Dose luck have anything to do with success?

[Lei]

We often heard that: "When people succeed, it is because of hard working. Luck has nothing to do wiht success." Do you agree or disagree with it and what do you think? Does success really has nothing to do with luck?

[Andyee]

Luck is just another way of expressing that you deserved it

[Aleksander Krstic]

It has to do with luck, but it's still just 5% of success. The other 95% are hard work, self-discipline and many other factors.

[coffegirl]

I would rather speak about opportunities.
There are people who take every opportunity and then there are ones who don´t even recognize their chances.
I think success is not only about taking advantage of a certain situation,it´s more about being proactive.

[FazK]

Well "luck" does have a lot to do with success it just depends how you define luck. In the words of Oprah

"I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity."

[Brutha]

It depends on the field. If you want to be a neurosurgeon.

In the field of becoming a bestselling author luck however plays a huge part.

Earning a nobel prize is often about being lucky. A lot scientific breakthroughs happen at places where nobody expects them to happen.
If you would know beforehand the outcome it wouldn't be scientific discovery

[pholberton]

Hi,

I am not sure where I heard or read this yet I always will remember this quote. "The harder you work, the luckier you become."

Good luck,

[Lei]

Originally Posted by pholberton

Hi,

I am not sure where I heard or read this yet I always will remember this quote. "The harder you work, the luckier you become."

Good luck,

"The harder you work, the luckier you become." great!!! who said it?

[Remiel]

Isn't luck merely where hard work meets opportunity? Without hard work can one ever be ready to take advantage of the opportunities present themselves?

[Talkofthatown919]

hmm i personally do not believe in luck at all. Hard work, determination and persistence is what brings about success. Because luck is just a word that i believe people use to potray those who have succeed.

[nin64]

Yes, of course.
I can't imagine what my life would be right now if somehow the internet disappear. So lucky to be born at late 80's.
Outlier by Malcolm Gladwell is a fascinating book. And I believe that the book have something to do with the topic.

[ProbableReality]

Luck?

Call it what you will.

It depends on your awareness of how you get what you get.

IMO, there is no luck. Your success is a function of every decision you make.

Choose well.

[Benny21]

I think there has to be some luck involved. Just a little bit but it only comes with hard work.

[One Life No Fear]

Someone already said it here but it is very true.. I believe the full original quote was something like "Where opportunity meets preparation this produces the offspring we call luck''.

I can't deny that sometimes you can be 'in the right place at the right time' but if you are not prepared for it, you can't recognise the opportunity so is this realy luck? I don't know.

The one thing that I know successful people hate hearing the most is 'you are so lucky'. It kind of patronises all those nights of hard work, the struggles and stress...

[Remiel]

Have any of you read good to great? If not it was a book that took a look at 11 companies that made a transition from being mediocre / good to great. In it they had an interesting story about how these companies made the leap from being good to being great. They ended up calling it the flywheel effect. Basically they said that the transition was like pushing a giant flywheel one small push at a time. Gradually over time they built up so much momentum that they make a transition from being good to great. Most external observers only see that breakthrough point and are blown away about why this company has become great.

Isn't it the same with sustained "luck"? Can a person have a lucky moment? Sure, but look at most lottery winners, what happens? Don't they lose everything they gained in that moment of luck, if not more? But there are other's that are "lucky" such as Bill Gates, yet his was sustained, wasn't it?

Could it be that this thing we call luck is really taking advantage of opportunities that surround us? Perhaps luck is also the Law of Attraction at work?

[Thekla]

Remiel, Good to Great is an interesting book to look at from the perspective of luck. Many of the great companies profiled experienced what seemed like very bad luck in the course of their progress to success, but they were able to weather it or turn it into an opportunity.

I believe that there is luck, in that there are random factors that we come into contact with. But all you have to do to see how luck impacts (or doesn't) sustained success is to look at a good backgammon or poker player. Everyone's cards are determined by luck, but good players win out over others... maybe not every single game, but definitely over time, and in a big way.

[audi]

Ask yourself what is 'Success'? What makes you successful? Does the way you've achieved it still matter as long as you have reached your end goal?

