Have You Been Lucky So Far?

There is a popular equation that goes Luck = 1% Pure Luck + 99% Hardwork or similar. I beg to differ. My personal experiences tell me Luck = 10% Pure Luck + 90% (Preparation + Opportunities).

Firstly, I give Pure Luck a higher percentage cuz' many good things in life happen sans raison. For examples, being born rich, striking lottery, picking up a briefcase stashed with cash etc. A handful of my acquaintances are simply blessed with Pure Luck without much explanable reasons. A mere 1% under-estimates the commonness of incidents of Pure Luck; I give it a 10.

Secondly, 99% Hardwork may be an over-estimation. A lot of Hardwork and a little Pure Luck probably can't work wonders. Imagine a person who had prepared himself extremely well with investment skills, and here comes an investor who dumped in only $10k. How much could he reap? Not much I'd say.

I choose to believe a good 90% could be attributed to preparing oneself well enough to grab opportunities when they come. Some examples on Preparation are - picking up salesmanship skills, breaking free from a common man's inhibitions (on approaching friends, kins & strangers for sales talks), learning to manage and raise sales teams, acquiring knowledge on the payout structure of network marketing etc. In the above examples, having been trained in sales and sales management skills would allow one to hit the gong when Opportunities like dealership of a good product, third-party investments come. Moreover, as 90% of Luck is NOT attributed to Pure Luck, even if a person were never to strike lottery in his lifetime, he'd still be blessed. In other words, he'd still be considered lucky to have been only able to grab hold of opportunities when they come. In a related issue, some opportunities are not obvious. One needs trained acumen to recognise them. Having a trained acumen also means afore training, and that's also Preparation in play.

While one wouldn't know if Pure Luck and Opportunities would ever come, he could best prepare himself well and wait. This beats the mentality of some coffeeshop seat-warmers; they just wait for good things to happen. If they were to strike lottery, lucky for them; hope they have the money-management skills to stretch their dollars. If they were to be offered Opportunities, too bad; they're unlikely to have the skill sets to hold on to these Opportunities for long, and would soon lose them and return to Square One, or even be worse off than before. Let me give you an example. A lazy Ah Beng was given a sum of money to run a loanshark biz. He lent it to almost anybody he knows, gambled with some of the funds and spent others on merriments. In the end, some debtors ran away, he lost on gambling and he had squandered parts of the funds. He's left with little or no funds to roll his biz, and he's no choice but to end it. He now loses a biz and probably has the investor hot on his tail to get back the interests for supporting him. This story is a classic case of a person who had an Opportunity without prior Preparation. He could have well-ahead prepared himself in money-management, personal discipline, and/or to develop a trained acumen to recognise people with good credibility. If he'd done so, the situation would have been different.

Hmm? Think about it. Have you been lucky so far?