The Cost

Bad stuff happens and often it comes with no real warning,
This emphasises the need for a useful qualification when starting your working life, continuing to upskill through your working life and a flexibility that allows you to reinvent yourself where necessary.
I had 2 redundancies and reinvented myself 4 times during my working life - 5 if you include retirement.
This will become more and more common for the current generation of workers
Miguel
 
If you are born in the free world, and not disadvantaged by the many ways that birth can put on you, I think luck is 1% accident and 99% a result of what you put into life. Coming of working age in the 60's when the freedom to pursue what you wanted was an ideal to many of us, was my stroke of luck I guess. The rest of my luck was just work.
 
If you are born in the free world, and not disadvantaged by the many ways that birth can put on you, I think luck is 1% accident and 99% a result of what you put into life. Coming of working age in the 60's when the freedom to pursue what you wanted was an ideal to many of us, was my stroke of luck I guess. The rest of my luck was just work.

I quite see where you are coming from and it’s a hard argument to dispute. One of my friends is a widow who lost her husband to cancer, at the time she had two small children and a full time professional job. Cancer’s luck that’s difficult to influence and not everyone has the good fortune to be born with a good deal of intelligence or even a healthy body; some things you cannot influence. My friend did influence her future life path; she’s one smart cookie, great interpersonal skills and both a tough build and a work ethic that has to be seem to be understood. So two sides of the coin of life there.

Yep, stuff happens and it’s how you respond to it that matters; however just like some people haven’t got the build to bench press say 200lb others haven’t got the brain power to work through some issues - there’s quite a low limit to the luck some people have the capability to make. Hard work by its self don’t make luck, hard work in the right place and at the right time usually makes luck.

This emphasises the need for a useful qualification when starting your working life, continuing to upskill through your working life and a flexibility that allows you to reinvent yourself where necessary.
I had 2 redundancies and reinvented myself 4 times during my working life - 5 if you include retirement.
This will become more and more common for the current generation of workers
Miguel

I think that yours is not an untypical experience and certainly goes to support my view that having some money behind you is a good thing. As for qualifications that’s a mixed bag, I would always say to folk to look at what skills are in demand first and ideally to learn whilst employed in the area of study.
 
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If you are born in the free world, and not disadvantaged by the many ways that birth can put on you, I think luck is 1% accident and 99% a result of what you put into life. Coming of working age in the 60's when the freedom to pursue what you wanted was an ideal to many of us, was my stroke of luck I guess. The rest of my luck was just work.

The greatest luck (or misfortune) comes before a person is born, when two people decide to be parents. From that point on, although with some exceptions, a lot of the child's fate is decided. What we think is our own hard work and approach to life is of course a product of our upbringing. Years ago I was a teacher and I always remember reading a study in the UK. It followed thousands of children from pre-school at age 4 through to school exams at 16. They assessed vocabulary at age 4 and from only that data accurately predicted grades at age 16 with 95% accuracy. They tracked the children through all their school days as some went to good schools, some to poorer schools, private or public. They worked out that if you moved a child from the worst school to the best school in the country it only accounted for a 3% rise in grades. Everything else is down to the home environment and the values and work ethics of your parents. Social mobility is still a rare thing in most parts of the world. It happens to individuals, but for most people inequalities grow.
 
The greatest luck (or misfortune) comes before a person is born, when two people decide to be parents. From that point on, although with some exceptions, a lot of the child's fate is decided. What we think is our own hard work and approach to life is of course a product of our upbringing.

I think that there’s a great amount of truth in what you said in your post, nature and nurture account for quite a lot so who your parents are (in summation) and what values they instil in you do at least predispose you to acting in a way that will likely bring success or not.

Barring mis-fortune - stuff does happen - a ‘Protestant’ work ethic tops all else, though for success some intelligence is also needed to support that work ethic. Good health (mostly inherited via the parental gene pool) is massively important too ... though the somewhat exceptional Prof Hawkins managed to achieve great things despite dreadful disabilities.

