Present Laughter

If you like silliness, the Roundabout Theatre Company's Broadway revival of Noël Coward's 1942 comedy, Present Laughter, now at the American Airlines Theatre, will bestow you with two and a half hours of it. That’s a bit much for me, but the production, directed by Nicholas Martin, does offer some memorable comic moments, and is certainly lovely to look at.

Victor Garber is the human star of the show, playing the egotistical aging matinee idol Garry Essendine, but I swooned for an even more radiant star, Alexander Dodge’s creation of Essendine’s opulent 1930s art deco London duplex. When the curtain rose, the audience oohed and aahed before bursting into applause. With Rui Rita’s lighting design it shimmers. Expect many design nominations this spring. Jane Greenwood’s costumes -- smoking jackets, silk pajamas, evening gowns, you know the Coward world -- are topnotch as well.

As for the play, I wonder why Roundabout chose this Coward work to revive. There’s no real plot, just the vain star reacting to the various friends, lovers and business associates who revolve around him. “I’m always acting,” he says dramatically. I actually thought Garber and most of the cast overacted, but a show like this allows for a great dealing of hamming it up. And it was funny watching him sprint to the mirror atop the piano to primp when he hears the doorbell. (Essendine’s ego is so big his living room displays a massive oil painting of him as Hamlet. Coward devilishly devised Essendine as a tongue-in-cheek mockery of himself and even played him on tour in 1942 and later in London and America.)

Music lover that I am, I did appreciate Garber at Essendine’s baby grand singing Coward's "World Weary," and loved the touch at the curtain call of having Garber lead the cast in singing “I’ll See You Again.” I had been enjoying Simon Green’s recording of that song earlier, so it was a treat to hear it live.

My favorite character was Miss Erickson (Nancy E. Carroll), the droll Scandinavian housekeeper who is a devotee of spiritualism and who halfheartedly attends to her duties, cigarette dangling from her mouth, proffering her opinions, wanted or not. The always wonderful Harriet Harris is delightful as Essendine’s longtime secretary, Monica Reed

Tickets for Present Laughter, which plays through March 21, are available by calling Roundabout Ticket Services at (212) 719-1300, online at www.roundabouttheatre.org or at the box office, 227 W. 42nd St.

A View From the Bridge

When I first saw Arthur Miller’s A View From the Bridge more than 30 years ago at Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE, I was thoroughly involved and left feeling deeply moved. Unfortunately, my experience of director Gregory Mosher's Broadway revival now at the Cort Theatre was vastly different.

Set on the 1950s Brooklyn waterfront, Bridge is the story of an Italian-American family headed by Eddie Carbone (Liev Schreiber, in photo center), a longshoreman who secrets lusts for Catherine (Scarlett Johansson in her Broadway debut, left), the orphaned niece he and his long-suffering wife, Beatrice (Jessica Hecht) have raised. Against that backdrop a second tale about undocumented immigrants trying to better their lives in America plays out.

Miller, a great lover of Greek tragedy, used that form as a model for Bridge, meaning the ending is inevitable early on. Getting there, though, should arouse enough passion to draw the audience in, but this cast seemed to be giving a first reading rather than a full performance. I felt no chemistry between Eddie and Catherine or between Catherine and Rodolpho (Morgan Spector, right), a newly arrived immigrant to whom she becomes engaged, setting the stage for Eddie’s fatal jealousy. All of the elements of Aristotle’s definition of tragedy are there -- an imitation of an action that is of certain magnitude, that through various literary devices is told in action, not narration -- except for the final one -- “through pity and fear causing a catharsis of emotions.” My primary emotion was of boredom, especially in the first act. A couple of sparks ignited in the second act, thank God, but not enough to make me care about these people. Too bad, because I certainly did when I saw the play at CENTERSTAGE.

I also had trouble with this cast in other ways. When they sat down to dinner and blessed themselves, I was jarred and thought, “Oh, that’s right. They’re supposed to be Catholic.” With their gestures and speech patterns I felt they were more like the Lomans, Brooklyn Jews. They didn’t come off as Catholic or Italian. When I mentioned this later to my friend Mary she joked that maybe they converted.

John Lee Beatty’s revolving sets -- dreary brick tenements and Eddie’s small apartment -- and Peter Kaczorowski’s lighting serve well the dark, brooding atmosphere of the script.

The inspiration for Bridge came to Miller after he heard a similar story while doing research for a screenplay on the Brooklyn waterfront in 1947. Eight years later -- in 10 days -- he turned a version of it into a short play and paired it with A Memory of Two Mondays for a Broadway run. He went on to expand it a decade later for an Off-Broadway production with Robert Duvall as Eddie.

