You Should Know

I always tell my kids, you can try your best and still fail. Sometimes you will succeed without any effort at all. Luck will affect the outcome of anything you do.

But you have to be ready for the luck. You have to work hard to be in a position to take advantage. Hard work can mitigate your failures, and any effort you put into doing your best is never wasted because you're trying to be the best version of yourself.

That's why you try. Not because you might win and get wealth and fame and glory. You try because you want to be the person who tries.

See also, honesty, kindness, generosity, forgiveness. These are not things we do to be rewarded. The universe (not to mention other people) is going to let you down more often than not. You should still be honest and kind and generous and forgiving and hardworking because that's the person you want to be.

“Hello, I’m Eddie Murphy and I’m here to tell you the importance of a good education. I’m 20 years old and a high school graduate. I studied at Nassau community college for about two weeks. I have no formal theatrical training whatsoever yet I’m one of the stars of the new Saturday Night Live. I also make more in a week than most white people make in a year. Which leads me to the conclusion that in 1981 a good education is just as important as a warm bucket of hamster vomit. That’s right, all you white kids in school are wasting your sweet precious time because life is luck. You’re either lucky or you’re a bum from the beginning. So stop kidding yourself, drop out. Go have some fun, drink some beer. Get each other pregnant and play Space Invaders. You know, you white kids take life so seriously. Quit school and be successful like me.”

Sammy: Excuse me Mr. Murphy, your limousine's waiting.

Eddie Murphy: Thanks Sammy. Sammy went to Harvard.

Working hard increases the chances of success is a better way to phrase it but networking is basically a necessity and luck is paramount

Having lived in quite a few countries now, it's all about who you know. It's extremely hard to get a job when you don't have a network.

And in Cuban's case, you just have to exploit the fuck out of a shitload of people. Only way to create a billionaire.

The flowchart is more that you may get lucky once or twice in your life, and work and preparation are meant to take advantage of those instances instead of screwing them up.

Some poeple have their parents buy them hundreds of lucky chances, other people never get a shot.

And then there's a hell of a lot of Dunning–Kruger being interpreted as not having a chance. Meritocracy is a lie, but idiots thinking they have cosmic bad luck and society is against them when they're actually idiots, assholes or both is also definitely a thing. The problem is it's hard to separate the two, particularly if you're the idiot/asshole.

IMO success is based entirely on the choices you make with the opportunities you get.

LUCK is the opportunities you get.

But the better choices you make with your choices the better the opportunities LUCK provides.

My high-school economics professor was such a smart dude.

The most important part of his entire class was driving home the truth that no matter how hard you work, your success will always be determined mostly by luck.

And how economies aren't something to "win" but a tool for society to give people what they need/want in exchange for contributing to society.

Every day, I think about how lucky I am. Because my father stressed education and taught me to read and forced me to do summer writing projects. Because I enjoy reading and learning as a result (even though I hated those projects). That I was born to a family that didn’t suffer financial hardship. That I’m male in a world that rewards that. That I’m a white guy in a country that punishes everyone else. It’s fucked up.

Well, yeah. But there's also plenty of times where you can't capitalize on good luck without a fair but of hard work. Generally, to succeed, a combination of luck, work, and help will all play into that success.

Work pays off most of the time.

It doesn't generally pay you enough though.