A person once told me that in life you need to learn to be lucky. When I asked him how to learn that he replied that you need to want to be lucky. And that’s it.
He was very serious and, to some extent, I think he wasn’t saying something crazy (and in fact he’s been very successful in his life, without resorting to help from others).
I think he meant we make our own luck: we work as hard as possible to create several occasions and maybe we screw lots of them but, if we try, try again, we can seize some of them.
I suppose the message really was: you need to be persistent. If you’re so dedicated, you end up grabbing some opportunities you didn’t even know existed (but you kind of created)
Thanks for coming to my TED talk… Be lucky!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_(Byrne_book)
The Secret is a 2006 self-help book by Rhonda Byrne, based on the earlier film of the same name. It is based on the belief of the pseudoscientific law of attraction, which claims that thought alone can influence objective circumstances within ones life
Just a modern day spin on the Prosperity Gospel.
This is 100% true, but you also have to be prepared for the moment you get lucky.
I consider my current career success to be due to a great deal of luck, but I also can’t deny that a lot of work went into being ready when that moment finally came.
Hard work doesn’t always translate to success, but you can definitely nudge the dice in your favor - especially with a more “holistic” approach to life.
Success is where luck meets opportunity.
If you don’t give yourself the opportunity you can never be lucky. The better you can set yourself up for opportunities the better you can make luck work for you when it arrives, both good and bad.
I think we put a lot of emphasis on “luck”, while neglecting what success actually looks like.
A lot of that “luck” manifests as benefiting from the status quo. A hundred people line up for a job and ten people get it. Those ten “got lucky”, perhaps even by having developed a particularly valuable set of skills that are exceptionally useful in that moment. But then you ask what they “got lucky” doing. And it turns out we’re describing Don Draper-esque ad executives profiting off the cigarette industry. Or WWE wrestlers who share Vince McMahon’s taste in victims. Or bank managers who had some of their best sales years in 2007 and got out before the card tower collapsed.
When you’re focused on “success”, its worth asking what you’re even trying to succeed at. Particularly when so much of what makes a modern Success Story in America comes down to boiler room scams, physical/sexual abuse, and the most toxic forms of industrial output in human history.
These are good points.
Success to me is health, friends and family, video games, and being able to do something I love while making enough money to maximize those things as best as I can. It’s always a balance.
I think everyone should define success on thier own terms. I feel lucky that none of the typical western desires of status or shiny objects interest me at all.
I think everyone should define success on thier own terms.
I think that works at some level. But you’re opening the door to some Wolf of Wall Street style sociopaths making life miserable for the rest of us so they can jockey for biggest bank account.
You can’t choose what other people are allowed to think.
There are always going to be evil people. Things that lead to evil people doing more damage then good is what regulation is for, like workplace safety, etc.
You can’t choose what other people are allowed to think.
That’s functionally what education is. Not so much “allowed” as “inclined”. But establishing social obligations and taboos is sort of foundational to any cohesive cultural movement.
There are always going to be evil people.
I don’t doubt it. But its important to define what “evil” standards for in order to rally against it.
Nepotism helps too!
That’s just a different kind of luck
Born on third base and convinced I hit a triple.
