Wednesday Wisdom: Misfortune, Luck, and Opportunity
January 17, 2024's Wisdom
Welcome to Wednesday Wisdom, our 3x3 Newsletter where I attempt to distill and share worldly advice for better living by presenting three quotes, three observations, and three questions.
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Misfortune
🤨 Quote
“You never can tell whether bad luck may not after all turn out to be good luck. . .
One must never forget when misfortunes come that it is quite possible they are saving one from something much worse; or that when you make some great mistake, it may very easily serve you better than the best-advised decision.”
Winston Churchill
Source: The Biggest Bluff
Observation 🧐
We often categorize a misfortune as a bad thing, but that is because we are focused solely on the situation at hand. How many times during a rough period do we pull out from the situation and see its true potential implications? How often are these as horrible as we first assumed?
Events that appear misfortunate are often part of a much larger web of cause and effect with their true impact not being determined for some time.
As previously recounted, it is not the events themselves that bring about true misfortunate but our interpretation of the events. As the Stoic teacher Epictetus would advise:
“Events don’t disturb us; it’s the attitudes we take toward events that disturb us… So when we’re hindered or disturbed or saddened, let’s not blame others but rather our own opinions. It’s the ignorant person who blames others for her or his troubles, the person with a little training who blames only herself or himself, and the well-instructed person who blames no one.”
Holding true and fast to our initial negative reaction to misfortune is bound to cause turmoil. Rather, pulling ourselves out of it, looking at it from a ten thousand foot view, reviewing the judgments we’ve personally placed on it, these will ground us in reality, outside of the knee-jerk reaction, and allow us to better assess the situation that sits before us.
The misfortune may have been out of our control, or it may have in fact been due to us—in either event, we regain control over the situation by reviewing how we’re judging it. Are we listing it as a bad thing, as a good thing, or as something we’re indifferent to until we can better assess the situation?
🤔 Question
How bad was the last misfortune I faced? Now having some distance from it, was it as bad as I initially thought?
Luck
🤨 Quote
“The way our lives turn out is the result of two things: the influence of skill and the influence of luck.”
Annie Duke
Source: Thinking in Bets
Observation 🧐
Anyone who has pursued a skill knows the pain of practicing tirelessly, putting in their ten thousand hours, becoming a master of their craft, and still facing setbacks and losses.
Skill is essential to finding success, and skill can be built up over time, but one cannot discount the power of luck within an event.
The writer Maria Konnikova, who went on to learn and master poker for her book The Biggest Bluff, summarizes this tug-of-war pull between skill and luck, writing:
“You can do what you do but in the end, some things remain stubbornly outside your control. You can't calculate for dumb bad luck.”
As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. You can have all the skills and plans in the world, but sometimes luck, good or bad, find its way into your situation.
The best way to avoid being bogged down in these moments is to find fluidity, take the moment and mold it to your advantage—maximize your learning of the event.
But perhaps most importantly, understand when best to fold. Life is a series of events, not a single one. Always look at the long game.
🤔 Question
What can I do in my pursuits to allow for good luck to come my way? When bad luck strikes, how can I limit its damage as quickly as possible?