Tickets for A View From the Bridge, which is playing a limited 14-week engagement, are available through Telecharge.com, (212) 239-6200 or (800) 432-7250, online at www.Telecharge.com, or at the box office, 138 W. 48th St.

For more information, visit www.AViewFromTheBridgeOnBroadway.com.

Julie Andrews

To commemorate her 69th birthday, Julie Andrews made a special appearance at Radio City Music Hall for the benefit of the AARP.   One of the musical numbers she performed was “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound Of Music.”   Here are the lyrics she used: 
  
 (If you sing it, its especially hysterical!!!)   
 
Botox and nose drops and needles for knitting, 
Walkers and  handrails and new dental fittings, 
Bundles of magazines tied up in string, 
  These are a few of my favorite things. 

Cadillacs and cataracts, hearing aids and glasses, 
Polident and Fixodent and false teeth in glasses, 
Pacemakers, golf carts and porches with swings, 
  These are a few of my favorite things.  

When the pipes leak, When the bones creak, 
 When the knees go bad, 
I simply remember my favorite things, 
     And then I don't feel so bad. 

Hot tea and crumpets and corn pads for bunions, 
No spicy hot food or food cooked with onions, 
Bathrobes and heating pads and
hot meals they bring, 
    These are a few of my favorite things. 

Back pain, confused brains and no need for sinnin', 
Thin bones and fractures and hair that is thinnin',   
And we won't mention our short shrunken frames, 
  When we remember our favorite things. 

When the joints ache, When the hips break, 
     When the eyes grow dim, 
 Then I remember the great life I've had, 
      And then I don't feel so bad. 

Julie received a standing ovation from the crowd  that lasted more than four minutes and repeated encores. Please share Julie's clever wit and humor with others who would appreciate it.
 

"Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late."
-- Robert R. Updegraff

"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tommorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind."
-- the Dalai Lama

Imagination

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
-- Albert Einstein

Be ready

"Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever."
-- Gail Godwin, Evensong

Trust

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

“This text will help you avoid a nervous breakdown. It will stimulate your recovery if you have had one. A famous neurologist, specialist in nervous breakdowns, often ‘prescribes’ this text for his patients. He writes the words on a card and instructs his patient to commit them to memory and repeat them until they are indelibly printed on the subconscious mind.

“The cause of much nervous trouble is frustration. And the antidote to frustration is a calm faith, not in your own cleverness, or in hard toil, but in God’s guidance. The cure of frustration is the belief that God will help you obtain your heart’s desire. Trust in God with all your heart, and you will be able to keep on working in health and happiness for long years to come."
-- Dr. Norman Vincent Peale

Stained-glass windows

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
--Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam. Over the past two years, I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart. As I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: ‘Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?’ ‘Why are you joining the voice of dissent?' ‘Peace and civil rights don’t mix,’ they say. ‘Aren't you hurting the cause of your people,’ they ask. And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of he world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our nation: The great initiative in this war is ours: the initiative to stop it must be ours.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate and bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.’

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, ‘Too late.’

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that of the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history."

--from Dr. King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence,” delivered April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church.

Isn’t is sad how current this is?

Off-Off Broadway Demographics

The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation presents the findings of “Demographic Study of Off-Off-Broadway Practitioners”. The study, conducted during September 2007 through February 2009, recorded and analyzed the specific population characteristics of the artists working in New York’s Off-Off-Broadway theatre sector.

Some of the highlights include:

• 85% of the OOB population holds a college degree. This is 58% higher than the national average.

• 86% voted in the 2004 presidential election. This is 22% higher than the national average of 64%.

• 68% of respondents are age 21-40

• 53% of respondents are female

• Income level of Off-Off-Broadway artists is near the national average, and slightly below the NY state average

• 91% of respondents live in New York City

“These reports help to shed light on the Off-Off-Broadway community and the significant contributions it makes to New York City’s cultural environment,” says Shay Gines, executive director, New York Innovative Theatre Foundation. “The demographics report in particular looks at the individual artists that make up the community and shows them to be highly educated voters who are involved in civic and community activities.

“It provides measured data to back up funding requests in this sector. It allows us to identify and leverage our strengths when negotiating for resources or advocating for the needs of this important arts community. It is proof that an investment in the Off-Off-Broadway community is an investment in NYC.”

