set a rumour about lucky dog statue in town and people believed it was lucky which made it easier for them to spot the opportunities.

These experiments revealed that lucky people generate good fortune because they are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, they make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, they have positive expectations and adopt an attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

At the end of Darren's experiment unlucky people became lucky and lucky people became even luckier.

Professor Wiseman in his book called 'The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind' concluded that the essence of luck is opportunity. In his experiments, he found that lucky people smile twice as often as others, and engage in more eye contact than unlucky people do. Such a behaviour exposes a person to more opportunities due to the increased social interaction. In fact, open-mindedness allows one to encounter a greater number of unique prospects, and makes one to embrace new opportunities. Moreover, Wiseman's study showed that optimistic person is more satisfied with all areas of their lives than an unlucky, pessimistic person.

Luck plays a huge part in every career. If you believe that things are outside your control and that your actions will not make a difference, you make less effort. If you make less effort, you will be less successful and this will just confirm your belief that you can't change anything. This is known as learned helplessness

'Unlucky people' tend to look through newspapers determined to find certain types of advertisements and miss other types of jobs. In the times of recession it is more important to look for benefits rather than salaries. Lucky people build and maintain diverse networks and regularly expose themselves to new experiences and environments. In result, more opportunities come their way. They expect their good luck to continue into the future and they take more calculated risks. They persevere in the face of failure, not giving up at the first obstacle. Lucky people are able to transform their bad luck into good fortune by learning from their experiences and mistakes.

Kat Ciszak