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 think she's right.

I saw an interested documentary about Warren Buffet recently.

He discussed this whole 'hard work' and luck thing.

He talked about big financiers in the US, and how many of them get their start via a combination of having been able to go to certain schools and meet certain people. That's not to say they don't work hard.

But as he put it, 'If they'd been born in Bangladesh their lives probably would have gone a lot differently.'

Tocatta/DraftyWindows - People who have acheived something often underestimate how hard it was to acheive as after all they did it didn't they and there is nothing special about them - when of course there is.

'Surely hard work is rewarded in most work environments?'

No.

Get real!

Ever watched any of those 'Blood, Sweat and (Takeaways, Tshirts, Luxuries, Diamonds, etc.)' series?

And here, too.

Plenty of nurses and bus drives who work their arses off and get assaulted routinely, don't get promoted, get made redundant due to public sector service cuts.

The number of people who work hard is a LOT larger than the number of people who achieve success in any specific way and in any specific field.

So hard work is not a sufficient condition for success. It may be a necessary one in many cases though.

People also value more highly what has cost them more, so are likely to consider 'success' to be the things they have worked hardest for.

I don't think either DH or I are special or that we have achieved anything amazing. We just have a rather typical middle England life, probably what most people take for granted. We have had to, however, work our socks off for it. It belittles that relentless struggle to call it luck.

draftywindows - lots of other people will have worked just as hard and not acheived as much though.

I guess it depends too on how you define luck and successful.

If at 17 you leave a passable school in a not very affluent town and start work in a factory at the bottom. If after 20 years you have worked hard and been promoted to a charge hand or shift leader or similar, you might well consider you have been successful. But you would still be earning peanuts compared to the people in management in the same company who happened to get a better education and started higher up the ladder.

My sister is a nurse - because of her hard work - she feels very rewarded.

I guess it does depend on how you class success. I know many people would not class me as a success, struck by ill health, unable to have more than one child and we live a simple (but IMO comfortable) life.

By sheer hard work I went to Oxford and earn way way less than many of my peers. I guess many of them would class me a failure.

I do think it is more than hard work, in my case careful ( sometimes calculating) judgement and a thick skin have paid off. I am relentless and have seen others in the same situation as me give up.

And it need not belittle the struggle - it is quite possible that without the hard work you would NOT have got to where you are. That is not the same as saying that it is ONLY the hard work that got you there. There are almost certainly people who worked as hard or harder who are not doing as well as you, for any number of reasons.

I can accept that Coaliton but without the hardwork you are going to get no where.

I do worry that my own daughter will lack our spirit. Having to fight for everything you have gives you a certain edge.

x-post ;)

The problem with the myth that hard work AUTOMATICALLY leads to success is that is allows the successful to dismiss the less successful as lazy and immoral, and justifies all kings of behavior towards them.

I have done some thinking about this whole question recently.
I always used to think that I pretty much deserved our relatively comfortable lifestyle. I have studied very hard, worked long hours in a demanding job, always given it 100%. I think my wage is fair for what I do.

I have a friend who is a single mum on benefits. She often moans about how poor she is and our relationship can be a bit uneasy. I dislike it when she says I have it easy because as I said I feel I worked for what we have (a terraced house on a council estate not a mansion btw). I have thought that she is lazy not to get a job now her DD is at school. She probably thinks I am cruel to go back to work.

But as I've known her longer and she's told me more stuff about her life I've wondered if our lives were reversed maybe I wouldn't have done any better. She grew up in care so she never had a role model for a good relationship or parenting so no wonder she struggled in these areas. She had a disrupted education and no encouragement outside school. She's always lived on the breadline in dodgy areas which explains why to me she seems overly suspicious about other people.

I had great parents who've been happily married 40 years. They taught me to read before I went to school and have supported me in everything.

I think those of us who have been lucky need to acknowledge that and be thankful for it and that should lead us not to squander that lucky start but to add to it with hard work and give something back.

