Is this what you imagined?

Rhubarb Crumble you poor thing. It's a horrible experience to go through. It will be get better and you will feel better. Be kind to yourself.

Sleepy wrote: »

What on earth would you call it other than luck when the circumstances beyond one's control are in any individual's favour when probability says that they shouldn't be?

Us humans like to believe we can attribute our successes entirely to our own actions but a quick look at the backgrounds of most of the very rich (or indeed most of the population of our prisons) would gives the self-deluding lie to that belief.

I'd call that an opportunity that presents itself. Individuals have freedom of choice, and using their risk assessment capability will choose to take advantage of the opportunity, or disregard it. Depending on your attitude and your outlook on life, you can either say you "got lucky", or you can recognise the fact that you took advantage of an opportunity that you made for yourself by working towards it.

I could get knocked down by a bus in the morning is the classic one - That's not based on luck, that's based on someone else's decision to maybe skip a red light, or failing to check that their bus was in perfect mechanical order before leaving the depot. Other people's idiocy or carelessness is not your bad luck.

Shít doesn't "just happen", there's always a reason behind circumstances, and once you analyse and understand the reason, you can do something to minimize the risk involved. Again, that's not luck, that's reducing the variables involved.

ash23 wrote: »

Sometimes there isn't a "reason" though. Some diseases are just pot luck for example. No reason people get them, they just do. And that can have a bearing on what sort of life they have. You can't reduce the variables when there's no known cause. I can get something despite living a healthier lifestyle than another person and there's nothing I can do to change that.

There's always a reason ash, the fact that you don't know the reason yet is why we do research, and research increases our knowledge that we can also apply to other areas in our lives or other circumstances we go through.

You can reduce the variables when you know the cause. Clearly I'm not a believer in fate, because if I believe that fate will make my decisions for me or that luck was involved in the decision making process, that leaves room for error, and then if you put your mistakes down to bad luck, you never learn from them, because you believe that "shít just happens". It doesn't, and just because you're not aware of the reason why or the cause yet, doesn't mean there isn't one.

ash23 wrote: »

It's a bit arrogant to assume you have total control of your life though. To think that all good fortune is earned and all misfortune is avoidable.

I don't think it's arrogant. Everyone has total control over their lives. That is the essence of free will and freedom of choice. The only thing I don't have control over, is other people's free will. I can certainly influence their choices, but when I make things happen for them, is that their good luck or their bad luck to have met me? That depends on your perspective - Some people would rather they never saw me again, some people can't use me enough. You can earn both good fortune, and misfortune, by your decisions. The more informed your decisions are, the better the outcome. You can avoid misfortune by preventing it. You can't do everything to prevent it if you don't know everything about it. Hence why nobody "just" gets cancer, they just don't know the reason why they developed cancer, but from research into the causes of cancer, we now have more information to help us reduce the risk of developing cancer. That's just one example.

Perhaps if a time comes when something happens that is totally outside of your control, which affects your life in such a way that you lose control of it, you might understand where some of us are coming from.

I understand perfectly where you and others are coming from. I've had things that have happened to me outside my control, and I've spent decades researching the reasons why such things can happen, and once I've been able to understand the reasons, I gained a better understanding of how to control and contain the consequences of the issue that presented itself. I can reduce the risk of the issue re-occurring in the future.

I'm not talking about mistakes by the way. I'm talking about things like being mown down by a drunk driver, getting a virus which leaves you brain damage, losing the ability to walk due to an illness that was unavoidable, giving birth to a child with profound disabilities of no known cause meaning you have to become a carer.
Not all things that affect your life in a negative way are "mistakes". Some are unavoidable, uncontrollable and those who manage to get through life unscathed by these are fortunate. It's not due to choices they made but good fortune that they manage to get through life with no major calamities and that enables them to live the life that they want.

It's down to an individual's perspective really. I've experienced all sorts of shyte, but it's what I have learned from those experiences that has enabled me to turn a negative experience that was outside my control, into positive consequences that I have complete control over.

That's not arrogance, that's experience. Experience that gives you perspective on how to cope with what one person might consider a major calamity that may not even faze another person. I have managed to build the life I want from fcukall, so I appreciate everything I worked for, and to dismiss that as "luck"... ehh, no, just, no. I've often said I like to give credit where it's due, but I won't have credit taken from me either and ascribed to some idealism which should not be given credit for my work.

Candie wrote: »

I don't think anyone would imply that; no one deserves a hard life through no fault of their own, but it doesn't equal that a person is successful through no input of their own either.

Some people have it much harder than others, but that doesn't make people who have more opportunities less responsible for their own success even if was easier from their starting point to achieve.

People getting credit for their actions doesn't have an exact and equal opposite of people being blamed for their failures.

I don't think anyone said that people don't have any say in their success either. It's a middle ground. Hard work is part of success but there is an element of luck, good fortune, serendipity, opportunity........call it what you like but a person can't claim that they owe 100% of their success and achievement to hard work. Many people also work hard and never get the success that another person might. It doesn't mean successful people have worked harder or necessarily always made better choices.
That was the point that I, and others, were trying to make.

I posted this earlier but deleted it because it went on to be more about luck!

18 year old would have laughed if someone said I'd be married at 22, living in a really nice house with a husband I would have known 1 year and 2 months on our wedding day. It doesn't feel strange, and it isn't. It does sound it though.

ash23 wrote: »

I'm not attributing anything to a higher power. Just circumstances beyond someones control.

