Why do some people always seem to land on their feet…?

[Farmhouse1234]

Been pondering this lately, as I’ve a few friends who this seems to apply to.
Whilst I’m sure there’s an element of luck involved, do you think there are other factors? For the people I know I think it maybe also be linked to - confidence, an expectation that things will generally go in one’s favour, and being a generally positive person (or perhaps that’s a circular argument!).

Anyone who has good health is lucky, most just don't realise it. Some are unlucky enough to not be able to turn it around no matter how much positive thinking they do or how resilient they are.

I think it's the security and confidence that comes when you have resources available to you. Taking a risk knowing that no one is going to go hungry or homeless is completely different to putting it all on black without that kind of safety net.

Sometimes it’s luck. Sometimes it’s a good support network and a couple of generations of psychological and financial stability behind them. Often I find it’s the latter.

confidence is easier to build when you were raised by confident people and have family around you who you feel very securely supported by / ok to be vulnerable with.

Funny to read this post this is something thought about recently! I think most people I am in contact with whether personal or work, is waiting for someone to ‘rescue them’ and desperately wanting a listening ear to their problems. I think like previous posts have commented too, people play the victim and the only person who can truly rescue a person, is themselves. I have never relied on my spouse, family, friends or anyone at work to help me out of anything.

Some people are just lucky. It really grinds my gears because when I say to DP we are so lucky he goes no we made our own luck. And it pisses me off. Because whilst I agree to some degree we have made the best of opportunities given to us, have made good preemptive sacrificial choices and dusted ourselves off when times have been tough. We still had luck. Luck that we had those opportunities in the first place. Luck that we are all alive, intact, able to work and in reasonable health. Fingers crossed it continues because at some point the luck has to run out 🫣

I don't think it's luck. Positive people tend to be more lucky.
Lots of reasons: more willing to take chances
More willing to say yes to an exper
More willing to apply for the job/ask for the raise etc.

If you're already an anxious or lonely or stressed person you are less likely to do these things.

Derren Brown did a whole show about it - fascinating.

Also the wheel of privilege. It's called intersectionality wheel of privilege and looks at every part of life and society.

I know money isn't everything, but if something awful like an unexpected death happens - you don't have the added grief about the cost of a funeral or having to be back at work on Monday .

Power, privilege and money contributes to seeming lucky.

Definitely not luck but it's about making the right choices. These are easier to make when you have experience of bad choices (yours or others). I made a good choice of husband, I didn't want to be married to someone like DF. My current job was an excellent choice after many years of terrible organisations I've worked for. Our financial risk aversion is a choice we made following redundancy and pay cuts 16yrs ago, subsequently we are now comfortable.
I imagine many people would consider us lucky, I don't see it as luck. I've learned from my mistakes, changed course and worked towards what I want from life.

Well i presume there is no fairy Godmother waving a magic wand, people make different choices so get different outcomes it is not really hard to work out

100% this. And also having an open mind. Sometimes you may not get exactly what you asked, but make the best of your situation and it turns out better than you thought.

I think I look like that to other people.
It's because I don't talk about my problems.
You'll hear about them retrospectively when the situation is resolved. And it will be a breezy

"Ah yes, this bad thing happened but then I did X, Y and Z and I was so lucky. it turned out fine in the end"

Leave anything long enough and you can claim it "turned out fine"
When it's happening it feels shit and you have know way of knowing how it will turn out.

Health, intelligence, not having a disability or serious injury are all down to absolute chance. We all need to count our blessings, while we have them…

But in other spheres, such as careers, I have definitely had times when I have ‘made my own luck’. For example, realising that my trajectory in one organisation had come to a stop (I had applied for promotion and been knocked back) and having no luck in moving directly to a promoted post elsewhere, I moved sideways to an equivalent role in another organisation, did an online learning qualification during some annual leave, then put myself forward and got promoted within six months. At other times I have had strokes of bad luck - an excellent employer re-located to a place that was at least a 1hr 45 journey away, which made it almost impossible for childcare and I decided to leave; another time I was made redundant in the middle of Covid. But on both those occasions I was buffered by being in a financially stable position, which again was a mixture of luck (DH on a high salary) and willingness to work/take risks (we had undertaken a financially risky house renovation that took up our weekends for an entire year but had paid off).

