How much has luck got to do with how your life turns turns out. l

20-04-2012 03:48PM #1

At the moment I am reading Steve Jobs' Biography and it struck me how luck played a huge part in his life, for example being brought up in the area of California where he lived as a child, the kind of adoptive parents he had, the friends he had, the school he went to basically the kind of culture he was formed in led him to become what he was. IMO Luck is the biggest influence on how your life turns out.

Guill · 20-04-2012 03:49PM

You're lucky to be alive. If you consider the chain of events that created the world, then life, then civilisation, then how history panned out for you to be where you are now. What job you end up in is probably the least lucky thing to happen to you.

I am pie · 20-04-2012 03:50PM

mariaalice wrote: »

At the moment I am reading Steve Jobs' Biography and it struck me how luck played a huge part in his life, for example being brought up in the area of California where he lived as a child, the kind of adoptive parents he had, the friends he had, the school he went to basically the kind of culture he was formed in led him to become what he was. IMO Luck is the biggest influence on how your life turns out.

Circumstance creates an opportunity, it's up to you to grab it and milk it for all it's worth !

Attitude and determination is as at least as important if not more.

Sykk · 20-04-2012 03:51PM

mariaalice wrote: »

IMO Luck is the biggest influence on how your life turns out.

My parents split up when I was 13 and squabbled over the family home for years which meant ad hoc renting with my siblings and I got less than 300 points in my leaving cert due to the fact that I had to miss 2/3rds of 6th year.

Now I'm a Network Engineer earning higher than average wage. Learning a new language and doing an additional degree to add to my qualifications..

Luck my hole..

clintondaly · 20-04-2012 03:53PM

Its not luck,its chance,coincidence,oppourtunity and the decisions made as each has arisen

FatherLen · 20-04-2012 03:53PM

Sykk wrote: »

doing an additional degree

NEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRD

Seachmall · 20-04-2012 03:54PM

I firmly believe that at least to some extent you do create your own luck.

As in, who's more likely to get lucky and be successful,

Person A, who sits at home playing games all day.

Or

Person B, who goes mixers to meet like-minded business people.

If Person B meets someone who invests in his business you could say it was lucky that he had that chance encounter, and it was, but he made himself available to get lucky.

SEPT 23 1989 · 20-04-2012 03:55PM

"The Harder I Work, the Luckier I Get"

Samuel Goldwyn.

StephenHendry · 20-04-2012 03:55PM

luck does play a part. if you have bad luck as in losing your job or home , then of course if will influence you. its how you bounce back from that and try something or some other path that will work out for you

General Relativity · 20-04-2012 03:55PM

There is no such thing as luck.

mathie · 20-04-2012 03:55PM

You make your own luck.

Funny how every pessimist I know thinks they're unlucky and the optimists think they're lucky.

clintondaly · 20-04-2012 03:56PM

"At the moment I am reading Steve Jobs' Biography and it struck me"

That was unlucky

KeithAFC · 20-04-2012 03:58PM

I make my own luck.

FatherLen · 20-04-2012 04:01PM

is it weird that there is a pic of steve jobs at the bottom of my page?
or is it luck?

Plazaman · 20-04-2012 04:05PM

Luck? Pffftt! If it was raining tits, I'd be hit by a cock.

LittleBook · 20-04-2012 04:05PM

If you ever feel you're not a lucky person, just read the intro of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" ...

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life's quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result-eventually, astoundingly, and all too briefly in ... you.

im invisible · 20-04-2012 04:14PM

^meh

Fuhrer · 20-04-2012 04:16PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

I make my own luck.

And when the luck doesnt pan out, you just refuse to pay your debts.

KeithAFC · 20-04-2012 04:19PM

Fuhrer wrote: »

And when the luck doesnt pan out, you just refuse to pay your debts.

I don't have any debts?

foxyboxer · 20-04-2012 04:23PM

Died at 56? Not lucky after all.

darlett · 20-04-2012 04:25PM

KeithAFC wrote: »

I make my own luck.

