I believe that success is a combination of both hard work and character qualities and luck. I also believe that H and I have both been very lucky in many ways.
There is a saying I have seen something about if hard work were the only element of success every woman in Africa would be rich. Something to think about.
Whenever I hear the phrase “self-made man,” I think of the factory owner Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times, who disowned his own mother to maintain that fiction. Our “pole position” at the start of life is all down to biological luck (i.e. born healthy, with no disabilities; born the preferred gender for your society’s opportunities; born in a safe and rich land) and the luck and choices of others (parents healthy, responsible, kind, wealthy, educated, etc. etc.), and it continues to affect our progress throughout life. No one can claim to be “self-made.”
One major problem with our current elites is that individualistic meritocracy encourages the wealthy and successful to feel that they have no obligation to others, that they have a “right” to their power and wealth. That is why our leadership (economic and political) is the worst it’s ever been in this history of the republic.
OK, let’s start sitting around and waiting for our luck to visit us. Isn’t it the most rewarding way to live?
There are different types of luck.
Will you recognize luck when your neighbor or friend has a good product and he asks you for investment money.
In Forbes’ 400 Richest Americans ( http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#/version:static ), they now include a “self-made” score described at http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/02/the-new-forbes-400-self-made-score-from-silver-spooners-to-boostrappers/ .
I think people can acknowledge luck (or good fortune), while still realizing that they need to be responsible for their choices and making things happen in their lives. People who think everything is luck and that they are unfortunate and have the victim mentality, have the largest strike against them of all. We are all lucky to have been born in the US, lucky we are still walking this Earth, lucky if we still have our minds, lucky if we aren’t terminally ill. But it’s pretty unlikely that you can just sit where you are, do nothing but make bad decisions, and have wonderful things happen to you.
In a country like this, the biggest stroke of luck is to have developed a positive attitude, and the ability to make good choices, in my opinion.
It seems people who recognize their luck are the same people who work hard not to squander it.
@njsue:
I tend to agree, a lot of people have forgotten “there but the grace of God go I” when looking at the misfortunes of others, and part of that is the whole resurgance of Ayn Rand’s mythos of heroic builders who did it all themselves and so forth and it leaves out quite frankly the elements that allowed them to achieve, it is a big ego boost to say “I owe no one nothing, I did it all myself”. That doesn’t mean success is nothing more than luck or randomness, it isn’t, success and doing things requires a lot of things. Being entrepeneurial requires taking risks, for example, and if you profile those who go that route, they came from backgrounds where risk taking was not discouraged (as compared to, say, the parents who want their kids never to take risks, never go outside their comfort zone, because if you fail, after all, it is disaster). MItt Romney built a big business, and whatever I think of Bain, he built it, but he also came from a background where his dad had a huge network of friends and acquaintainces, and where he grew up surrounded by people in business, and that made a big difference. The guy who founded the company I work for (since bought), when I asked him told him his father always encouraged him to try things, and his dad was entrepeneurial. It didn’t hurt that the guy was bloody brilliant, graduated with a 4.0 from MIT without doing much studying in chem engineering, but he acknowledged the debt of having his father.
@MiamiDAP :
No one was saying that it was luck alone, and I am getting tired of the Ayn Rand crowd using that as a retort when anyone brings up the things that lead to success, basically ridiculing the notion that luck plays any role in people’s success and claiming that people are saying it is all luck, which it is not. Claiming that you might as well play lotto to hope for success is just as wrong as those who claim they ‘did it themselves’, the John Gault myth of the self made man who achieved and therefore owes no one anything, both are equally self serving to either someone who is generally making excuses for their own lack of success (the “it is all luck”) or the self heroic view of things (I did it myself, no one gave me anything"). If you are a successful woman in today’s world, you owe more than a bit of that to luck of having followed generations of people battling the bigotry and stupidity of religion and society that limited women to baby making machines. It is part of the mindset of the old “anyone can achieve anything, if they try hard enough”, or worse, “If I can make it, so can they” totally dismissing the luck that that person might have had in being allowed to achieve (note the word allowed, the person still had to achieve). I am what I think is pretty successful in life, and I worked hard to achieve it, I didn’t have a rich daddy with well off buddies, I didn’t go to an Ivy league school and have the old boy network, but I had an upbringing where i lived in a safe area where I didn’t have to fear getting shot to death walking home from school, I went to schools that were decent, if not spectacular, I had two educated parents who not only expected me to learn, but pushed learning for the sake of learning, the love of reading and understanding things, I have some what I believe are inherited abilities, and I also learned from my dad, both caught and taught, about how you live your life…someone else who didn’t have that, even if they had by inate skills, might have ended up very differently. The idea of same outcome from different starts is basically an excuse from those who have achieved to deny the fact that they had , for want of a better term, luck of the draw, that allowed them to achieve, rather than realizing that not everyone was so fortunate or lucky.