I agree totally mamadoc, we very much believe in giving back despite our modest income, both financially and giving up time.

I teach in a state school as if I had not had good teachers I may not be where I am today - perhaps that is where the luck comes in. Importantly I had teachers who understood my background but never let me use it as an excuse.

I have been in and out of care, been around drugs, abuse and poverty all my life. I had to work rather than go to school every day. I have lived in shit towns and attended bog standard comps witht he odd glimmering teacher. All of that was a reason to work twice as hard so my children would never have to experience the same.

There are always going to be more people working at the bottom of the pile and less at the top (unless yo're talking the NHS and other public services ) - it's a fact of life and especially of a capitalist country.

Therefore there will ALWAYS been people who can slog their guts out their entire lifes and basically send themselves to an earlier grave who never get that promotion, that better job, that more comfortable lifestyle, that "success" in life. No matter what they do.

On the taking a gamble side of things

In 2007 it was estimated that 400,000 start-up businesses started up - 20,000 of those (so 1/5) failed within the first 12 - and it's similar numbers every year.

Other estimates put it as higher as 1/3 of start-ups failing within the first 3 years.

Often this is down to bad planning, but equally some just don't get that lucky contact, that lucky break

ExH met someone the year we tried to do our business who had just started up a business - it was doing well. But he told us he'd tried the EXACT same business plan a few years earlier but it failed and he lost a lot of money (not a problem as he was loaded anyhow). He freely admitted to us that the only reason it worked the second time is because of one contact he met by chance who was able to get leads for him, leads that he'd previously tried and failed with.

While agreeing that it's a combination of hard work and luck, one thing that makes me think luck plays a larger part is that we have no choice what the society we live in values.

To give an example, Wayne Rooney may work very hard at his training, and Jonny (sp) Wilkinson may have worked equally hard at training in rugby since he was a kid. However, we live in a society that financially values footballers over rugby players, and lawyers over teachers, and bankers over scientists. You don't have any choice in what your skills may be in.

coalition - I think you are quite right in that hard work alone does not necessarily pay off.

I know so many writers who have worked for years and still not managed to get a single thing published. Sometimes it's lack of talent. Sometimes it's poor judgement. Sometimes it's just bad luck.

That said, luck alone won't sustain a writer.You need talent. You need good judgement. but most of all, you have to graft.

I'm pretty sure you can apply this logic to many things in life.

I would say it was about 50/50 in our case.

We do work hard to make our lives good, however things like being born healthy, into a loving family, being relatively clever, being born in a first world country, having healthy kids yourself, meeting the right person to marry and so on.

Lots of good decisions/hard work but also a shedload of luck.

Litchick,

But it may still eventually be luck that we live in a society that values writers

Morloth - I'm certainly coming around to that way of thinking.

DH is very disparaging about luck. He points to my background and says that I did everyhting myself and dragged myself out of poverty and a difficult home life. That I could just have easily replicated the poor decisions of everyone around me.

And while I love him for his faith in me, I did have some luck along the way. My Mother had huge ambitions for me and pushed me on and I was born clever and creative. That is two up on most of my family and peers.

Beethoven - that's a fair point. But I'm no creative type who would pursue my art in penury. I've been very poor and won't be again. I'd do something that was valued and made money.

Both DH and I joke that we have the money making genes. He used to do a milk round at five before he went to school. I worked on the outside markets.

But maybe that's luck...that we have those genes????

Litchick

"But I'm no creative type who would pursue my art in penury. I've been very poor and won't be again. I'd do something that was valued and made money."

But if the only thing society valued was, say, being a premiership footballer, how well would you do? I suppose, it's not too long ago us women weren't allowed to enter professions that made money.

It doesn't stop the fact that it's a combination of hard work and luck, but I think luck comes first.

PS, just noticed the post in another thread about Katie Price, who is supposedly worth £30m. Now, she may well work hard, but that has to be luck that society values celebrity culture.

Yay warren buffett namechecked.i love that man.so astute