Lucky in life or How to win a lottery.

Less than three weeks after the Munich air disaster of 6 February 1958 robbed the world of some of the most talented footballers on the planet, a little known Manchester woman, or more accurately Salford woman named Edith Marie Vincent, nee Hayes gave birth to a son in a sleepy Cornish village, ironically named St Germans. 

Now, attempting to link these two events is i'll admit, tenuous and desperate in the extreme but as the aforementioned 'son' who has achieved little in life to trouble any columns of achievement above average and who is best known for a dance move that went horribly wrong, I hope the reader will allow a little poetic licence even if it is accepted that despite being an enthusiastic and committed amateur footballer, a Duncan Edwards I was not! 

As a scrap of a child I did not flourish during my early years suffering in the main from childhood Asthma, a condition not helped by the house occupied also suffering a major malady, namely having no heating system other than a dilapidated rayburn, which when lit in winter would at least partially thaw the kitchen and heat a hot water boiler in the airing cupboard but leave the rest of the house colder than an Eskimos nose drip!

That having been said there follows not a seemingly tireless rant around the 'times were hard' theme. This would serve no useful purpose as every generation feels aggrieved at how easy things seem for their children compared to their own experience. Personally though I consider myself lucky that I did not spend my youth glued to a mobile phone checking my social media for 'likes' of my latest selfie!

For me the only lucky thing about growing up now for most kids is central heating!

So how do we know if we are lucky in life?

Well some might say if you are born into a loving family environment it matters not what else you perceive to be necessary to consider yourself lucky, you have already hit the jackpot.

But that is not the way we are conditioned to think is it?

Why else do we lament not winning a life changing sum of money on the lottery when we play it? considering ourselves to be just not a lucky person as it 'never happens to me' 

So perception of luck is the driving force in how we see what happens to ourselves compared to others who we view as gleefully popping champagne corks and receiving mega sized cheques from Z list TV presenters.

Personally, I have never thought too much about receiving good-luck in my life having always considered it a commodity largely enjoyed by the ultra attractive and insanely rich. As I seem to have avoided enjoying either of those qualities I have paid scant attention to any discussion on the matter always asserting that our lot in life is mostly preordained by;

Where we are born; 

The social standing and nurturing skills of our parents;

How clever we are plus our own drive and determination to achieve.

That having been said good-luck, or conversely the lack of it is one of those ethereal things which routinely plays a role in the everyday lives of all living things. Of course we don't recognize its influence in most of our daily dealings but when things either align or fall nicely into place in a good way, (good luck) or everything seems to go totally against all our hopes and aspirations (bad luck) it takes on an importance that is immeasurable.

Luck in one of its forms can be life inspiring, life changing or in a worst case scenario life ending.

So what about chance? Are luck and chance the same thing?

Well no, it seems to me that chance is the odds of something happening and luck is the event actually happening or not. To put it another way the chance of winning a lottery are pretty remote but as already discussed that doesn't stop folks up all over the world taking a punt in the hope they get 'lucky' and have a life changing sum of money winging its way into their bank account!

So consider this dear reader,

 

You probably stumbled across and read this post by chance, but amazingly it was written by a lovely, stunningly handsome bloke and was very informative!.....................

You lucky thing! 😁

The carrot or the stick? Why we all need some incentive

Incentive is a word not often used when people consider their daily lives and interactions with others but it is safe to say that without incentive the very fabric of our society would break down overnight.

How so? I hear you say, well let us consider the basics of incentive. Imagine I wanted to receive lots of comments on this post, if I were to offer £50 for every comment received I think I would probably receive a fair number and that would be the effect of providing an incentive. Similarly I could announce that failure to comment on this post would result in having your legs broken, that of course is a sanction but it could provide an equally effective incentive to comply with my requests if you believed that;

 a) I was serious in my intention and;
 b) I was capable of carrying out the threat.

So incentives can be in the form of rewards or the threat of sanctions.

Employers have known for a long time that if they want to attract the top people into their organisation, get the very best out of them and just as importantly keep them happy and committed then they have to offer decent rewards and incentives. Retailers too realise that its important to offer incentives in order to attract shoppers through their doors. That's why we are bombarded by things such as buy one get one free and other seemingly fantastic offers such as; Buy the moon, nothing to pay in the first year, then 48 easy payments of a trillion pounds and of course the obligatory 99pence!

