How luck and failure are related to probabilities

Most people treat luck as either divine grace, their own merit or reward for good deeds, or as a result of various practices like visualization. But more often, luck is viewed as something independent of the person themselves.

And misfortune is perceived as divine punishment, as a property of one's personality to attract bad luck regardless of their actions, that is, something that comes anyway and from outside under the influence of some higher powers.

As you've already guessed — this is all incorrect.

To understand what luck is, let's first understand probabilities.

Probability of Success ​

Let's say you're trying to build your comfortable social circle and estimate the probability of finding like-minded people at 10%. This means that after making 9 attempts at meeting people, on the 10th try you'll find someone close in spirit.

Risk ​

Besides positive probability, there's also negative probability, which is called risk. Here it's the opposite — you estimate, for example, a 10% risk that while meeting people you'll encounter a very bad person. That means 9 times you'll meet normal people and on the 10th time you'll meet a scoundrel.

Probability ​

Probability or risk is an approximate assessment of the experiment's result, where the outcome is not initially known for certain.

Without trial and error, unfortunately, it's almost impossible to achieve anything, as many things in life are not known in advance. Therefore, we need to assess probabilities, test hypotheses, and analyze results.

And for us, people striving for freedom, this is mandatory, as we walk an untrodden path. So get used to experimentation becoming part of your life.

Most people once made certain experiments in life during their youth and stopped, they remained in the illusion of stability and certainty given to them by the system, and accordingly, they will remain there until the end of their lives unless they find the strength to change something.

Luck ​

Luck is when a successful result somehow becomes achievable earlier, not on the 10th attempt, but on any attempt before that, for example on the very first try. You've probably heard the phrase — "Fools/beginners are lucky." This is luck when the desired result somehow became achievable immediately, without going through the entire sequence.

Luck also has probability. There is a certain probability that a lucky event will occur in the chain of probabilities. Many believe that this can even be influenced.

Bad Luck ​

Bad luck is the same thing but not in the probability of success, rather in risk, if the risk materialized earlier than planned.

Bad luck is also considered if in the probability of success, the positive result came not on the 10th time but later, for example on the 20th, although, most likely, this was just an incorrect assessment of probability.

It's How You Look at It ​

Luck and bad luck are fundamentally no different. We ourselves color different situations with emotions and not always correctly. Emotionally, luck and bad luck are extreme positions, that is, carrying very positive or very negative emotional charges for a particular person.

Often we emotionally incorrectly evaluate what's happening, experiencing excessive negative emotions from events we consider bad luck, although they may not be such.

And sometimes we consider simple good circumstances as luck, which fundamentally don't affect much. For example, when we're not particularly in a hurry, but as soon as we came to the bus stop, our bus immediately arrived.

Or even what is luck for one person is bad luck for another. For example, a lost wallet — the owner is sad, while the finder is happy.

You also need to understand that even if you didn't know at all that there are some probabilities, regardless of your level of knowledge, the laws of the universe still work and probabilities work, whether you want it or not, whether you know about them or not.

From not understanding cause-and-effect relationships, it may seem that lucky and unlucky events are manifestations of higher powers or God. Hence, by the way, superstitions: it seems that performing or not performing certain actions, like not walking under a ladder, can affect probabilities, but unfortunately, this is not the case. Black cats can breathe out 😉.

Assessment of Risks and Probability ​

For us, developing people and those striving for freedom, it's very important to properly relate to all this, especially to probabilities and risks. For us, risks and understanding probabilities are much more important than luck and bad luck themselves.

This is what is in our control zone, what we can really influence. Therefore, I suggest you focus specifically on them and analyze your behavior and plans from the perspective of risk assessment and probabilities.

Risk assessment and probabilities should primarily occupy your attention, while concepts such as luck and bad luck should not be in focus, you can not think about them at all.

Risks Are Especially Important for Us ​

Proper risk assessment is the key to our survival and problem-free life, which means a life where bad luck plays a very small role, as reducing risks automatically reduces the probability of bad luck.

Look at most people you know: they often take unnecessary risks which lead to bad luck. At the same time, they are absolutely sure that unfortunate results from increased risks don't depend on them, it's someone else's fault, external forces, or God sending trials.

Examples of Risks That Can Really Be Reduced ​

• If you drive a car, then buckle up, hold the steering wheel properly and get rid of aggressive driving and speeding
• If you do sports, spend time studying proper technique and safety issues in your sport
• Life without a financial cushion attracts unexpected expenses like a magnet. So overcome yourself and start working on financial literacy
• Men need to get divorced as soon as possible. Every day lived in marriage increases the risk of an unhappy life and complete collapse

And of course, there are many other completely unnecessary risks that give nothing. I recommend you analyze your life for such risks and reduce them to a minimum.