You seem to have a lot of it. Is that for your own personal use or do you intend to supply?

franbe · 20-04-2012 04:28PM

some say there is no such thing as free will, not dumb crack pots either, ...which means its all pre determined. :eek:

20-04-2012 04:28PM

I think you maybe have to read the biography to understand where I am coming from, for example he grew up a slightly tough working class area which made him the type that wasn't knocked back when things went wrong, he had a job from the age of 14 which made him appreciate money but not over value having money he has geeky/teck friends, ( Steve Wozniak among others ) he grew up in the center of the new emerging computer industry etc etc. Now you could say having anyone ONE of the above happened by chance but in IMO to have all those circumstance in his life made him lucky.

SomeGuyCalledMi · 20-04-2012 04:29PM

I would say hard work and perseverance are the most important traits required. And you must take chances. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take

3ndahalfof6 · 20-04-2012 04:29PM

interesting how close it is to fúck

Irishwolff · 20-04-2012 05:29PM

I think living in LA is lucky enough with the hot weather & good beaches.
Maybe if he was born in a third world country he would be unlucky and not come the success he was.
I think a mixture of luck and hard work

sbsquarepants · 20-04-2012 05:49PM

mariaalice wrote: »

I think you maybe have to read the biography to understand where I am coming from, for example he grew up a slightly tough working class area which made him the type that wasn't knocked back when things went wrong, he had a job from the age of 14 which made him appreciate money but not over value having money he has geeky/teck friends, ( Steve Wozniak among others ) he grew up in the center of the new emerging computer industry etc etc. Now you could say having anyone ONE of the above happened by chance but in IMO to have all those circumstance in his life made him lucky.

Along with how many hundred thousand or even millions of others?

Luck plays it's small part but i think it was drive and genius that got him where it did.
I mean if it was just luck, who's luckier now you or steve jobs? If i had to switch places with one of you, i know which one it would be!

opinion guy · 20-04-2012 05:51PM

Sykk wrote: »

My parents split up when I was 13 and squabbled over the family home for years which meant ad hoc renting with my siblings and I got less than 300 points in my leaving cert due to the fact that I had to miss 2/3rds of 6th year.

Now I'm a Network Engineer earning higher than average wage. Learning a new language and doing an additional degree to add to my qualifications..

Luck my hole..

You simply don't realise how lucky you are. Thousands like you end up differently. Thousands more were unlucky enough to be born in warn zones, or starvation zones, or malaria zones etc.

Napper Hawkins · 20-04-2012 06:05PM

Sykk wrote: »

My parents split up when I was 13 and squabbled over the family home for years which meant ad hoc renting with my siblings and I got less than 300 points in my leaving cert due to the fact that I had to miss 2/3rds of 6th year.

Now I'm a Network Engineer earning higher than average wage. Learning a new language and doing an additional degree to add to my qualifications..

Luck my hole..

I beg to differ...

It was lucky that your parents split up when they did, not nice at all of course and I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but it forced you to grow up and mature a hell of a lot earlier in life thus giving you a distinct advantage over many of your peers who were still one finger up their nose and sitting on their hole in their twenties with no clear direction. It gave you a work ethic, an appreciation of money and an awareness very early on that life isn't fair and that if you want something you're gonna have to work for it. I wish I'd even had a fraction of that kind of cop on when I was a teenager, but I didn't because I had it relatively easy and thus wasted my teens and early twenties doing sweet FA because I didn't know any better.

Nobodys disputing that you worked hard and fair play for achieving what you did. But if you think luck had nothing to do with it then think again.

Sea Filly · 20-04-2012 06:51PM

Plazaman wrote: »

Luck? Pffftt! If it was raining tits, I'd be hit by a cock.

Luck isn't always good.

hondasam · 20-04-2012 07:04PM

mariaalice wrote: »

At the moment I am reading Steve Jobs' Biography and it struck me how luck played a huge part in his life, for example being brought up in the area of California where he lived as a child, the kind of adoptive parents he had, the friends he had, the school he went to basically the kind of culture he was formed in led him to become what he was. IMO Luck is the biggest influence on how your life turns out.

I think it's a combination of luck, meeting the right people who influence/help you and lots of hard work.

How much has luck got to do with how your life turns turns out. l

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