Chance

Stop Aiming for the Top

In a culture where the slobbering hoi polloi fawningly idolize extreme wealth, fame, and performance, a suggestion like “stop aiming for the top” might seem counterintuitive if not outright heretical.

But there are reasons that it makes sense. For one, achievement is not always representative of ability.

We often perceive the most successful as being the most talented, or the most intelligent, or the most skilled, or the hardest working. In fact, they are often simply the luckiest.

In Luck We Trust: Believe to Receive

Luck has fascinated philosophers for millennia.

Solon believed that all human success was just good luck, while Democritus consistently downplayed the influence of luck on people’s lives. Aristotle devoted a great deal of thought to luck, and considered the topic at length in his texts on ethics and physics.

People still debate the existence of luck, its nature, and the extent of its influence on the outcome of human affairs.

Whether we believe in the existence of luck largely depends on how we view the concept of luck.

Is luck an external force or a personal attribute? Is it stable or unpredictable? Is it nothing more than a way for us to frame happenstance in terms of whether the result was favorable or unfavorable?

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