Some people believe in luck, some people believe in God, they're merely convenient rationalisations for what we don't yet understand or can find no other reasonable explanation. I'm sure you remember a time when "It's God's will" meant HIV was a death sentence. Science has enabled us to understand the disease and come up with the causes and treatments. None of that would've happened if people had accepted the theory that it was just their "bad luck" they contracted the disease.

That is your perspective of success in which case it's quite easy to be successful if all it means is that a person learns something from the experience.
If I want my destiny to be finishing college, getting a good job, getting married, having healthy children and being comfortable and I don't achieve that, does it mean I'm a failure? No, probably not. Things may happen beyond my control. Death, illness, divorce etc. I have no control or hand in that in some cases.

Does everybody want the same things in life? No. Therefore how everyone measures success is going to be different. If you only focus on what you see as your failures, then you'll never recognise, appreciate nor give yourself credit for your successes. You may think I have a low bar for my definition of success, but those smaller successes stack up, and when things fall over, do you give up? No - your success depends on your ability to adapt to your environment and your circumstances, your ability to cope with change and challenges.

Does ending up a college drop out, unemployed, divorced, in poor health and with no children mean I'm a success as long as I've learned a lesson along the way? That's a new perspective on it I suppose but I'd have to say that based on what this thread is about, it's about where we want to be in life and what we want to achieve and if we have managed to achieve it. More importantly it is about if we're happy with our lives.

Nobody is 100% happy with their lives, and those that say they are, are not living, they're merely existing, because they're effectively standing still. We all die eventually, but how you fill your life is what defines whether you've been successful or not. If you failed to appreciate your successes, and only focus on what you see as your failures, then you haven't learned a thing.

Some have said they are exactly where they want to be and have attributed that to hard work and no good fortune. Others are merely pointing out that being in a good place and being happy with your current "success" also has an element of good fortune.

I'm where I am because of hard work and determination. Am I happy? Am I fcuk! I still have SO, SO much more I need to do in my life before I check out. The day I settle for "happy" is the day I may as well fcuk myself off a cliff, because that'll be the day I stop challenging myself to do better. I'm often called a jammy bastard by people who don't realise the work I do in the background, they put my success down to me being lucky.

Is the fact I suffer from insomnia that enables me to work almost 24/7 lucky? Depends on your perspective really. Personally I'd love to be able to sleep like everyone else, but while I'm awake I have to fill the time somehow, but nobody sees that, they only see the results, they'll never see the cause. When people ask me where do I find the time, I tell them - "Chronic insomnia", and they laugh, because they think I'm joking, which makes me laugh because they think I'm joking.

A person can learn from bad experiences but does that make them successful and happy? One can be wise from lessons learned in life but be unhappy but that is by your definition, success.

No, my definition of success is recognising that there's nothing wrong with failure.

"Yup, pretty much. Except we drove around in a van solving mysteries." -Homer Simpson

I imagined I'd already have my PhD by now, rather than just starting it. But yeah, life has turned out pretty much as I'd hoped it would. Better, in some cases. Bit annoyed about the back injury and exploding thyroid, but meh, you can't have everything.

Zelda Proud Goose-step wrote: »

No, I'm talking about luck. You're acting as if you got where you were because of hard work alone and that is pure bollix.

How could you possibly even know this?

There is an element of luck in almost everything that ever happens to you from the moment you're born. It has nothing to do with implying things are easy for someone due to random advantages.

But that's exactly what you're implying! You're implying that due to circumstances outside a persons control, they can either lack the opportunities another person has, or have even more opportunities than another person has. Opportunities are useless if you don't learn to take advantage of them, that's not luck, that's still something you learn, and the quicker you learn, the quicker you advance, because then you're learning to create more opportunities for yourself and how to create opportunities for other people.

It's about being humble enough to recognise when fortune is on your side. You think career goals are a totally different topic to falling masonry. They aren't.

If I created that good fortune, you're damn right I'm gonna take the credit for it. That's not luck, that's not random, that's not chance. That's down to me. A person's career goals ARE different to falling masonry - you can't achieve goals without first setting yourself targets. That's how you achieve your goals, and if you miss your target you go back and try again, and if you want it badly enough you'll keep trying.

Falling masonry is someone else's responsibility. I'm not an architect, but there's an easy way to prevent falling masonry - learn from your mistakes and the previous mistakes of others, and design a better structure. At least that way you have more control over your environment, and the more control you have over your environment, the less you need attribute to bad luck when shìt goes tits up. It's called taking responsibility.

You're at the mercy of luck all the time, in every aspect of your life. Yes, you work hard, but do you think other people don't work as hard, or much harder, and end up worse off?

I don't think anyone is at the mercy of luck in any aspect of their lives, and putting things down to good luck or bad luck makes a person lazy. Of course people work hard and much harder and end up worse off, but that's because they didn't work hard enough, and if I fail at something or I miss my targets, it means I didn't work hard enough to hit them. At that point I can either try again, or I can draft in help to help me achieve my target to get closer to my goal. That's called working smarter. Still nothing about luck.

Those who end up worse off are the people who are afraid to take opportunities when they arise, never learned how to create opportunities for themselves, and put their fortune down to notions like luck rather than realise that their fortune is their responsibility. It is within their control, don't hand it off to some misguided idealisms about 'luck'. Luck doesn't exist.

SYT2000 wrote: »

Luck is a factor but you are dismissing so many other factors relating to people's character and behavours which allows them to make the most of their circumstances.

A book I'd recommend is "Mastery" by Robert Green. It details has masters of various crafts throuhout ages achieved what they did.

Which is to totally ignore my arguments.