Quote From TreeofLife:Quote From pm133:
What you are calling luck, I call opportunities.
Opportunities occur literally all the time. Most people miss them.
The key is to be open to opportunities, to have the eye to spot them, the background to exploit them and the courage to try things. Most of this is under my control.
You are of course perfectly entitled to call this luck but like I said, everything I have ever achieved has been largely down to my efforts. To suggest it is simply nothing more than pure random luck which anyone else could have succeeded in exploiting is not something I agree with.
I will take one example from your post. Not Knowing the right person.
If you know your field you already know who the right people are.
So make contact with them or find someone who can do this for you.
There is no excuse for not at least trying to do this, failing to land a job with them and subsequently blaming "bad luck" because it is nothing of the sort. It is bad preparation.
Am I persuading you?
So we are talking about similar things, I guess the differences is just the way we view them: Luck or Opportunity. I guess for me, I view good things happening to me as good luck, because I believe it could just as easily happened to the next person, who has worked just as hard as me or has a similar publication record and so forth. On the other hand, if something doesn't work out for me, I don't view it as bad luck, rather that I didn't work hard enough or network enough or whatever - and then I can work to rectify the problem. Maybe that's odd, but it works for me.
Yeah I think we are talking about similar things. I don't like having a mindset which treats good things happening to me as luck because it promotes Imposter Syndrome. Yes some luck is involved but over a period of time, the good things which happen to me can't all be just luck. When I sit back and think about it honestly, most of it has been down to my own actions. Critical evaluation is extremely important to me and that doesn't just mean having a go at myself for things I did wrong (although I am a strong believer in doing exactly as you do). It also means taking the time to appreciate that I've done well in tasks. In my opinion it is vital that you have the ability to evaluate your self positively as well. That's a hard for British people because we are hamstrung by a poisonous culture which says it is somehow unseemly to consider yourself to be good at certain things. We are wrongly taught that this is arrogance. No wonder so many struggle with Imposter Syndrome, a lack of belief in our own abilities, a fear of failure and a subsequent lack of ambition. As a nation we are being left behind by more confident nations.
Blimey I am glad I got that off my chest :-D
Anyway I think you have to find a method which works for you.
