People who spot and seize opportunity are different. They are more open to life’s forking paths, so they see possibilities others miss. And if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped, they brush off disappointment and launch themselves headlong toward the next fortunate circumstance. As a result, they’re happier and more likely to achieve their goals.
Their open-mindedness turned a strange moment into a lucky break.
Psychologists are figuring out why some people always seem to juggle incredible opportunities. Their insights can help us all lead luckier lives.
1. See Serendipity Everywhere
Luck is hard to study, and yet scientists have uncovered the startlingly large role chance plays in love and work. We are more like pinballs bouncing around a machine than captains at the wheel. Certain types of people are well suited to this fact of life.
Elizabeth Nutt Williams, a psychology professor at St. Mary’s College in Maryland, found that chance was a significant factor in shaping the career paths of thirteen professional women she studied. Women who take advantage of happenstance have competence, self-confidence, and the ability to take risks. They also have a strong support system. And a North Carolina State University study found through interviews with 42 engineering workers that job tips often come from unlikely sources in unexpected situations.
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire and author of
The Luck Factor, spent a decade researching people’s perceptions of their luck. He found that those who call themselves lucky score higher on the personality factor of extraversion. That means that they are more likely to have a fortuitous encounter because they meet lots of new people and keep in touch with a large group of friends and acquaintances. These advantaged souls also score higher in openness, and lower in neuroticism, the tendency to experience negative emotional states like anxiety, anger, guilt, and depression.
Wiseman conducted an experiment in which he placed the same chance opportunities—money on the ground and a potential encounter with a connected businessman—in the paths of two different people, one who claimed she was an unlucky person, the other who said things always seemed to work out well for him. The “lucky” guy immediately noticed the money on the ground and pocketed it, then struck up a conversation with the businessman in the coffee shop where he’d been planted. The “unlucky” woman, meanwhile, stepped right over the cash, and sipped her coffee without saying
a word to the same businessman.
2. Prime Yourself for Chance
Serendipity smiles upon people who have a more relaxed approach to life. They have clarified their long-term goals but don’t worry too much about the details. Rather than aiming to become the top cardiac surgeon at the Mayo Clinic, they vow to be a doctor who helps save lives. Once they’ve pinpointed the ultimate destination, they believe there are many different ways to get there. This requires openness to life’s surprising twists and turns as well as cognitive and behavioral flexibility.
An open person heads to the dog park thinking he might encounter a potential new friend, business partner, or romantic interest. A closed person sees only dog owners. “Don’t classify people and situations in advance,” advises Wiseman. “Wait until you know what’s in front of you.”
You can increase your opportunities for good luck by maintaining a large network of friends and acquaintances. Increasingly these days, the best opportunities float online,
so make sure you’re connected. Case in point: Marketing expert Shel Horowitz grabbed a chance to lecture in Davos, Switzerland, after noticing a LinkedIn search for conference speakers.
Cognitive flexibility can be cultivated, too. To limber up your own brain, try thinking about different points of view on a single topic. Maybe you have a firm belief that underwater homeowners don’t deserve a bailout. If that’s the case, try to come up with 10 reasons it might actually be a good idea.
3. You can also learn to behave more elastically.
Flexible people often respond to the same stimuli differently than do rigid types.
They might take varied routes to work, or stop at out-of-the-way places for a cup of coffee, rather than heading to their favorite cafe for “the usual.” Exploring new territory naturally increases good fortune.
“Do something different,” says Ben Fletcher, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. It doesn’t even need to be meaningful to your goal. Trying to get a date? Read your neighbor’s newspaper, switch seats on the train, or watch a new television program.
Breaking behavioral habits can lever changes in mental habits that have kept you from success so far. “People’s lives can be absolutely transformed by being nudged along a slightly altered route,” says Fletcher.
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How to Make Your Own Luck: 9 Steps (with Pictures) – wikiHow Life
Could Loss of the Y Chromosome Help Speed Cancers in Men?
By HealthDay
WEDNESDAY, June 21, 2023 (HealthDay News) — It’s common knowledge that loss
is a part of male aging — loss of hair, loss of muscle tone, loss of vision or hearing.
What’s to blame for certain cancer outcomes? New studies confirm: sex matters.
But men growing older also start losing the very thing that makes them biological males, their Y chromosome, and that can leave them more vulnerable to cancer, a new study says.
The loss of the Y chromosome can help cancer cells evade detection by the body’s immune system, according to researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles.
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A colorful panoramic Autumn Day view of a small foothill neighborhood,
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Specifically, it results in more aggressive bladder cancer among men,
the study authors reported June 21 in the journal Nature.
“This study for the first time makes a connection that has never been made before
between loss of the Y chromosome and the immune system’s response to cancer,”
said researcher Dr. Dan Theodorescu, director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer.
“We discovered that loss of the Y chromosome allows bladder cancer cells to elude the immune system and grow very aggressively,” Theodorescu said in a medical center news release.
It’s not all bad news, however. Bladder cancers driven by the loss of the Y chromosome also were more vulnerable to immune checkpoint inhibitors, which are drugs that enhance the body’s ability to target and destroy tumor cells, the researchers explained.
Each human cell normally has one pair of sex chromosomes. Men’s cells
have one X and one Y chromosome, while women have two X chromosomes.
