Luck happens to those who let it.
Random opportunity comes along, you happen to be in a position to take advantage of it, and you happen to see it as it arrives.
Random opportunity comes along, you happen to be in a position to take advantage of it, and you happen to see it as it arrives.
“success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions.”
but I guess you’re also saying that people who get cancer are just letting it happen? Maybe they should’ve investigated the edges. You see there are two types of luck, good luck and bad luck. How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?
It's kind of like walking outside with your attention constantly focused on the fact that you might step on dog shit.
If you do this, your agency is pulled away from appreciating a beautiful flower, or interchanging smiles with a pretty person, or seeing a hundred dollar bill off to the side.
The fact that it is true that you can step on dog shit doesn't make it more true than the fact that most of the time you don't step on dog shit, and that you have the agency to walk and go around as if you weren't going to step on dog shit today.
It may will be that I do everything wrong in life and limit my opportunities, and still win the lottery because I tripped and fell on my face and lo and behold there was a winning lottery ticket that someone misplaced.
What I am saying over and over again is increasing your odds of success. Does not change your luck. Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails. You have zero agency in that outcome.
Your statement excessively (because it’s non-predictively useless) reductionist.
Yep, it’s absolute luck that that particular sperm and ovum happened to combine, that the pregnancy successfully proceeded, that you were born in a country not at war (I’m guessing), that that car didn’t run off the road and squash you when you were eight, etc. But acknowledging all that doesn’t provide any guidance.
My “woo woo” statement was literally the case: yes some incredible opportunity could sweep by and be missed because you happened to be looking the other way. And that will definitely happen — tant pis. But if you are willing to consider lucky opportunities when you are looking the other way your odds will improve.
https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.
You may have been lucky because a recruiter has reached out to you for a role which you would fit well in, but that's because you've made a conscious effort in dedicating time your craft and to advertising your capabilities.
Luck (or the lack of) is nearly never the sole factor in your successes or your failures.
> Just like you cannot change the fact if a coin lands on heads or tails.
You can, just throw the coin again until it lands the way you want.
Oh, I didn’t realize life is that simple. I can just keep doing things until they turn out the way I want.
https://sashachapin.substack.com/p/things-you-learn-dating-c...
“ Cate views her own life through a frame of responsibility: she takes responsibility for what happens to her. At the same time, she is genuinely not proud, and genuinely doesn’t think she’s better than anyone else. She credits luck for her good fortune and unusual attributes more than anything else, and is compassionate and curious toward everyone we meet. This is, I think, what sticks with me most.”
It is not luck that shifts your mind to highlight these negative aspects, that is where agency takes place. Take care.
> How do you know if by increasing your good luck in one area you’re not increasing your bad luck in another?
I think you do know. Eat healthy and move => most likely will increase the probability of be able to be more active at an older age. Build and launch projects => increase the probability of building a profitable business (but if doing that makes you burnout - sure, you could say you increased your "bad luck" from a health perspective)
I might be misunderstanding your point, but other people are treating luck as mere chance or odds, while you seem to me to be treating it as something binary that sounds a bit like "destiny" or "predeterminism".
By changing the odds of an outcome, you’re not changing your luck, you’re changing the odds. Even having 99.999% certainty you can still be unlucky and land in that percent. Probability is not deterministic. And what determines the outcome? Luck.
It’s mostly pseudo-intellectual posturing. Code monkeys desperately striving for some perceived superiority.
Maybe you can define it for us.
Lucky for us, it's turtles all the way down.