Fortune Favours the Brave

We recently read an interesting blog about ‘luck’ or good fortune.  In essence it says that in general people are very poor at noticing, or acknowledging, good fortune but that we regularly bemoan bad fortune.  Robert H. Frank says that this negative lilt is both a condition of the human brain and has consequences for how we experience the world. His call to action is that we should become better at taking notice of the good fortune and feeling grateful for our good ‘luck’; he suggests that those who do, have more of a sense of the contribution of the qorld around them to their wellbeing, and as a result are more generous, and build positive spirals of happiness, be that in their relationships, health or even sleep patterns (we don’t have much of a problem with the last one).

In reading the article, there was one quote in particular that resonated with us, and we’ve been thinking about it ever since (excuse the Americanisms).  

‘When you are running or bicycling into the wind, you’re very aware of it.  You just can’t wait till the course turns around and you’ve got the wind at your back. When that happens, you feel great. But then you forget about it very quickly – you’re just not aware of the wind at your back.  And that’s just a fundamental feature of how our minds, and how the world, works. We’re just going to be more aware of those barriers than of the things that boost us along.’

Don’t we know this about cycling.  A head wind can leave you screaming for mercy  (see here and here).  I’ll never forget Mark Beaumont (previous record holder for circumnavigating the globe by bike) describing having to push his bike downhill into a headwind– the misery!  However, on this trip there have absolutely been moments where we have marvelled at our growing strength as we speed down the road, neglecting to acknowledge the powerful patron at our service.  

So, as suggested by Frank’s article, we have been having a go at being more cognisant of our good fortune in general, appreciating it and recognising the contribution it’s making to our day.

Things like:

• sticking our head around an unlikely looking corner to discover a kind and friendly lady who let us camp in her restaurant grounds
• the serendipitous timing of an Irish farmer, who we had arranged to camp with, riding past on his motorbike on his daily outing to fetch water, whilst we were debating whether or not to cycle up a very steep dirt track to check whether it was the 4km driveway to his place
• a very light shower waking us up so that we put the fly on our tent before the torrential down pour started an hour later
• Lizzie checking her map whilst Ali pulled over for a wee and noticing that we were next to a potentially massive shortcut - down hill, cutting off 30km and a 500m climb (or maybe this was just not thorough enough planning to begin with!)
• Being treated to several good belches of ash coming out of a volcano as we sped past one morning
• Ali getting a puncture which put us half an hour behind where we might have been, and then meeting a Spanish tourer coming the other way 10 minutes before our turn off (it sort of depends which way you look at it!)
• Arriving at a bridge that had been washed away to discover the “river” was only 2mm deep and not 2m (as it would be by the end of the rainy season), aided by the fact the rains have come a month late this year
• Extensive cloud cover seems to settle in on some of our longest days helping to keep us from melting

But we’ve also been noticing the bad fortune:

• the unpaved road we took in Belize
• a day and a half spent in Antigua with no views of the huge Volcano that sits next to the city

• Ali standing on a sting ray after catching his first wave whist surfing.
• Knocking the button on the handle of our hotel room door which resulted in us locking ourselves out in our pj's (mostly funny, but pretty annoying that the reception didn't open for another 45 minutes to let us back in and our breakfast was inside the room).

Is noticing these things each day changing our experience? Is it making us happier and helping us to sleep better? Who knows! But we certainly do find ourselves gratefully dwelling on the good fortune, thankful for its contibution to our enjoyment. We're also noticing that our list of good fortune it is growing far quicker than our list of bad fortune.  And that the good fortune is really making things better, and that the bad fortune tends not really to be that bad.  (The swelling on Ali’s foot subsided after a few hours).