THE INNOVATIVE THEATRE FOUNDATION is celebrating its sixth anniversary of celebrating Off-Off-Broadway, which recognizes the great work of New York's Off-Off-Broadway—honoring its artistic heritage and providing a meeting ground for this extensive and richly varied community. As advocates for Off-Off-Broadway, they recognize its unique and essential role contributing to global culture.

Each season, The Innovative Theatre Foundation publicly recognizes excellence in Off-Off-Broadway, with a high-profile awards ceremony. The New York Innovative Theatre Awards celebrate the community and honor some of the previous year’s greatest achievements. The IT Awards heighten audience awareness and foster greater appreciation of the New York theatre experience.

Website: www.nyitawards.com

That Old Mercer Magic!

The year of celebrations for Johnny Mercer’s centennial may be over, but luckily the joy continues with JaLaLa’s release of the new CD, That Old Mercer Magic!, with its bold and sassy interpretations of Mercer classics.

Backed by a dynamic group of musicians, Lauren Kinhan, Laurel Massé and Janis Siegel (together forming JaLaLa) infuse the songs with swing and jazz renditions, styles Massé and Siegel perfected in their decades with Manhattan Transfer and Kinhan through New York Voices.

Listening to their harmonies of great songs like “Ac-cent-u-ate the Positive” and “Dream” makes me think this must have been what it was like to listen to the Hit Parade in the 1940s. I also love the playful scat of “Jeepers Creepers.” And each singer gets to shine in solos -- Massé is reflective and moving in of one of my all-time favorite songs, “Moon River.”

Most of the 12 selections were familiar to me, but some were nice new discoveries. The complete listing includes: “Spring Spring Spring,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “My Shining Hour,” “I’m Old Fashioned,” “Ridin’ on the Moon,” “Moon Country, “Have You Got Any Castles, Baby,” “Too Marvelous for Words” and “The Dance of Life.”

Your calling

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
--Frederick Buechner

Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Sitting through a performance of Love, Loss, and What I Wore at the Westside Theatre is like being trapped with five sitcom characters for 90-plus minutes without the benefit of an off button. Could anything be more boring than listening to a group of women drone on and on and on about clothes? Well, yes. If they had added hair too that would have been worse, so I guess we can be grateful for small favors.

The play, by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron and directed by Karen Carpenter, is based on the best-selling book of the same name by Ilene Beckerman.  It has been playing since the fall with a rotating cast; the night I was there featured Katie Finneran, Michele Lee, Debra Monk, Tracee Ellis Ross and Casey Wilson. All were fine based on what they had to work with except Lee who seemed uninterested (this is understandable) and unprepared (which isn’t since they all read from scripts while seated on stage.)

The idea is for the women to use clothes -- the first bra, prom dresses -- and situations -- dressing rooms, buying the first bra -- to share stories of their pasts. But only the shallowest of women -- I could count the number of men in the audience on one hand -- would want to listen to a bunch of gals gab about this fluff. I love clothes too -- I subscribe to Vogue and forage through the recycling bins in my basement for fashion mags my neighbors have discarded -- but looking at clothes at my leisure is a lot different than listening to them being analyzed in silly detail for an hour and a half.
 
Among those who also have participated, or will, are Tyne Daly, Rosie O'Donnell, Kristin Chenoweth, Rhea Perlman and Rita Wilson. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Dress for Success.

For tickets phone (212) 239-6200 or visit Telecharge. For more information, visit LoveLossonStage.

(In photo, by Carol Rosegg, are: Michele Lee, Tracee Ellis Ross, Debra Monk, Katie Finneran, Casey Wilson.)

The Public Theater Announces Auditions for Its Tuition-Free Shakespeare Lab 2010

The Public Theater announced today the beginning of its recruitment for The Shakespeare Lab’s 2010 Company.  The theater’s professional actor development program will once again be tuition-free in 2010, building on the success of last year’s session.  The widening of access to the Shakespeare Lab builds on The Public’s long tradition of free Shakespeare in the Park and the theater’s ongoing commitment to building a community of classically trained artists. Shakespeare Lab 2010 will run from June 7 to Aug. 8 and membership is by audition only.

Under the direction of Shakespeare Initiative Director Barry Edelstein, The Shakespeare Lab immerses a carefully-selected company of professional, mid-career actors in a six-week intensive exploring the rigors, challenges, and joys of performing Shakespeare.  The Shakespeare Lab is a unique opportunity for working American actors in mid-career to hone their craft and expand their classical skills.  It aims to build a strong and diverse collective of classically trained actors which will expand The Public Theater’s community of artists. 