Shit Happens ​

Of course, shit sometimes happens even when we've taken control of our lives. You can't be 100% protected from it. But with the right attitude, it happens much less frequently and we already know that it's not divine punishment, but simply some undesirable probability in the risk sequence that we know about in advance, as we keep our lives under control.

An important point is that risks are never eliminated to zero, and this isn't necessary, we reduce them to a minimum, but at the same time, we're not afraid to take reasonable risks if this is necessary to achieve our goals. There's no other way.

Let me emphasize again that we only take calculated risks only when it's necessary to achieve our plans and goals. Risk for risk's sake or for adrenaline is not what we need.

And if you really want adrenaline, you can consider extreme sports, but necessarily taking into account all requirements and safety techniques — without this it's not sport, just stupidity.

But we're talking mainly about meaningless risks, the probability of which should definitely be reduced to a minimum.

And when bad luck occurs, we treat it accordingly — emotionlessly and calmly solve the problems that have fallen upon us. With the right attitude to risk, there won't be many such problems, they will appear rarely and generally be easy to eliminate.

Think About Probabilities ​

Planning will help you here. Plan everything you want to achieve. Assess probabilities. If the probability is low, but you want to achieve something, study what can increase this probability. The same goes for risk, if the risk is too high then either abandon this venture or look for ways to reduce the risk. Develop skills, study theory, gain experience in those directions where you need to increase the probability of success.

For example:

• If you want to surround yourself with like-minded people, then develop communication and networking skills. And attend themed events where the probability of meeting interesting people is higher
• If a foreign language is needed for development in your industry, then don't postpone it, look for a good language school and start attending lessons and prepare that it will take several years. The probability of getting a high-paying job will increase accordingly
• If you're looking for a way to get passive income, then study different directions of business and investment, in some direction you'll eventually find something for yourself. Moreover, just studying business management, studying the stock market and cryptocurrencies opens up many opportunities and ideas, which means the probability of getting income increases and risks decrease simply because you know about them

Don't Focus Too Much on Bad Luck ​

The mistake many people make is that they focus too much on failures and try to protect themselves from each of them, but at the same time neglect more global thinking and concentration on their life goals and life strategy.

It's important to understand that some failures just happen, there's no point in worrying too much about some of them. For example, if a car splashed you with mud in the rain, it doesn't mean you should always walk in a raincoat and fear puddles or carry a brick to threaten reckless drivers. Otherwise, we would have to worry a lot and constantly be ready for blows of fate, and this is the path to neurosis — we don't need that.

Therefore, we primarily work on reducing risks and accordingly change our behavior — we drive safely, carefully cross the road, look under our feet, not at the phone.

Shit sometimes happens, nothing can be done about it, the main thing is that we initially reduced the risks and did everything that depends on us. This means shit will happen rarely, not destructively and will not require much effort from us to eliminate it.

Look at how other people live — it seems that they only deal with cleaning up shit, one problem after another, but do not care at all about eliminating the source of these problems. On the one hand, it's not their fault, it's a feature of the system that closes people's eyes and deprives them of broad thinking, but on the other hand, nothing prevents them from starting to develop their thinking and learning to see the world more broadly.

Planning ​

When planning, it would be good to start with the most important life goals, because often goals can be false and imposed on you by the system. By setting the wrong goal, you may achieve it, but it will all be in vain, it won't bring happiness. But at least it will bring experience, though it's not clear if this experience is really needed...

So in this regard, an incorrect goal can also be considered as bad luck.

Create a plan and look — what can be done clearly — do it, and what doesn't depend much on you or is currently closed if you don't have the corresponding knowledge or skills, then open it, experiment, look for ways, gain knowledge and experience and increase positive probability, and consequently the probability of luck.

Luck favors those who move forward.

Correctly Evaluate Goals ​

Among the goals of many people, there are completely false ones at 100% and having no chances of success at all. And they are false because they are imposed by the system and are not the result of analysis and planning of the person themselves.

Without understanding your goals, it's difficult to count on luck.

For example, serious relationships or marriage with a woman. There is no option for a man to be happy in a relationship with a modern woman at all. That is, the probability of success of such a goal, namely for a man to become happy in marriage tends to zero. Think about it, where did this goal come from in the first place? Look around, how many families do you know where the man is happy? There are probably none. Moreover, marriage is considered happy not because the man is happy in it, but because the woman is comfortable. No one even thinks about the man's happiness — think about this.

Another example: a person dreams of suddenly getting rich, but at the same time doesn't engage in business, finance, cryptocurrencies, doesn't study the stock market, doesn't accumulate capital. They just go to work and spend all money to zero. What is the probability of getting rich with such an approach? Obviously, zero.

