AIBU to think that although we may be lucky, it hasn't all been down to just luck

[Litchick]

Have a friend staying at the moment and she has told DC that our very comfortable existence is all a matter of luck.
Luck that we were born in the west. Luck to be clever. Luck to have reasonable parents etc.

I know she's right, and yet I want to impress upon DC that it hasn't been like winning the lottery. We have had to work our arses off and still do.

AIBU, or should I just leave it that indeed we are incredibly lucky?

I do fight an illness every day and for that reason lost my career and than had to work bloody hard to get it back.

I had the right to a free education but was denied it as my family needed me to work. I had to sit up in the evenings and teach myself.

There has been some luck in my life ( most of it bad tbh) but hard work has been and always will be the dominating factor. Because I know that what I have has been the result of hard work I appreciate everything.

You are discussing a well known psychological phenomenon called the Fundamental Attribution Error - how people wrongly attribute success to be something that they have done, whereas failure is always something external to them - outside things.

And a really good book on this sort of thing - Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Basically what ORM is saying

Having studied psychology I know all about Fundamental Attribution Error. To be honest I take credit for my adult failures as well as successes. I have made some stupid relationship choices and am still paying the price for that. I could have chosen a career that paid more money, perhaps that was also a mistake.

Oh hell yeah, I have made some monumental screw ups both personally and professionally, and will readily acknowledge that actually I don't have the greatest judgement in some aspects of my life. Marrying my husband was the best decision I ever made, before him my decision making was appalling for example. And if you determine success in purely financial terms (I don't) I probably made an awful decision in deciding to change careers.

Of course I acknowledge that we are lucky to be born somewhere that provides us with innate opportunities, and I acknowledge that the education and upbringing my parents provided me with allowed me to be in a position to be open to opportunities and able to maximise them. However I will not put all of my successes down to luck, as bloody hard work and sacrifices had a huge role to play too. Equally my screw ups (plural!) are mine too!

My parents focused too much on hard work. I had pretty much sailed through life on this mantra until I hit 20 and became very ill. I wish I had been able then to attribute it to bad luck and sought help instead of seeing it as a personal failing, "fighting" it and making it worse. Now that I don't have the same capability to do as much as I used to, I realise that for some people it isn't possible to work 14 hour days - it isn't laziness - and I even consider myself lucky to have a genuine medical, easily explained, reason for resting more often. The guilt I felt pre-diagnosis was awful as I couldn't separate exhausted from lazy in my head.

I've quoted this before but it seems apt. I can't tell you how often these lines from Baz Luhrman's Sunscreen Song pop into my head:

"Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's."

AND

"Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself."

I agree with the idea that part of it is about appraising opportunities accurately as they arise. I have just been faced with the decision to stick with a fixed term contract post that doesn't pay much but affords me great opportunities to pursue a course of study I am keen about to a level I will be happy with and a permanent contract that pays more that would make the course of study much more difficult. I have chosen, after much deliberation, the ftc option: taking a calculated gamble that the study opportunity is worth the risk. Both options involve similar workloads (aiming to get a distinction in the MSc will involve more work, I reckon, than the permanent job and will entail other sacrifices). I think, from this vantage point, that it's worth it. However, I could be horrendously wrong. Only time will tell.

I think I often focus on how hard work and wise choices have been fundemental in our lives rather than luck.
I do this, partly through pride , and partly because I don't want my DC to be fatalistic about things - even bad luck.
Picking yourself and dusting yourself off are fundemental, I think.

I also don't think you will progress if you attribute life's successes or failures to luck.

I married an git first time round who made my life hell. I could say that was bad luck - nothing is learned. I could just blame him , he does carry blame , it is tempting. But where does that get me? Or I could look at the wrong decisions I made and then decide never to make them again. In a similar manner I could look at the career that I have which I enjoy and I am relatively successful in. I could say that was luck, or I could look at what I did to make that happen and perhaps try to do the same in other areas of my life.

Slightly at a tangent, but...

I have had a lot of people ask me how I got my 'lucky break'--I work in a very competitive field. When I reply that I worked, for nothing, for years, to improve my game, they look unconvinced. I'm afraid sleb stuff has made people think that it's just a lucky break that makes the difference between succeeding and not. When you tell them it's mainly sheer graft and resilience (and some talent), it's not what they want to hear.

hard work inherently results in a sense of satisfaction, even if it is not rewarded with success. (ok, maybe there are limits to this if you are toiling in a factory 14 hours a day, but generally speaking.)

whereas relying on luck for any shot of success is not a very good strategy.