The Lab’s workshops in Shakespearean performance are led by some of the most respected figures in American classical theater training, including Christopher Bayes, Lisa Benevides, Barry Edelstein, Robert Perillo, J. Steven White, Grace Zandarski, Janet Zarish and others.  Guest artists, including eminent members of The Public Theater community and other leading Shakespeareans, will frequently visit the Shakespeare Lab.

The Lab is the cornerstone of a busy summer of Shakespeare-related activity at The Public Theater, including the productions in repertory of The Merchant of Venice and The Winter’s Tale, directed by Daniel Sullivan and Michael Greif, respectively. Two new recently announced programs for teens, A Midsummer Day’s Camp and Shakespeare Spring Break, plus  Shakespeare Lab Jr., a program of free, one-week Shakespeare workshops for New York City schoolchildren and Summer Shake-Up, a one-day celebration of Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater for New York City schoolchildren and their families, round-out the summer’s activities.

Requirements and other information about Shakespeare Lab 2010 may be found at www.publictheater.org. The Public Theater is at 425 Lafayette St. For more information about Shakespeare Initiative programs, please visit www.publictheater.org.

Doubt

“It is a proven fact that no two things can occupy the same space at the same time. This theory applies to the mind and heart of human beings. Where there is trust there can be no doubt. . . doubt stems from our beliefs, many of which hinge on our thoughts and feelings of unworthiness. . .

"We attract into our lives that which we focus upon with the strongest intent. Unfortunately, most of us do not monitor our thoughts, and therefore have no idea of what we are thinking most of the time. . . The moment a seed of doubt becomes imbedded in our thoughts, we can become so preoccupied with fixing what has apparently gone wrong that our thoughts shift from the desired outcome. We are now focused intently on ensuring that nothing goes wrong. Forestalling wrong, rather than desired intent, becomes the focus. . .

"Constant prayer and affirmation are the strongest defenses against doubt. . .

"When we expect to be guided and protected and to receive the benefits of Divine Will, we can expect the results of all endeavors to be favorable.”

-- Iyanla Vanzant, One Day My Soul Just Opened Up

Trust your gifts

"For you, there is only one road that can lead to God and this is fidelity, to remain constantly true to yourself, to what you feel is highest in you. The road will open before you as you go.”
-- Teilhard de Chardin

“Do your best and leave the rest to our dear God.”
-- Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton

Autobiography

Let my life go -- in the will of God -- this way.
Let it affirm the impossible
for the impossible is evident everywhere.
Little can be proven absolute from day to day.
But there are: faith, love, prayer --
indomitable frailties that phoenix
before and while and after I say
Amen.

-- Sr. Maura Eichner, S.S.N.D.

Caring for yourself

I’d like to share with you some wisdom from St. Bernard of Clairvaux about the importance of keeping our spirits healthy. He uses a clear comparison as caution against allowing too much work and worry to drain us:

“The canal simultaneously pours out what it receives; the reservoir retains the water until it is filled, then discharges the overflow without loss to itself. . . You must imitate this process. First be filled, and then control the outpouring.”

He advised pausing during the busy day for recollection as a way to bring the distracted inner self to peaceful integration, a way of living contemplatively in everyday life and work.

-- from The Song of Songs I (The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux)

Meditation

“To learn to meditate we have to learn to be humble. . . . What does it mean to be humble? It means to begin to acknowledge that there is a reality outside of ourselves, that is greater than ourselves and that contains us. Humility is simply learning to find our place within that greater reality and . . .learn to live in our place. The first thing to understand is that you are your own place. To come to terms with all reality, we must first come to terms with our own reality. It is in the stillness of meditation, the stillness of body and spirit which reveals the unity of body and spirit, that we enter the experience of knowing really that we are. We come to know this with absolute clarity and absolute certainty. Only then are we ready to go to the next step which is to go beyond ourselves, to rise beyond ourselves. The tragedy of the egoist is that the egoist does not know his or her place. The egoist thinks that he is at the center of the everything and sees everything only in relation to himself.

“Meditation and the constant return to it, every day of your life, is like cutting a pathway through to reality. Once we know our place, we begin to see everything in a new light because we have become who we really are. And becoming who we are, we can now see everything as it is and so begin to see everyone else as they are. The truest wonder of meditation is that we even begin to see God as God is. Meditation is therefore a way to stability. We learn through the practice and from the experience how to be rooted in our essential being. We learn that to be rooted in our essential being is to be rooted in God, the author and principle of all reality. And it is no small thing to enter reality, to become real, to become who we are, because in that experience we are freed from all the images that so constantly plague us. We do not have to be anyone's image of ourselves, but simply the real person we are.