Y may disappear with aging
However, aging men can lose the Y chromosome from some cells during normal cell division. Investigators have found the Y chromosome missing from some white blood
cells in about 40% of 70-year-old men and 57% of 93-year-olds, according to Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. In some older men, more than 4 out of 5 white blood cells can lack a Y chromosome.
Loss of the Y chromosome has been observed in several cancer types in men, including 10% to 40% of bladder cancers, Cedars-Sinai researchers said in background notes.
It has also been associated with heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
The Y chromosome contains the blueprints for certain genes. The Cedars-Sinai research team studied the way these genes are expressed in normal cells in the bladder lining, and used that to develop a scoring system that could measure the loss of the Y chromosome in bladder cancer.
The investigators then reviewed data on two groups of men with invasive bladder cancer. One group had their bladders removed but were not treated with an immune checkpoint inhibitor, while the other group received the immunotherapy.
Patients with loss of the Y chromosome had a poorer prognosis in the
first group and much better overall survival rates in the latter, the findings showed.
To figure out why this happens, the team performed lab experiments involving bladder cancer cells in mice.
The researchers found that mouse tumor cells lacking the Y chromosome.
Grew at a much faster rate than did tumors with the intact Y chromosome.
However, this only happened in mice with intact immune systems. In mice missing a type of immune cell called T-cells, tumors with and without the Y chromosome grew at the same rate.
“The fact that we only see a difference in growth rate when the immune system is in play is the key to the ‘loss-of-Y’ effect in bladder cancer,” Theodorescu said. “These results imply that when cells lose the Y chromosome, they exhaust T-cells. And without T-cells to fight the cancer, the tumor grows aggressively.”
“Fortunately, this aggressive cancer has an Achilles’ heel, in that it is more sensitive than cancers with an intact Y chromosome to immune checkpoint inhibitors,” said co-lead researcher Hany Abdel-Hafiz, an associate professor at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.
Preliminary data not yet published shows that loss of the Y chromosome can also make prostate cancers more aggressive, Theodorescu said.
“Our investigators postulate that loss of the Y chromosome is an adaptive strategy that tumor cells have developed to evade the immune system and survive in multiple organs,” said Shlomo Melmed, dean of the medical faculty at Cedars-Sinai.
“This exciting advance adds to our basic understanding of cancer biology
and could have far-reaching implications for cancer treatment going forward.”
Further research is needed to better understand the genetic connection between
loss of the Y chromosome and T-cell exhaustion, the study authors noted.
“If we could understand those mechanics, we could prevent T-cell exhaustion,” Theodorescu said. “T-cell exhaustion can be partially reversed with checkpoint inhibitors, but if we could stop it from happening in the first place, there is much potential to improve outcomes for patients.”
While women do not have a Y chromosome, Theodorescu said these findings could have implications for them as well. The Y chromosome contains a set of related genes on the X chromosome, and these might play a role in both women and men.
“Awareness of the significance of Y chromosome loss will stimulate discussions about the importance of considering sex as a variable in all scientific research in human biology,” Theodorescu said. “The fundamental new knowledge we provide here may explain why certain cancers are worse in either men or women, and how best to treat them. It also illustrates that the Y chromosome does more than determine human biologic sex.” The post Loss of Y chromosome in aging men fuels cancer: study appeared first on Talker.
How do men lose the y chromosome as we age – Bing video
Several molecular technologies, including next‐generation sequencing and multiplex PCR‐based assays, are used to detect mosaic loss of the Y chromosome (mLOY) in the blood of men. Accumulating evidence suggests that mLOY represents the most common acquired chromosomal alteration in humans, affecting >40% of men over 70 years of age. Advanced age, tobacco smoking, and some SNPs in cell cycle genes are known to increase the frequency of mLOY.
The developmental process of mLOY in elderly men remains to be clarified, but it possibly reflects recurrent mitotic elimination of Y chromosomes or clonal expansion of 45,X cell lineages. In rare cases, mLOY also occurs in young men and fetuses. MLOY has been associated with early death, cancers, and other disorders in elderly men, infertility in reproductive‐aged men, and developmental defects in children.
The longitudinal progression of mLOY varies among elderly men. 9 Thus, mLOY is likely to be enhanced or suppressed by various environmental and genetic factors. Of these, tobacco smoking represents the major risk factor for aging‐related mLOY. 5
Since the frequency of mLOY in current smokers was significantly higher than that in former smokers, 10 , 24 the effect of tobacco smoking on mLOY appears to be reversible. In addition, several environmental factors, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,
air pollution, heavy drinking, and obesity, have been linked to the risk of mLOY. 3
Yet, the significance of these factors needs to be confirmed in future studies.
Multiple SNPs in the genome have been associated with the risk of aging‐related mLOY. 3 , 11 , 17 These SNPs include variants in genes involved in cell cycle regulation, tumor growth, and cancer susceptibility. These SNPs may facilitate Y chromosomal loss during mitosis or clonal expansion of 45,X cell lineages. In addition, structural alterations of the Y chromosome have also been linked to the risk of mLOY.
In particular, large deletions on the Y chromosome are frequently coupled with 45,X/46,XY mosaicism. 25 , 26 However, our study indicated that common copy‐number variations in the azoospermia region at Yq11 do not increase the frequency of mLOY. 27
Mosaic loss of the Y chromosome and men’s health – PMC (nih.gov)
More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about immune checkpoint inhibitors.
SOURCE: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, news release, June 21, 2023
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Could Loss of the Y Chromosome Help Speed Cancers in Men?
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