 If your incentive is to lose weight then we are helpfully encouraged to eat organic weeds, barley water soup and something that looks straight out of a cats litter tray for breakfast. It doesn't stop there, we are also given an incentive to stay on the right side of the law, with monetary fines and the potential loss of your driving license for any misdemeanors. Even avoidance of having a parking ticket slapped on your windscreen is an incentive to pay the correct fee and park within the bay properly. So it seems wherever we look we see incentives and sanctions being used to encourage us to work harder, buy particular products and even to make us comply with the rules that society dictates. 

On a global scale incentives are routinely used to ensure compliance with international law. They play a huge part in inter-governmental diplomacy and relationships, where so called 'rogue states' are offered lots of financial and technological aid if they give up the policies that worry western governments and have economic and other sanctions imposed if they don't.
So do you always need incentives to achieve what you want or need? Well I think you probably do, most people need a carrot to perform at their best or comply to the rules of society all of the time, albeit the benefit they receive may not be in monetary or goods terms, keeping your liberty and freedoms is a powerful incentive to live within the law. And then there are the likes of Parents,volunteers and carers whose likely incentive is more spiritual, or an emotional attachment and a desire to help loved ones achieve a semblance of well-being. So bearing all this in mind perhaps you'd like to comment on this post........for free of course, ..your incentive? well just remember that legs are important! 😉

Is Everybody Psychic?

Have you ever experienced something that you had dreamt or imagined experiencing previously? The French have a quaint saying for this, Déjà vu or ‘already seen’. Déjà vu experiences happen more frequently and to more people than you may think with some reports saying that as many as 70% of the population may have had some form of Déjà vu experience.

 Our reaction to these events can vary enormously with the majority reporting feeling just a little disconcerted by the event, others feel a mild sense of bewilderment and a few can become so affected they feel temporarily overwhelmed. These people often report becoming light headed and nauseous. Why these events happen is the focus of intense debate. Some psychiatrists feel that there is a brain anomaly which tricks us to believe that the present is in fact the past so has already happened, while many parapsychologists believe the events are related to past life experiences.

They argue that to have these experiences a person has to possess some form of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) or sixth sense.

So does having a Déjà vu experience mean some form of psychic ability? If it did of course this would seem to suggest a large portion of the population have some psychic ability, albeit they may not realise it.

While accepting that I can offer little in the way of hard evidence and not wishing to ride rough shod over the reader’s beliefs I would have to contend that this may be a simplistic and unlikely scenario, however it is not a complete leap of faith to suspect that people who have had a Déjà vu experience could perhaps be able to process information, at times, from a deeper part of the consciousness and possess some ability to use the mind to see and feel more of what’s going on around them. It follows that these people may be more open and intuitive, which allow them to be more aware of their surroundings and bring to the fore a part of the sub-conscious area of their brain. 

Of course there are always people ready to offer up their ‘psychic’ ability to the needy and unwary for the appropriate fee. There’s no doubt that some people purchase an extremely useful and some would argue necessary benefit, that is they feel comfort and attain an inner peace from being told that grandad is pain free and still watches over them but is it someone with genuine psychic ability imparting this message or a skilled cold reader, able to pick up on any visual or verbal clues?
Hmm, Please comment and let me know what you think.

“So what of me?” I hear you say, can I claim any psychic abilities? Unfortunately there is a world of difference between seeing the future and making educated guesses as to where life is leading. I’ll give you an example;

If I were to state that I have had a Déjà vu experience and England will win the world cup in 2026, beating Argentina in the final 2-0 with Eze and Watkins scoring the goals and this were to happen, I would rightly claim guru status and a psychic ability so brilliant that you should all bow down in awe of nostrachirpus. On the other hand if I were to say that England scrape through the group stages before losing to Germany in a penalty shoot-out, this would be an entirely reasonable assumption to make on previous history and limited expectations so not difficult to imagine this scenario coming to pass even though it would seem that I had somehow seen into the future.

So there it is, I am psychic and I see another disappointing world cup or have I?? mmm, we'll have to wait until the summer of next year to find out!

Nostrachirpus hopes to rival the predictive feats of Psychic Paul the octopus in 2010.