This week’s Powerball jackpot has jumped to $100 after five consecutive Powerball lotteries were drawn without a division one winner, an eye-watering sum of money and the sixth-biggest jackpot in Australian lottery history. Although half of Australian adults are expected to buy a ticket, however, the odds of winning the top prize are incredibly slim. In 2022, I wrote a piece for SMARTdaily about luck and interviewed Professor Richard Wiseman about the topic. Professor Wiseman is a leading British psychologist and researcher who headed a groundbreaking scientific investigation to uncover the truth about luck, with the results published in his 2004 book, The Luck Factor. Over 10 years he conducted interviews with 400 male and female volunteers of all ages and from all walks of life, and what he determined is that luck isn’t due to karma or coincidence. Lucky people, often without knowing it, generate their good fortune via four basic principles: creating and noticing chance opportunities; making “lucky” decisions by listening to their intuition; creating self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations; and adopting a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good. When it comes to the lottery, however, Professor Wiseman told me that there’s a big difference between luck and chance and that winning the lottery is a “chance event”; something we have no control over other than buying a ticket. In good news, however, you can learn to be lucky. As part of his research, Professor Wiseman created experiments to examine whether good luck increases by getting people to think and behave like they are lucky. The results were dramatic. Eighty per cent of people were happier and more satisfied with their lives, and perhaps most importantly, they were luckier. Unlucky people had become lucky, and lucky people had become even luckier. Bear this in mind if you are buying a ticket for the Thursday night draw, and good luck! #luck #psychology #lottery #powerball