Two separate and independent events prompted me to write this. One was from a friend, E, upset about people telling her she’s lucky to have her new job. Another is from Mark Cuban’s blog post about with the same title as this post. I had just came across an episode of Shark Tank where Mark Cuban was on and another friend, W, highly recommended his blog so I added it to my RSS feed.
People tell me I am lucky all the time. I do feel fortunate and blessed to be doing what I do now at 27. Not a day goes by w/out me being thankful for what life has given me. However, I get the feeling that people tends to credit others’ success to luck b/c they don’t comprehend it. It reminded me of the closing scene of one of my favorite movies of all time: Rounders
If you have not seen this movie, Matt Damon plays a young poker player while going to law school at the same time. His girlfriend makes him quit because she doesn’t understand it. She thinks it’s gambling and well… luck. Speaking as another poker player myself, poker takes an incredible amount of discipline, training, focus, patience, and hard work. It’s actually pretty boring sometimes. You do a lot of folding, waiting for the right opportunity. This was also a common misconception when it comes to trading.
It makes me wonder sometimes, maybe people don’t understand what it takes to be rich. I am not the first to say this, but getting rich is incredibly boring (have you read Mark’s post yet? go read it!). You get there by hard work and saving. I see so many of my friends that clearly do not understand this concept. Believe it or not, I don’t even own a personal credit card(I only have one for business purchases). I hardly ever go out to eat or downtown to drink anymore. I’ve been on a minimalist purge lately and I literally looked at all my expenses and brutally slashed out everything I was not happy about. It’s not about being cheap. It’s about value for me and my opportunity cost is much much higher. People thinks I’m joking when I say this, but this is one of my favorite mantras now:
Jesus saves. So should you.
There’s a saying that “luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” it is so true. If you don’t save and not have the capital when buying opportunities presents themselves, especially during market downturns where there are tons of bargains, how can you take advantage of it? We don’t even have to talk about real estate or stocks, just think about even sales down at your favorite retailer. Assuming credit cards don’t exist, if they’re having their biggest sale ever known to mankind and you can’t take advantage of it if you don’t have the cash, it’s the same thing. If this double-dip recession thing does come true, I hope you’ve saved up some capital to get some real bargains. I hope you’re like me, camouflaged and patiently waiting. Waiting for that big game to come right into your gun sight and ready to pull the trigger.
I blame the media. People see other millionaires driving fancy cars and big houses on TV, soon enough you start believe that it happens all the time. What’s worst is you start believing that’s the norm and now comes the credit cards, car payments, mortgages. Real millionaires don’t live like that. Pick up The Millionaire Next Door at your local library/bookstore/Kindle if you haven’t read this book yet. People read about 100 stories about the success of Google and they start believing entrepreneurship or starting a business is easy. Yes, those are 100 stories, but they’re about ONE company.
It’s the same about travel and crime. One story about mugging and people are so quick to jump to conclusion about the overall safety of a country or city. I can’t even count how many times someone tells me backpacking is dangerous, so and so place has high crime rate. I backpacked around the world for ninety days. I didn’t die. I didn’t get mugged. I didn’t even get pick-pocketed despite not using my money belt (Looking back, I’m almost disappointed and offended… I was basically daring all the gypsies in Europe to come after me and they didn’t). I even went down to exactly where they were protesting in Bangkok on their one year anniversary and the whole safety issue is just totally blown out of proportion. How dangerous is a guy yelling into a bull horn, because that’s all that happened. The only danger you have is if you stand too close to him and it might damage your hearing.
The opposite is also true. Just because people don’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just because you don’t see me working doesn’t mean I’m not putting in 60, 80, 100 hrs a week working to make my dream come true. Just because you didn’t see it didn’t mean I’ve not been working out on the factory floor everyday after school since I can walk.
So the next time you want to say someone is lucky, think about this: are they lucky, or do they deserve everything they got?
Alright I’m off my High Horse brand soap box now.
