Are Failures Caused by Bad Luck or Self Serving Bias?

Do you believe in Luck?

Luck. A small innocent looking word. But sometimes it may change someones life entirely. Or, does it? Tennessee Williams once said,

“Luck is believing you’re lucky.”

To some extent I believe that too. I believe that a person makes his or her own luck. One thing needs to be clarified here. I am not referring or relating Luck with Fate anyhow. I think those two are completely different things. So, believing in Fate or Destiny is one thing, and believing in Luck is another. For example, every human being is destined to die some day. No one can change that fate. But if you live a long and healthy life with your friends and family, shall we call that being Lucky? No. If you maintain a healthy diet and active lifestyle, don’t have any self-destructive addiction or habit, you are bound to live a healthy life. At least that’s the case most of the time. Next time if you see someone old like that, don’t tell or think that he or she is lucky. Congratulate him/her because of their achievement. Yeah, congratulate them on their well-earned health.

“I’m not a big believer in a thing called luck. I believe it has a lot to do with fate and just really having a vision of the way you would see your life.”

Marla Maples

But sometimes fate can be cruel. Sometimes ‘Bad Luck’ doesn’t give you a choice. Sometimes people, who has always been good, decent, polite and hardworking, seem to lose the bargain with fate long before their time. Today a guy like that has died. He was only 22. I know for a fact that he was a good person, who didn’t deserve to go at this age. After fighting for two years against Cancer, he finally gave up. It just doesn’t seem fair, not at all. Rest in Peace brother.

Unlucky or Lazy?

Nowadays people want more, but wish to work less, than our forefathers. So, when they cannot have something and don’t want to work harder as well, they just leave it on luck. And if someone else gets that thing, they just tell themselves, that the achiever got lucky. The concept of luck has become so overused as an explanation by those who cannot accept other peoples good work or acknowledge others success. Can we explain or accept it? No? Then it’s luck.

The belief in luck, is a sense of fortuitous necessity in the sequence of phenomena.

Thorstein Veblen

What that means is, to believe in luck is to deeply believe that things are supposed to happen in a certain order, that there is a way to the world. If you’re a believer of Luck, then it is the force that creates the inevitable deviations between the real world and what’s supposed to happen according to their faith. Luck resolves the conflict when you don’t know why things didn’t go your way. Luck is much, much easier than acknowledging that you didn’t try harder enough than someone else.

Luck is always the last refuge of laziness and incompetence.

James Cash Penney

But if we want our lives to make sense, we need to stop artificially filling the gaps between those predictions and the realities with which they come into conflict. Because this is becoming a huge problem of this generation and we may face the effect in the near future. Psychologists already have a term for these kind of behavior, i.e. Self-serving bias. What is this?

Self-serving Bias

“A self-serving bias is any cognitive or perceptual process that is distorted by the need to maintain and enhance self-esteem, or the tendency to perceive oneself in an overly favorable manner. It is the belief that individuals tend to ascribe success to their own abilities and efforts, but ascribe failure to external factors.”

Wikipedia

Sounds familiar with what I’ve been talking about, right? Check out the poem I found about it, it’ll make more sense.

When the other fellow takes a long time, he’s slow.
When I take a long time, I’m thorough.
When the other fellow doesn’t do it, he’s lazy,
When I don’t do it, I’m busy.
When the other fellow does something without being told, he’s overstepping his bounds,
When I do it, that’s initiative.
When the other fellow overlooks a rule of etiquette, he’s rude,
When I skip a few rules, I’m original.
When the other fellow pleases the boss, he’s an apple polisher,
When I please the boss, it’s cooperation.
When the other fellow gets ahead, he’s getting the breaks,
When I manage to get ahead, that’s just the reward for hard work.

source – unknown

I don’t want to make this post any longer. So, these were some thoughts I had on Luck. I want to believe that the word usage doesn’t prove anything and people still value and rely on hard work, not Luck. Those who use luck as an excuse to their failure or to justify others success, I want to finish the post with a quote from Denzel Washington for them.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.