It's important to understand that if the initial goal is wrong then there is no place for luck on the way to it, which means luck won't come from nowhere.

Flip the Board ​

To achieve goals: plan, reason, look for information in your directions and most importantly act according to your plan.

But if you've reached a dead end or it's just time for radical changes — act decisively, change everything and flip the board. Don't delay, don't postpone and don't drag it out. The time for this has come — throw away all doubts and fears.

With decisive actions, flip the board and start everything from scratch, no matter what age and situation you are in.

I know that emotionally this is very, very hard to do, I've done it myself many times. But the result has always been just amazing. I don't believe there can be a bad result.

By flipping the board, you'll reset all probabilities and kind of update them, as if starting the game again with default parameters. Accordingly, you'll reset both luck and bad luck values.

And the most non-obvious thing is that this will be a blessing for you. Do this only if there is a need — obviously, there's no need to flip the board without necessity. This is done when a person has already reached a dead end and further movement is possible only towards worsening the situation.

For example:

• If you're married to a woman, then flip the board — get divorced. This can be done even if everything seems good — marriage gives nothing to a man and effectively puts him in the position of a woman's slave
• Leave a hateful job. Of course, only after good preparation
• Get rid of negative people. Move them to the outer circle of communication or decisively cross them out of your life altogether
• Move to another city or emigrate if there is a need. If you live in a country with a dictatorship, then such a need definitely exists

I emphasize that everything needs to be well prepared, thought through and acted upon reasonably.

Emotions and Fears Are Our Enemies ​

It's also worth saying that emotions and fears often don't allow us to act soberly and cold-bloodedly and properly relate to risks.

For example, a man understands that he won't see happiness with his wife, she will become more and more of a bitch. But he's afraid of losing children, as he loves them very much, she knows this and uses children for his enslavement and extraction of resources and life energy from him.

Because of this fear, the man, even understanding everything and assessing the risk, still doesn't take a decisive step and doesn't flip the board. And she essentially kills him, leading to a heart attack or stroke. Many men in marriage with a woman don't live to forty years old.

Therefore, for us men, the need to get divorced as soon as possible is a matter of life and death, although it doesn't seem so at first glance.

Critics ​

Speaking of external influence, of course, you also need to take care of your environment. On which probabilities and even luck with bad luck also depend. For example, let's take critics.

There are also such people in your environment who will necessarily notice your slightest mistake or failure, mock it and make you feel awkward. And they also love to catch you by your word, for example, if you shared your plans with a critic, but you failed to implement them, they will mock you and present you as an unreliable person who doesn't keep their word. Actually, this is gaslighting.

Be sure to get rid of such people, they not only make you worry about trifles and overstate the importance of your failures, which is already bad, but also spoil your whole life strategy, shifting focus to all sorts of little things and taking it away from your true goals and generally bring bad luck into your life.

To make it clear what the essence of the problem is, I'll tell you in more detail — critics, by criticizing any of your small mistakes, make you think that it's important not to make such small mistakes and make you feel responsible before the critic who will necessarily put your mistake on display and you get a false goal to please this critic. Because of this, you begin to concentrate your strength and attention not on your global plans, but on all sorts of little things. Accordingly, global plans become more difficult to achieve and become less real because you don't give them proper attention. This means that such people strongly influence your luck and bad luck, it even seems that they somehow increase the probability of bad luck and attract it into your life. Therefore, critics are the first people in your list to exclude from your circle of communication.

But again, healthy constructive criticism and an outside view are also needed — don't go to the other extreme, to unfounded confidence in your rightness — this can also cost you very dearly.

And of course, don't be such critics yourselves.

Let's Summarize ​

• We found out that luck is not something independent of us, completely unpredictable and uncontrollable. But actually quite in our control zone, at least we can definitely influence probabilities
• For us, free people, it's preferable to think in probabilities - we always evaluate them and work on increasing the probabilities of desired results
• We're not afraid of experiments and hypothesis testing, this is our path and part of our life, not a one-time action
• We also always assess risks and do everything possible to reduce them
• And first of all, we get rid of useless risks, such as reckless driving
• But at the same time, we fearlessly take reasonable risks towards our goals
• Planning helps us very much to move towards our goals, and also attracts luck, as moving towards a goal we increase not only the probability of successful goal achievement but even the probability of luck, that is, the probability that success may randomly occur earlier than planned
• If bad luck occurred then we emotionlessly solve the problems that arose and analyze why it happened and how to avoid similar situations in the future
• But we don't fill our heads too much with protection from everything and everyone
• And finally, if you are at an impasse, then there is always a choice to turn the board over and start all over again and reset all probabilities