“The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” –Harry Golden
The Blame Game
We live in a lottery culture. Instant gratification is the working model we are presented with most times. If it doesn’t happen right away, then most folks tend to give up.
When they give up they tend to fall into one of two categories, both of which are looking to find a place outside themselves to affix the blame for their lack of success. I guess our psyches are somehow wired in such a way that as long as there is an outside source that we can point to as the cause of our circumstance, then we can press on without facing the pain of actually working though our own part in events leading up to where we find ourselves.
This blame phenomenon is so prevalent in our culture that we used to joke about it when I was in the Navy. “It doesn’t matter if you fix the problem as long as you fix the blame.”
The first category of blame fixers either point to some entity as the cause of their circumstances (“I can’t save any money because the government taxes me too much.”) or they will double down on their circumstances and blame one circumstance for another (“I can never be wealthy because I was born poor”).
When I ask one of these folks how they are doing I’ll probably hear something like, “{Sigh} OK. Under the circumstances.” I want to fire right back, “What are you doing under there?”
But usually I don’t.
Luck be a Lady
The other group of people are inclined to pin outcomes squarely onto “luck”. If things go well, especially for someone else, it is because they have luck. And when things don’t go well, in particular where they themselves are concerned, it is only because they have bad luck.
Here’s how Dictionary.com defines Luck:
the force that seems to operate for good or ill in a person’s life, as in shaping circumstances, events, or opportunities
The key is that the force is operating purely by chance. That way folks are spared the emotional trauma of attaching causes to actual people. And heaven forbid that actual person is themselves!
As long as we are talking about circumstances, let’s take a look at some of the circumstances from the life of the guy quoted up top there, Harry Golden.
Harry Lewis Golden (May 6, 1902–October 2, 1981) was an American Jewish writer and newspaper publisher. He was born Herschel Goldhirsch in the shtetl Mikulintsy, Ukraine, then part of Austria-Hungary.
In 1904 his father, Leib Goldhirsch, emigrated to Winnipeg, only to move the family to New York City the next year. Harry became a stockbroker but lost his job in the 1929 crash. Convicted of mail fraud, Golden served five years in a Federal prison at Atlanta, Georgia.
So you suppose he considered himself lucky or unlucky?
Hard Work
At some point something changed in Harry’s life. He went on to become a successful reporter and writer. Eventually he even received a presidential pardon.
Through hard work he turned his luck around.
But was it even luck to begin with? I would suggest that his early bad luck was in large part really just poor choices.
Why is it that lottery tickets are so popular?
I mean I know a young lady who religiously buys lottery tickets every week. She doesn’t have any extra money for them because she’s constantly complaining how broke she is.
Yet to her mind, winning the lottery is the only hope she possibly has to ever become wealthy.
To her it is all about luck and not about working hard to learn how money works or about how wealthy people work with money.
Let me ask a question. Are lottery winners lucky?
If so, how come such a huge percentage of them are far worse off financially (not to mention all the relationships in their lives that tend to get destroyed in the process) after only a few short years than they were before they “won”?
On the other hand folks that work hard and build something, like say a business that produces wealth that lasts, are they more lucky? Or are they just working harder and making better choices than others are?
I suspect good circumstances are far more often a result of hard work and wise choices than random chance.
But that’s just the Way I C it.
–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.