Relationships - the vast majority of us start off single when we leave childhood (unless you’re one of the unfortunate girls who are pressured into an arranged marriage in their teens 😕) so relationships are fundamentally a choice. A woman’s choice of partner is a huge life-determining choice. I don’t think that people change that much*, so as a young woman it’s important to read the signs and consider the possibilities. Young men who spend their days loafing around, gaming (in my day it was watching TV) and eating/drinking are unlikely to suddenly morph into hard working husbands and fathers. Someone whose family background is chaotic or unstable (crime or addiction) may well be a wonderful hardworking person, but there is a chance that family chaos will overspill back into their own life at some point in the future. Some women take this further and deliberately look for men who are from wealthy backgrounds - I met a woman who actually talked about ‘husband hunting’ - with the view that this wealth will probably pass down to her husband at some point. No one has to be in a relationship, so to a certain extent we live the life of the man we choose…

On another note, being connected to a family of second generation immigrants, whose parents arrived in the country with suitcases, I can say that they have very little tolerance for the idea of ‘luck’ over and above hard work. I sometimes have to say, a) it’s not always that simple and b) it’s harder than it used to be!

*Edited to add: with the obvious exception of men who become abusive after marriage and pregnancy, which is horrible bad luck for any woman.

It's difficult. There's what people see and what they don't.

On the whole I don't think those who lack positivity do the best at life or in particular at work.

My parents both divorced twice before I was 20 having maintained a very unhappy marriage until I was 12. I dropped out of uni after a term, did a secretarial course, went abroad for a while, temped a bit, got a job in Bank that started my career in 1981 (worst year for getting a job).

My mother told me aged 18 she was perfectly happy with just step and they didn't need me living at home again. I had a bf from 18 to about 21 who was nice but very mixed up and I ended it - he was not good for me or for my purse. I had another from 23 to 29 who wouldn't have made me happy long term. There were others I quickly realised were frogs.

My father gave me the deposit for a flat early on, because I had no stable home largely and I bought a flat aged 21 but a doer upper and did it up. Work went well and I was good at it and got promoted and ended up with a good career. Aged 26 I turned a large profit on the flat and bought a house. Throughout my 20s I was in work before 7.30 and worked until 6.30/7. I never lived with a partner until 3 months before DH and I were married.

The first five years of marriage were tough with a sickly baby, many miscarriages and a baby who died just after birth.

People don't see any of that, the discipline, the risk analysis, the organisation, the drawing a line and moving on, the nights at A&E aline with an asthmatic baby because DH was in the middle of a case.

They see the bright smile, the can do attitude, the houses, the cars, the careers. They see the two DC who went to Oxbridge but didn't see the investment in (time) and nurturing of their curious minds (I read them the Iliad and Odyssey as infants). They think and sometimes say "you were so lucky". The people who told me I was nuts in my 20s for working so hard and scoffed, were the same people who said "you're so lucky when I could give up work for seven years, and stay in London, after DS was born".

It's partly luck, partly resilience, partly hard work, and very much always looking for a bit of blue sky and finding a positive.

I'm reaching the end of my working life now and think there's a great deal to be said for being positive and not chasing a man rather than a career. OTH I think for the right man you would and should go to the end of the earth but have so often seen someone do that with the nagging doubt pulling at their tummy.

I have been lucky with my health as has DH. I've just been beset with an overactive thyroid, sorted more than 30 years ago and rank osteoporosis (probs the thyroid and the edge of an eating disorder in my 20s) where falls have resulted in two wedged vertebra but luckily very little pain arises and I had just two weeks off work with the fjrst and none with the second as by then wfh prevailed. Might my recovery from both things have been partly due to resilience. I don't know but neither diseases, luckily for me, are killers.