"Meditation is practiced in solitude but it is the great way to learn to be in relationship. The reason for this paradox is that, having contacted our own reality, we have the existential confidence to go out to others, to meet them at their real level. And so the solitary element in meditation is mysteriously the true antidote to loneliness. Having contacted our conformity with reality, we are no longer threatened by the otherness of others. We are not always looking for an affirmation of ourselves. We are making love's search, looking for the reality of the other. . . .

“Meditation is demanding. We must learn to meditate whether we feel like it or not, whether it is raining or snowing, or the sun is shining or whatever is on television or whatever kind of day we have had. In the Christian vision of meditation. . .we find the reality of the great paradox Jesus teaches: If we want to find our lives, we have to be prepared to lose them. In meditating, that is exactly what we do. We find ourselves because we are prepared to let go of ourselves, to launch ourselves out into the depths---which soon appear to be the depths of God.

-- John Main OSB, THE HEART OF CREATION

"We are the people of July 4th -- not Sept. 11th."

-- Thomas Friedman

A Changing World

Simon Green brings his countryman Noel Coward to life in his new CD, A Changing World, which features the artist’s great songs as well as his words of wisdom on love, patriotism and other matters. The quotes, which are effective because they are not overdone, help paint such a full portrait that listening is like spending time with Coward, and enjoying every minute.

From the beginning with songs of “pride and grace” that celebrate England, to the finish with the tender “Come the Wild, Wild Weather,” Green and his superb accompanist, David Shrubsole, transport us to an era of sophistication and wit. And it’s a delightful journey!

Green comes to cabaret from a musical theatre background and that experience can be heard in how he conveys the story and sentiment of each song. He has chosen an interesting mix, from the romantic to the risqué to the oh, so humorous. The complete list is:

1.) There Have Been Songs in England/You Were There
2.) Couldn’t We Keep on Dancing?
3.) Where Are the Songs We Sung?/A Room With a View/I’ll Follow My Secret Heart
4.) What’s Going to Happen to the Tots?
5.) Time and Again/Wait a Bit Joe
6.) On Leaving England for the First Time/London Pride/I Travel Alone/Sail Away
7.) Three Theatrical Dames
8.) Why Must the Show Go On?
9.) Twentieth Century Blues
10.) I’m Old Fashioned/Let’s Do It
11.) Alice Is at It Again
12.) I’ll See You Again/This Is a Changing World
13.) Someday I’ll Find You
14.) Come the Wild, Wild Weather


The CD was inspired by Green’s popular Coward show last year at 59E59 Theaters. I’m hoping a similar recording will come out of the show he did there this past holiday season, Simon Green Traveling Light. That was a joy, as is “A Changing World.” I highly recommend it.

Make Your Own Luck

Expect good things to happen, and they will!
BY JON GORDON

Do you feel lucky? To paraphrase Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry, that’s one question you need to ask yourself. It turns out that luck, like much in life, has a lot to do with your beliefs and the energy and attitude you project. The luckier you feel, the luckier you are.

British psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of The Luck Factor, conducted a 10-year study on the nature of luck. He discovered that people who seem to get all the breaks "generate their own good fortune" to a large extent. There are ways, based on Wiseman’s research, that you can enhance your luck—today.

1. Make the most of chance opportunities.
Strike up conversations with strangers. Ask people where they’re from. When you’re on an airplane or a bus, talk to the passengers next to you. I do this, and it’s amazing how many wonderful relationships have developed as a result. I met my wife as she was walking by the place I worked 12 years ago. I took a chance and said hello. Best decision I ever made. Be aware of and open to new possibilities.

2. Believe good things are going to happen.
Lucky people expect positive results, and that’s what they get. It boils down to the power of belief. Whatever you put your attention on starts to show up more in your life. Lucky people expect to find a parking space. They expect clients to say yes. They expect tomorrow to be even better than today. Expect success, and you’ll attract more of it.

3. Turn bad luck into good.
Lucky people believe everything happens for a reason. They see obstacles as opportunities to learn and grow and make changes for the better. They face adversity like everyone else but they transform dead ends into detours and bad experiences into good outcomes. Do you feel lucky now? Good!

Richard Wiseman has gained an international reputation for research into quirky areas of psychology. His latest book, Quirkology, explores the curious science of everyday life, including lying, love and laughter.

This article appeared in Guideposts magazine.