28 ms·
I disagree that luck has anything to do with success. People get lucky all the time and do nothing with it. How many people win the lottery only to go broke? W
by n3rdy 14y ago
I disagree that luck has anything to do with success. People get lucky all the time and do nothing with it.
How many people win the lottery only to go broke? When that happens nobody bats an eyelash, but if someone uses those lottery winnings to start a successful company, it was 1,000,000% the lotteries fault for this persons success, not their initiative.
No doubt some people are lucky and have an easier time than others, but opportunity is such a small part of the equation. People in the U.S will literally get dozens of opportunities a year to become successful, but they're not paying attention and never even notice them, and they will continue griping about how unfair their life is.
It is the tenacity someone has to build something from nothing, and their ability to do that over again if everything falls apart, that sets one apart from the unsuccessful.
While everyone else is obsessively pursuing escapism through television, gossip, or substance, a successful person is obsessively pursuing the steps they need to take to alter their own reality to something better.
The luck argument in my opinion is ignorant because the type of person who strives to be successful doesn't want anything handed to them, they understand that dependence is born out of things coming too easily, so they reject it.
The type of person who waits for luck to strike, is doomed to either disappointment or dependence. They will never feel that same confidence and security a success minded person feels, because even with wealth, their focus will be on not losing that wealth. Someone who built their own success is confident in their ability to start over.
- brazzy 14y agoWell, you're wrong. Luck is a big factor in exceptional successes. As the article says: it's not sufficient. It's not necessary to be moderately successful. But no matter how tenacious and "success minded" you are, without a stroke of luck your success will be pretty limited. When someone uses lottery winnings to start a successful company, do you really think they would have gotten "dozens of opportunities each year" to invest a large amount of money however they want? It's of course a very attractive delusion to claim that luck has no part in success. To the successful person it increases their personal sense of achievement, and to the one hoping to be successful it makes big successes appear more achievable. Especially if you add the idea that it's not about talent/intelligence either but only about mindset. But it's still a delusion.
- n3rdy 14y agoI disagree. Success is all about trial and error. If you want to call it luck when you run out of things that can go wrong, then call it luck. I consider luck to be an exception, not an inevitability. The only role luck has in achieved success is avoiding the errors by doing things correctly the first time around, but that still isn't exactly luck, because not knowing what can go wrong leaves you vulnerable to future problems. > When someone uses lottery winnings to start a successful company, do you really think they would have gotten "dozens of opportunities each year" to invest a large amount of money however they want? My point was you don't often hear about lottery winners investing their money and turning it into a business system. You do hear about lottery winners blowing their windfall with nothing to show for it in the end though. If good luck is the only reason that people born poor can become wealthy, then is bad luck the only reason that people born wealthy go broke?