"Everything in life is luck."

Donald Trump

That's a great perspective to take and for the most part I subscribe to it too, and it's something I would tell my kids, but I know that it's not completely true. You can minimize negative things, and yes those things are negative and positive, but you can't always eliminate things.

Every single successful person that I know or have read about including those in the Ambush Interviews on this board, to Trump to Rockefeller have talked about a thing called Luck in their memoirs. Luck doesn't reduce work load because all of those people worked extremely hard and worked smart. Luck just provided them with certain opportunities. In show biz they call it the 'big break'.

I'm lucky to have been interested in computers when I was a kid. This made it easier for me to get acquinted with the internet when the internet came along. I didn't know the internet was going to come along but it did and I'm also lucky it was invented when it was. If it was invented sooner or later, some opportunities I had would have been missed. It's just dumb luck.

Even being able to work smart is partly due to luck.... luck that your brain is normal. Somebody with less mental capacity can't do what you can do. I can never be Einstein.


I think this sums it up and is what successful people have been telling us throughout the ages.

There should have been a third option: good-looking.

I've seen way too many people who were both unlucky and dumb as stumps, but they get by somehow on their good looks. A lot of people are inherently shallow and reward good looks rather than brains or merit.

If you're lucky then you don't have to worry about people fucking you over for not being smart, because your luck covers your ass on that.

Of course if you'd said lucky and stupid, I don't think I'd want to go down that path. Lucky and average, sure.

If you're smart and poor, you end up being one of them cranky failures who has no friends and bitches about everything.

All of those people who are succesful, are succesful for a reason. Its not only they worked hard or smart, but they thought positive, they had a goal and couldnt imagine to fail. I know ppl who were working harder than me, maybe also smarter, but they didnt have any real goals and were laughing at mine, because they were huge. Well, I reached my goals, they didnt have any succes. Luck had nothing to do with it. I say, set a goal, think optimistic and work on it. Succes will come, no matter what.

Funny, I've had this happen to me first-hand. If you put things like that, sure, I guess you can run into a streak of bad luck every now and then, coincidences do happen. However, my statement was more in relation to the myth of luck being base for success. It's been said by others in this thread, smart people create their own luck, they don't wait for it to happen.

Smart, at least, if by that you mean intelligent.

Luck may make you a millionaire, but it doesn't allow you to experience the pleasure of reading Crime and Punishment, The Man Without Qualities, Fathers and Sons, etc.

I classify being goal oriented as working smart. It's like saying that everybody can achieve what they want if they try hard enough but it's not always true. You and I will never get babes based on our looks the same way Brad Pitt will. Because we were born with different looks. That's just luck.

Luck = Preparation + Opportunity
Smarts = Genetics + Hard Work

Smarts are great and I'm glad to have them. The one thing I could use a little more of is luck.

Great thread, revived my faith in people on GFY. You guys are a smart and lucky bunch.

According to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, luck is caused by a concentration of anti-neutrinos in your vicinity.

Im sure you have seen the ugliest guys dating the hottest girls and you thought wtf? It happens and no, Im not talking about the rich guys.

smart is better, or i would prefer to be wise