Whatever, I stand behind my earlier comment: having a pile of money behind you for ‘rainy days’ is very sensible and IMHO everyone should be aiming to do so ... whilst also watching out for trouble and seeking ways to avoid ever having to raid such a ‘safety net’ fund.
 
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If you are born in the free world, and not disadvantaged by the many ways that birth can put on you, I think luck is 1% accident and 99% a result of what you put into life. Coming of working age in the 60's when the freedom to pursue what you wanted was an ideal to many of us, was my stroke of luck I guess. The rest of my luck was just work.

Arnold Palmer once made a very long put to win a tournament and someone watching said what a lucky shot. Palmer replied yes funny that, the more I practice the luckier i get!
 
A 'chance' meeting in Texas at guitars festival in 1994 gave me my start. I had a great patron for 6 years but it still took 16 years before I saw any surplus money in my business. Most of us back then working outside of Hawaii were fishing in a very shallow pool... it took guts to stick at it. Builders entering in the market place today can chose a giant on whose shoulders they can stand. For me there was Bob and I don't think I ever got fully on his ! Love you man :)
 
For me there was Bob

I assume you are talking about Bob Taylor. I bought my first Taylor guitar in 1991 and it blew me away. What Bob did was not only make great sounding guitars, he made great sounding guitars that could be manufactured easily. For instance his bolt on necks were controversial at the time and put down as a "short cut" that would sound awful. Well it turns out they worked great and now everybody does bolt on acoustic necks. But all that aside, what made Taylor guitars so successful is that they sounded great in world of high priced guitars that sounded awful. I could name names but I won't. Well Gretch comes to mind. Sorry!
 
I assume you are talking about Bob Taylor. I bought my first Taylor guitar in 1991 and it blew me away. What Bob did was not only make great sounding guitars, he made great sounding guitars that could be manufactured easily. For instance his bolt on necks were controversial at the time and put down as a "short cut" that would sound awful. Well it turns out they worked great and now everybody does bolt on acoustic necks. But all that aside, what made Taylor guitars so successful is that they sounded great in world of high priced guitars that sounded awful. I could name names but I won't. Well Gretch comes to mind. Sorry!

I had a "Bolt on" neck guitar in 1959 Harmony I think it was ..I still have the bolt :)
 
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Arnold Palmer once made a very long put to win a tournament and someone watching said what a lucky shot. Palmer replied yes funny that, the more I practice the luckier i get!

Yep, tis true that the more you practice and the harder you work the luckier you get (or rather the luckier than you would otherwise have been). Now remember that for every Arnold Palmer there are say 1,000 other Golfers who put the effort in and didn’t make the cut into the Golf Pro life, so it’s not all about hard work.

I’d agree that you can influence ‘good luck’ by what you do and likewise I think that ‘bad luck’ can be influenced too. However some things - actually quite a lot of things - are effectively plain random and/or just outside of our control. As a young man one of my otherwise perfectly healthy colleagues was diagnosed with Luekemia, he was dead within a fortnight and left a wife with a couple of young children. Does anyone remember 911? A lot of people lost their life that day and a lot of other people had theirs very much changed by what was an event completely out of their control. Bad stuff happens; there’s a lot in life you can’t control, so have some insurance and some money put aside for a rainy day.
 
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It's pretty obvious really. It's a numbers game. On an individual level you might be able to make a difference, just in the same way that someone wins a jackpot on the lottery. By definition not everyone can win the jackpot on the lottery though, the maths tells us that. It relies on people failing with the odd successful winner. The idea that everyone has absolute control over what can and what cannot be is somewhat naive. Right skills, right time, right place -- and if you happen to be born into money you've got one hell of an advantage, it tends to give one a bit more control. Hard work in itself can be a very blunt tool, even foolish. I could work at my athletic sprinting 15 hours per day, 7 days per week but at 5' 7" I'm never going to catch even a local club sprinter. I could try but ultimately it would be a complete waste of time and effort if my objective was to be the fastest person on planet earth. I could reach my personal peak, much quicker than when I started out. Both a failure and a success. We shouldn't be afraid of either.
 
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