Tis good not to encourage your DC to be fatalistic - but I don't think telling them they have - relatively - been 'born lucky' will neccessarily do that.

You could take the attitude that it's what you do with your luck that makes a difference.

yes you have to put in the hard work to get a chance of good luck. But the reality is for many people that years and years of hard graft will show little in the way of "success", even with a talent to go with it.

I've done the poor (in a country with no benefits and an income not even enough to pay half the rent), and I've done comfortable with enough to pay the bills and more. I can honestly hand on heart say it was worse being comfortable in jobs we both hated than when we literally couldn't pay the bills.

Happiness is a state of mind "things" that money can buy are just things. That's not to say I don't like some of the things that mone can buy, but their an added bonus, not something that intrinsically makes me happy.

There are people who are "successful" (I hate that term to me it implies a nice middle income, 2.4 kids, house and car etc etc) who have been lucky, there are people in life who have become successful through hard graft......and good luck.

Sadly I've found through life it's those that have worked hard and had the good fortune for the hard work to pay off who are the worst for looking down their noses at those who haven't done "as well" as themselves........because obviously those people just didn't work hard enough

DSICLAIMER _ I'm not saying that everyone on this thread who's got through through hard graft and didn't get a helping hand through good contacts/money from family etc is like that - but certainly some people in RL are like that.

I hope to teach my boys that they have to work hard to succeed.........and how to look at the opportunities that do fall in front of them and try to grasp them - I hope I don't make them think that if they graft hard and takes risks that they will always pay off.....

But I also hope to teach them that you don't give up if the opportunities never turn into anything, but to keep working hard and fate may eventually turn it's hand towards their good luck.

And I'm now off to see how wet DS1 got at holiday club with all those water bombs.........certainly my kitchen got soaked filling them up

Obviously there is a huge amount of luck involved in being born in a developed economy, with good genes and parents who are focused on giving their DCs a good start in life.

But we all have to work to maximise the opportunities life offers.

I tell my children that they are extraordinarily lucky to have the opportunities that they do, and that it is up to them to work hard and make the most of those opportunities.

Is noone else really intrigued what Snobear4000's job is based on her post last night?

"I spent working for £20 per day, sleeping eight to a room, working twelve hour days, getting beat up, verbally abused etc. I have had guns pulled on me, been assaulted by police, worked through the night into the next day too many times to count.

I think that makes sense tocatta my DH can be very judgemental of people who have not escaped his background because he has done it and does not understand why others don't. As lovely as he is there is nothing outstanding about him, average intelligence, average looks and compared to me he is not even that driven. He is very stubborn and practical though.

Perhaps because I escaped a shit life and was then plunged back into it because of my own foolish decisions I am more understanding. However I am a pull yourself by your bootstraps kind of woman though and fiercely independent as I have learned, the hard way, that the only person I can rely on is myself.

Apart from the accident of my birth I do put very little down to luck. My failures and successes are my own fault.

yes nulgirl! I am very curious.

I assumed she worked in an innercity school.

I have found that the harder you work - the luckier you get!

i am finding it depressing that so many people here are saying hard work only rarely pays off and usually goes unrewarded. Surely hard work is rewarded in most work environments?

I am in agreement with your friend, actually. Country of birth, class, parents, these make the most difference to the rest of your life. Sure, you can work hard to make the most of what you have, or you can laze around and throw it all away, but all the hard work in the world doesn't add up to much if you're born in the slums of Calcutta instead of a middle-class family in Surrey.

Country of birth is difficult to overcome, but class and parents can be escaped.

BTW, did any of you see the episode of Blood, Sweat and T-shirts where one of the English guys was trying to persuade one of the Indian sweat-shop workers that he should educate himself to get on in life, as that was what he'd done himself, and anyone could therefore do it. It took quite a while before he realised that growing up on a council estate in England (with free education, supportive family, no need to earn money to support anyone) was really not the same situation as the other guy (working 14-hr days to barely support his family, no access to free education - for an adult, anyway, overcrowded family home, etc.) and that yes, he himself actually had grown up with some advantages.

It depends where you draw the line. It could be argued that successful people are lucky to have been born with/had the experiences to allow them to have the kind of personality and abilities to become successful.

What difference does it make though?

I think it does make a difference, I am driven because I believe that hard work will pay off.

If I thought it was just luck I would probably be a drug addict in a bedsit with a few kids in care waiting for my luck to roll in.

I can remember age 15 making a very conscious decision that I as going to escape my life and never go back. My whole life has been about me working hard to achieve that.