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I've known deca-millionaire trust fund kids who ended up broke (or dead). I've known immigrants who started with nothing and ended up fantastically independent
by nugget 11y ago
I've known deca-millionaire trust fund kids who ended up broke (or dead).
I've known immigrants who started with nothing and ended up fantastically independently wealthy.
And the vast, vast majority of people who settle somewhere near the middle.
What nobody teaches you is: it's all about luck.
Below that, the fine print: the harder you work and the more you sacrifice, the luckier you will get.
''If only'' works both ways. If only - then I would have been successful in some way. If only - then I wouldn't have met the partner who I fell in love with. It works both ways but people tend to overweight the negative (regret) and underweight the positive (gratitude). All you can do (young, old, or in between) is get up every day, be realistic about where you are and where you want to be, and keep moving forward.
- cocoggu 11y agoI agree it's a lot about luck and work, but I think you are missing an essential key to success: relationships.
- vasilipupkin 11y agoluck is a big factor but being in the right place at the right time maximizes the probability of getting lucky
- Retra 11y ago"Being in the right place at the right time" is a vast majority of what luck brings you.
- vasilipupkin 11y agono, I don't think of it that way. As an example, if you moved to Silicon Valley in 1999 and made it a point to try to get a job at a cool startup, you might have at least had a chance to end up at Google as an early employee. But you had no such opportunity if you moved to Wichita, Kansas because you thought it was cheaper, or whatever the reason.
- tomcam 11y agoit's all about luck Bullshit. Luck sure goes a long way, but so do working very, very hard and smart and making course corrections and constantly doing things people say will fail.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago99% of the time, when you do something that lots of smart people say will fail, you fail. People look at that 1% and conclude that if you just keep whacking your head against a brick wall, it will eventually turn into gold, completely ignoring the combination of smarts, habits, and the sheer dumb luck that are actually behind success. But the gutters are full of ambitious failures.
- tomcam 11y agoAmbition != working hard and smart Spoken like a critic. Not a producer. I know lots and lots of smart people who know how to criticize but not to create.
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoYeah, that's a standard rhetorical catch-22. Virtuous people always succeed, so anyone who doesn't succeed is by definition not virtuous--the system works! It's the same kind of thinking as "If God doesn't answer your prayers, it's your fault for not praying hard enough," or "Communism cannot fail, it can only be failed."
- tomcam 11y agoNothing to do with virtue. I have seen bad people succeed with the same techniques. Please read more carefully before you make irrelevant remarks. This does not serve you well.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago"Virtuous" was obviously shorthand for "working very, very hard and smart and" etc.
- crandycodes 11y agoFortune favors the bold