Its how you deal with things.
I was brought up to get up if i fell down.
If i lose everything start again.
I dont do sulking or poor me get back up sort it out find the funnybside and move on.

I’m this kind of person and I think it’s a mixture of luck and attitude.

I always try to be a positive person so I don’t dwell on things and make plans on how to move forward. But also I’m the kind of person who gets landed with an unexpected bonus at the same time as an unexpected bill - some people would have a shit attitude to that whereas others would see it as very lucky and perfect timing. I’m the latter.

I think of myself as unlucky even my friends think so. I'm so used to it now though I never expect anything to go my way, it's depressing.
The up side of it is I get excited at small things. I went to buy something the other day, it was the last one on the shelf. The joy I felt put me on a high all day.

Bad luck comes in different guises though, doesn't it?

No amount of positivity from me would have prevented my father from dropping down dead of a heart attack when I was a child.

No amount of positivity from me would have magically provided me with a family circle. I had no siblings, no aunts or uncles; no grandparents were still alive. By the time my DM died when I was 30, I had absolutely no surviving blood relatives whatsoever, and I was going through a divorce from my abusive ex, and to say my financial circumstances were bad at that time would have been an understatement.

Until you find yourself totally alone in the world, you can't comprehend what it's like.

It is a lot more difficult to stay positive when you have no support network. Friends can only do so much, and tend to back off when you are having a bad time.

Money helps.

I agree. The fact that minor setbacks are being discussed on this thread shows that some people have no idea what real bad luck can entail.

One poster is even talking about her success not being due to luck, but mentioned the house deposit she was given at age 21. Yeah.... right.

The point others have made about only bring able to land on your feet if you have solid ground to land on (i.e. a secure base of some form) is spot on. Those who have it don't even notice it, and don't realise how integral it has been to their success.

It wasn't your fault, as an official was shepherding you, but that was really, really shit for the people you queue-jumped.

I’m so sorry that you lost your father as a child and also lost your mother so young.

Someone, perhaps on another thread, said that parental bereavement happens to everyone. This is true, but when and how it happens in your life can make a huge difference.

I lost a much-loved parent in my mid twenties and it had a huge impact on me. They were terminally ill for several years, so my mid-twenties were dominated by sadness, grief and horror as they declined. I wasn’t a young woman making the most of living in London; I was travelling hundreds of miles in order to visit the person I loved most in a hospice. Then there was the grief afterwards. Other parts of my life (professional, social and romantic) certainly suffered during that time.

Whereas if they had lived a more natural lifespan and it had happened when I was in my late thirties or early forties (and even that would have been a relatively early death) I would have been far better equipped to handle the situation. So I think there is an element of bad luck involved, but obviously the person who had the worst luck was my parent as they missed out on so much and could still have been alive today. 😕

One poster is even talking about her success not being due to luck, but mentioned the house deposit she was given at age 21. Yeah.... right.

Well, I also got given a house deposit at 21. And I won’t deny it was incredibly lucky. But to suggest any success I’ve had since is down to that one piece of luck is offensive.

I could have sat in that same little terrace forever. I could have stuck in the same undemanding job because it easily covered my minimal mortgage. But I didn’t. I worked hard, I got promoted in the last three companies I work for; I earn six times what I did in that first job, and I’ve made wise investments out of that first property. None of it fell into my lap.

Luck’s all very well. What you do with that luck counts for a lot more.

But that house will have given you a level of security and stability which will have helped in other aspects of your life. It's disingenuous (and insulting to those who didn't have that leg up) to pretend otherwise.

Hard work is still important, but you will have had to work less hard to get where you are than someone who wasn't born with your specific advantages.

It didn’t make me brighter or work harder. It wasn’t on my CV. I didn’t make the right decisions in the right jobs because of the house I was in and the percentage of it I owned.

It's disingenuous (and insulting to those who didn't have that leg up) to pretend otherwise.

I say in literally the second sentence of my post that it was incredibly lucky.

Most people try and improve their life. That is normal behaviour.