Success can be achieved in many different ways, luck being one of them. Want to become a millionaire? - Go play the lottery, that is luck, but in my eyes that is not success, not for me. For another man it could be exactly what he needs to feel successful.

[san]

Personally I believe luck do exist and play an important role in your life. It is because of your luck or fate you are born to certain parents, in a certain country and in a certain place.

It is only because of luck or fate you come across a book or a person or an event that changes your life 180 degrees to find a new meaning in your life.

Of course hard work plays an important role in shaping your life but it is "luck or fate" that makes you work hard or lie idle and still enjoy the fruits of hard work of other people e.g. your parents or your son or daughter.

If it was not fate, than why will some people die in a plane crash or flood or other natural or man made disasters?

If luck depends on hard work only, then why all the people who work harder than other people are not luckier than those who do not work hard?

Why a person we call "successful businessman because of hard work" fails miserably in his personal life? Why can't he or she do the same hard work in his or her personal life, knowing very well that he needs to work hard to make his relationship works.

[ShiningLight]

If you follow the belief that you create your reality - then luck has nothing to do with it - for you are creating everything around you, even your "luck."

If you don't believe that you create your reality - then you may find that luck is what brings about your success.

Change your perspective, change your reality. It's your choice, really.

[Robou]

San,
your point of view on luck is very interesting...... I really respectfully disagree with it though...according to this if we were unlucky enough to have been born to the wrong parents, wrong place, wrong circumstances in general are we supposed to resolve that we are just "unlucky" and that our lives are doomed to mediocrity because the force known as luck has chosen to overlook us?
What you say about luck leading us to a book, an event or people that change our lives is somewhat overlooking of certain key points...... First of all if a person isn't interested in personal developement they are not likely to be hanging out in the self help / PD section of the bookstore...... People that are into PD are going to always have their eyes open to possibilities (books, seminars, succesful people) around them and will see in a certain situation what others may not..... Books, people, seminars etc don't change your life you do that all by yourself by taking action armed with the new information that you have aquired by the books, seminars, people etc that you have read, attended or met. There are people with the worst of circumstances that have triumphed and overcame and there are people with seemingly charmed lives that put a bullet in their brain.... You see it on the nightly news almost daily.
I'm sorry but I just can't subscribe to the belief of a force known as luck that roams around the universe randomly deciding who's going to be succesful, rich, famous etc.....if you want fame you search it out and work for it, move to Hollywood and take acting lessons and go to auditions for movies.... If that's the kind of fame you want....inspiration or desperation is what Tony Robbins says..... Maybe it's that desperation you feel when everything seems to be crashing around you and you realize that the way your currently living isn't going to get you where you want to go that pushes you to the self help / PD section of the book store where your "lucky" enough to find a book that gives you invaluable information about how to change your perspectives, values and beliefs and therefore your life.....how lucky!
Sorry for the long post guys.....this is my first post actually since joining and this seems to be a great forum and most people seem very willing to help others and I hope I can make the occasional worthwhile contribution as well get some valuable advice myself as I am going through a rather rough period right now.... But that is another thread entirely.

[Remiel]

Isn't what most people attributing to luck simply the Law of Attraction?

[allen080105]

This video answered that question for me. Basically on the subject of luck he says that luck is probabilities and there are several ways you can increase your probabilities of anything.

[TheIronStar]

Originally Posted by Lei

We often heard that: "When people succeed, it is because of hard working. Luck has nothing to do wiht success." Do you agree or disagree with it and what do you think? Does success really has nothing to do with luck?

Luck does matter, but it's always best not to have to rely on it.

[David365]

Originally Posted by Remiel

Isn't what most people attributing to luck simply the Law of Attraction?

I would agree there is a great overlap - if someone believes they are lucky they adopt a more positive, optimistic attitude to life and a belief system to match.