My dad once was confronted with an Ayn Rand type like that, who proclaimed how achievement was about the character of the person, how those who don’t make it simply lacked “the will” (growing up during the Depression, that alone made my father see red). My dad told the story about a friend of his growing up, his family was poor, the kid grew up to be a very successful lawyer in NYC, partner in one of the top law firms. The Ayn Rand type would nod, and say “see, if he could do it, anyone can”…then my dad hit the guy with the Sunday punch, that the friend later on acknowledged that he was helped by a public school system that during the 1930’s, was the envy of the world, and he had teachers and mentors who saw his promise and helped. The kid was Jewish, and back then there was a real community around that and there were succesful members of their temple who made sure to try and help the kids in the community achieve. The kid in winter used to go into the lobbies of hotels to do his homework, because his family apartment was always very cold, and no one bothered him. The kid had access to CCNY which at the time was world class, and literally was tuition free, and he was able to afford textbooks because members of his temple would either pay for them or sometimes older kids would have the books already…and someone at an Ivy league law school took a chance on him, even though he was coming out of ‘only’ CCNY, at a time when Jews were rarely given that privilege, so someone saw something in him. After he graduated, a partner at a major law firm took an interest in him and again was willing to take a chance on hiring a Jewish kid, at a time when many big law firms openly discriminated against Jews. My father’s friend turned out to be a really top notch lawyer, and he was successful because he was talented out it, no doubt, but a lot of things allowed him to succeed when so much was against him…and it likely could have worked very differently if for example, he was poor, lived in a rural area where there were crappy schools, where there wasn’t a community to support him, what would have happened to him?
I don’t see anyone arguing this. Fatalism is not an effective or productive approach to life. You always have a set of choices at any given time, even if they aren’t very good ones. Your choices can make your given situation better or worse.
I think I am the luckiest person in the world (although I usually use the word “blessed”). I can’t even believe how lucky and fortunate and blessed I have been.
Unfortunately, I do know people (not me) who have done everything right but been staggeringly, heartbreakingly unlucky. Sometimes that happens, and it can be almost impossible to recover from.
Will you be lucky enough to have a few bucks to invest? Not everyone does.
@zoosermom:
Hence the term “There but for the grace of God go I”…it is pretty sad when people because of some need to make themselves appear ‘great’ won’t acknowledge the many things that helped them along with their own achievement. It is both ego IMO (look at how great I am, I built all this from nothing) and also IME is a way to not have to deal with the emotions when looking at someone who is less fortunate and wondering why, lot easier to say “luck had nothing to do with my success, so of course they could achieve what I did”, also takes away any concept that maybe with your own good luck, you might have some duty to help pass it on to others.
My father’s favorite saying is “The harder I work, the luckier I get” and it always resonated with me. I was born on second but knew I was going to have to work had to get to home plate. I also tried hard not to take it for granted and pretend I was a hitter. My own kids were born on third but are incredibly resourceful, grateful, and decent human beings. They also know they weren’t hitters but were “lucky” enough to be born at the right place and at the right time.
Luck is an element, but not nearly as big as ppl think. Luck was being born here, the rest was hard work and planning either of my own, my parents, or their ancestors. If I got a job through a connection, it was bc I cultivated that connection and showed my worth. I was born to no wealth. My ancestors left me the inheritance of being born in a country where I can make my own luck.
Bad luck is definitely there! But people too often see poor decision making or performance as bad luck. Just as people may attribute success to luck rather than hard work, connections, etc.
And then there is just rotten luck: markets, bad health, job losses, having sextuplets! And being born in a place where you worry more about food than anything luck might get you…
I feel ridiculously lucky most of the time. I also acknowledge that I’m not in control of the luck, either good or bad, so I try and not depend on luck or blame luck.
Luck happens :).
Another point I’d bring up is that some people see the exact same situation as unlucky and lucky, depending on their point of view. I was in a terrible train wreck when I was 14; and I feel very lucky to have survived. Other people from that accident feel very unlucky to have been there in the first place, and it haunts them. I just avoid Amtrak and consider myself lucky.
So I think perspective has a lot to do with luck-lemons and lemonade…
In my daughter’s first year of life, three members of our social circle lost a spouse unexpectedly. One to a previously-undiagnosed heart ailment, one to a drunk driver, and one to cancer. They all had children under a year of age, and we are still in touch. In addition to the loss of the loved one (two men and one woman), all three families faced a cascade of terribles as a result of the deaths that has made their lives much more difficult and unfortunate. I would say that all three of those families are now defined by bad luck because none of the deaths was the result of poor choices or behavior.
I know many people with chronic health issues due to issues beyond their control. The issues have not killed any of them, but have definitely affected their lives. The more of a financial cushion they had, the more the health problems could also be cushioned and the better experts and Rx they could afford and the better they could adapt their environments to minimize those health effects.
@zoosermom, am very sorry for those who lose a spouse when they have an infant. That was one of the first things I was concerned about when I was diagnosed with a severe, chronic health condition–would I remain healthy enough to be there for my kids and hopefully hold a job?
“Will you recognize luck when your neighbor or friend has a good product and he asks you for investment money.”
@MiamiDAP, the person I worked with was asked to help start(fund) a company but he was in between jobs and couldn’t help. The product was wine coolers for Bartles and James.
The reason I know is my insurance company puts out a monthly or quarterly magazine. The question they had asked that month was “What past investment do you regret”. A couple of the stories involved not investing in a friend or neighbors idea. I was discussing the story with him and he told me his past investment regret, wine coolers.