We often overhear discussions attributing success or failure to a starting point and mere luck. Could it be true? Are we victims of the luck of the draw?
Depending on who we’re talking to in real life, we often leave the Law of Attraction out of discussions we have with certain people. Not everyone believes even when the universe presents them with non-stop confirmation. This topic tends to exclude LOA more than usual because anyone using “luck of the draw” to beat up on themselves for mediocre results likely won’t be receptive to the idea.
The complaint
Twice in the last week, we listened (patiently) to discussions on some of our favorite podcasts about how much luck of the draw plays a part in how successful we find ourselves throughout our lives.
ChooseFI is a podcast about how simple and repeatable financial independence is – we highly recommend this podcast. They present evidence from every corner of the spectrum about the nearly guaranteed results achievable from a repeatable application of productive personal finance principles. Everyone has setbacks, but the essential guarantee of success comes from repeated attempts. The only way to not succeed is to die trying – anyone can have a fatal car accident on the way to a job interview, for example.
While the podcast hosts usually go out of their way to showcase success stories and emphasize how repeatable the process is by literally anyone, a recent episode completely threw that out the window. One week ago, the guest said she believed 5% of our financial results come from effort and conscious direction while the other 95% came from luck of the draw and privilege.
Anyone with an awareness of the law of attraction would feel the discord in that statement. Also, usual listeners would be left scratching their heads at the contradiction. Why do we allow these types of discussions when we know how counterproductive they are?
Today, a different interview on a different podcast attributed so much of his extreme personal success to his own luck of the draw. We found it funny how it kept happening to him every time he opened himself to new opportunities, but whatever.
Luck of the Draw Meets Timeframe
It’s hard to disagree on any particular point. These well-meaning folks are describing their personal experiences for the benefit of the audience. If nothing else, we thank them for giving us something to respond to today!
We acknowledge that luck plays a tremendous role in very short-term results. At the same time, in the long term, we think luck has practically nothing to do with results. Let’s discuss this distinction with a few examples.
Road trip
Get in the car and choose your destination.
Which traffic lights will you sail through and which will you have to stop for? Can you change lanes the moment you realize you want to get over? Or do you have to wait for someone to pass? Does your GPS reroute you around some kind of backup ahead, or are you going to ignore its advice and sit in construction for an extra 20 minutes?
Did your car survive the trip or was there some kind of issue you should have resolved weeks ago? When you arrived, was the destination what you expected or did you neglect to see if it was still open for business?
Even a short, routine drive is affected over and over by luck. Did you let it stop you, or did you keep driving toward your destination? Imagine someone getting so discouraged by the red lights that they threw up their arms, turned around, and complained forevermore about the luck of the draw. Sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it?
Sports
Maybe the single most important thing that sports teaches us is what today’s article is trying to get at. We can play the best strategy with the best technique but still lose.
Just because you hit high-probability shots doesn’t mean they go over the net 100% of the time. There’s some element of luck in any individual shot, but in aggregate, they’ll succeed some high-probability percentage of the time (the law of large numbers). Within a single game, a binomial calculator (or even the central limit theorem) will predict how many individual successful shots you should expect to make (a point estimate or confidence interval) when using your high-probability move.
The ball doesn’t always bounce the way we want it to, but that’s no reason to complain. Individual failures happen all the time according to whatever probabilities are in play. Luck happens, and bad luck is a fact of life. Nobody is immune to the luck of the draw… in the short run. In the long run, you get exactly what your strategy and technique should bring you.
It’s also possible (and likely) to miss a percentage of shots even when your technique is flawless. The ball doesn’t always bounce the way you want it to. Random wind happens too. The good news is, it happens to everyone else as well. In the short term, bad luck happens. The longer you play, the more your result is going to tend toward the result everyone using your technique and strategy gets.
Poker
Speaking of “luck of the draw,” card games use luck as a regular feature. Nobody always gets the hand they want, and in fact, that very rarely happens.
A common mistake of card players is to confuse result with process. It’s a mistake called “resulting.” We might make a bad decision but because of luck, it could work out well this time. While the decision was a losing proposition, it does work some low percentage of the time. Similarly, good decisions work a high percentage of the time but not always.
A good decision resulting in occasional bad outcomes is still a good decision. A bad decision resulting in occasional good outcomes is still a bad decision. A problem that humans have is that they can luck out on their first attempt and then their brain wires those two things together for future decision making. Practice recognizing these false beliefs in yourself, and realize you can change them whenever you find them.
Education
Choosing a college major is a big decision! What percentage of high school seniors get online to calculate the cost/benefit ratio of various degree programs? Practically none.
The choice of college makes very little difference, but the choice of major is huge. Choosing a well-paying major that appeals to the student’s abilities is a good strategy. Selecting a reasonably priced school in a reasonably inexpensive area is good technique.
Not everyone is going to like every professor and every course. Even someone with the most in-demand major doesn’t get every job they apply for, but if they keep applying to jobs, the eventual result should be obvious. People with worthless fashion degrees do land fantastic jobs occasionally (fortunate luck of the draw), but most don’t (because it’s a low probability shot).
We find it regretful that the folks who complain the loudest about the cost of college being too expensive have chosen worthless majors at majorly overpriced schools. In various sports, that’s called an unforced error. In poker, we call it throwing your hand away. Back on the road, you took a wrong turn down a very long and expensive toll road.
Conclusion
So now we have a few wonderful examples of how luck of the draw has a large influence on very short-term results (mechanisms), but luck doesn’t have very much influence over long-term results (effect) when you stick to your game plan. If your game plan is productive, you get good results, but if your game plan is crap, you get smelly results.
It’s possible to select the wrong strategy to counter your opponent’s strategy, that happens. When their strategy isn’t knowable, you can only play the odds there too. Choose your best bet. Optimize the game plan. Your parents don’t choose your strategy, at least not for very long. Free societies don’t choose or limit your strategy options very much, and unfree societies usually can’t stop you from voting with your feet. The reason people don’t often choose winning strategies in sports, education, career, and all other facets of life is that they don’t think very far ahead (i.e. not a vibrational match to the result).
Thinking ahead and maximizing impact gives us productive strategies.
Practice and following expert advice gives us great techniques.
Adding back LOA…
Finally, if we were to add the Law of Attraction back in to the discussion, we would recognize that our luck of the draw is profoundly influenced by our vibration. This paradigm fits in with a previous article, Cause, Mechanisms and Effect.
- LOA is the underlying cause of everything downstream,
- luck of the draw and short-term results are the mechanisms, while
- long-term results are the end effect.
Your vibration dictates so much more though. The environment that inspires your goals is set by the law of attraction responding to your vibration. The strategies that you allow yourself to consider are also subject to your vibration. Your willingness to consider options and persevere through practice is again no different.
We think the winning strategy is to leverage your vibration in all that you want out of life, and we think the best technique is to pay attention to how you feel.