A great book on luck is "The Luck Factor", published about 6 years ago by Dr Richard Wiseman. He carried out extensive research with groups of people who considered themselves "lucky" or "unlucky". Unsurprisingly, there was no difference in their actual luck when it came to buying lottery tickets. But, there was a difference in their behaviour and expectations. As Wiseman puts it:-

"They (expectations) make a difference to whether we try something, how hard we persist in the face of failure, how we interact with others and how others interact with us."

In other words "lucky" people think and behave in ways that increases their chances of creating, noticing and exploiting chance opportunities. Other experiments found they were more likely to persevere when encountering problems, and were also far more likely to reframe bad experiences by thinking how much worse they could have been.

[Remiel]

wow, I think I will be picking up that book sometime soon. It sounds great.

[Parthon]

I would say that luck might determine the pieces you can play with, but how you play the game is determined by you, and you alone.

For the "circumstances affect the outcome" idea, certainly they could, but then we'd have to redefine success too. What would be success for us First worlders could be way out of reach of someone from a poor country, but his success could be much more valuable than ours. The challenges he would overcome would give him more to learn, and more ways to grow than us in our pretty, safe, little world here.

Given the same starting conditions, work, knowledge and beliefs are what separates a successful person from the rest.

[MagicalRealist]

Originally Posted by Lei

We often heard that: "When people succeed, it is because of hard working. Luck has nothing to do wiht success." Do you agree or disagree with it and what do you think? Does success really has nothing to do with luck?

My grandfather, who started out poor and became a very successful businessman, used to say, "Sometimes you just get lucky. But people create their own luck, good or bad." It took me a long time to understand fully what he meant.

He was confident and charismatic. He was genuinely interested in other people, and what made them tick, and he was a shrewd observer of human nature. He was always on the lookout for a new opportunity--and it had to be something that excited him, because he was the sort of guy who would gladly work 14- or 16-hour days if it was something that set his pulse racing and imagination soaring.

To him, business wasn't really work. While he worked long hours he didn't see it as "working hard"--instead, he was playing a complicated, high-stakes game in which he could win big or lose everything, but the thrill was in playing the game, not in the final payoff. In his mind, the game had no end. Retirement wasn't in the game plan; the only way he was going to quit playing was by dying.

And while he did enjoy luxuries and status symbols that came wth succeeding at the game, that wasn't what motivated him to get into business. His office was a seedy little room with flourescent lights in a nondescript strip mall. It had ugly brown office carpet, plain white walls, a narrow window with a view of a parking lot, and contained the "executive" office furniture he'd bought himself in 1960. It was hideous, but he didn't care. He had everything he needed to play the game in that room, and was happy.

He was gregarious, astute, and intelligent, so he frequently got "lucky" because other people remembered him when they had an opportunity to present or a problem to solve. They could have taken their proposals to other people who had more money, a wider reach, greater expertise--but they went to him first. He could be scathing and vindictive if you messed with him, but even some of his adversaries will still admit that he was a straight-shooter and a man of his word, and how he would honor a handshake deal even if things went sour for him. If a deal went bad, he dealt with it, then moved on to the next deal; he didn't waste time on regret or self-pity or trying to recapture his losses. It was just part of playing the game.

So all of this made him a magnet for the opportunities that just seemed to fall into his lap. He was brash, dynamic, in love with his work, and he genuinely liked people. Other people saw that in him and responded positively to it; they wanted to be part of that excitement and energy. And he was always looking to expand, to explore a new layer of the game, so he remained on the lookout for something he'd never tried before that would catch his interest and set him on fire again.

He put out the vibration of a successful individual. He radiated success. And he was open to recognizing and receiving whatever good came his way. He might scoff at seeing it phrased in such a woo-woo, New-Agey manner, but I don't think he'd disagree with it. And that? That was the source of his "luck." None of his good fortune--no matter how unexpected--dropped randomly from the sky, or came to him by some absurd chance.

[brendannz]

"luck is when preparation meets opportunity."

[jeff3]

Originally Posted by Aleksander Krstic

It has to do with luck, but it's still just 5% of success. The other 95% are hard work, self-discipline and many other factors.

That's strange, in my world it's the other way around.

[Remiel]

Originally Posted by jeff3

That's strange, in my world it's the other way around.

How so?