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If the grout in you bathroom floor held and the water did not seep through ... lucky.
If it did ... unlucky.
Seeped through.
This morning a tree across the street fell and took out the power lines, landing in my yard. At least it missed the house and cars. Lucky or unlucky? Suffice to say I don't think my life is full of good luck.
I'm wasn't sure where to post this question. I've heard people tell me that so many positive things just happened to them.
I've heard other people say everything they have they earned. It didn't just fall into their lap.
What about you?
You often make your own luck. I had sent out resumes in the off chance I might get hired to teach at a nearby university. As fate would have it an opening suddenly develop at the start of the fall semester. I got the call because there was nobody to fill the teaching slots at such short notice.
Getting sober wasn't luck. It took a willingness to enter the rooms of AA and give sobriety a try.
Picking up the pieces of my life at the age of 35 and making something of myself wasn't luck. It took planning and years of hard work.
Luck would be selling a rental property before the pandemic started. Nobody saw this coming and I just happened to sell in May of 2019.
Luck is inheriting 2.5 million from a grandmother you barely knew which is what happened to my sister in law.
I'm wasn't sure where to post this question. I've heard people tell me that so many positive things just happened to them.
I've heard other people say everything they have they earned. It didn't just fall into their lap.
What about you?
I wouldn't say, "luck" personally. I'm a religious person & give all praises & thanks to God when good things happen. I've had many situations in which 1 thing ended like w/ jobs throughout my life & God's blessed me w/ something else right at the RIGHT TIME. It's happened quite often, so I don't fret when things end, I know something else will coming along!
You have to define luck. I define it as the occurrence of extraordinarily improbable events.
My life is filled with extreme luck, both good and bad. We have so many utterly impossible things happen to us that our friends look on in amazement. No one believes our stories unless they were there. Often it is a chain of unbelievably improbably occurrences that tend to balance each other out. I have quit telling new people that I meet about these tings because they just assume I am a nut and walk away. An impossible coincidence here or there might be believed but not all of them. It is simply not believable. It makes life super chaotic, but I thrive in chaos. It has been really hard on my wife though.
It could be something simple like having the wheel bearings in your car seize up and then break free of the bearing race allowing the wheel to turn again, but throwing your car into the forest alongside the road at over 100 mph, however somehow you manage to travel through the forest at that speed for 50 or 100 years and not hit a single large tree, swerve back onto the road and drive home. Bearings seizing up is pretty rare. Seizing and then breaking free of the race and allowing the wheel to continue to turn (roughly, but still working) is extremely unusual. Surviving a 100 MPH trip though dense woods while trying to regain control of a car and emerging almost unscathed and able to continue your drive home - WTF? There were some small trees add shrubs sticking out of various parts of the car, but did nto hit any of the hundred plus large trees that I flew past.
Another example. My fiancee (now wife) and I had recent moved to California. I had spent a summer intership there but she had to been there before. We were super broke because of some unlikely events that occurred on our trip and because the boat I had rented a room on, had gone out sailing before we arrived and lost a mast in a storm and was two weeks ate in getting back, so we have to make alternate living arrangements. She had no job and did nto know what she wanted to do (her degrees were in Communication and English). I was working, but the way things time out, I woudl not get a paycheck for three weeks after I started. Because we arrived earlier than planned, I did not start working for two weeks after we arrived.We were living in a tent on the beach. We were so broke that every dinner was a Del Taco special that we split (two tacos and a coke for $1). Long before we moved, I had bought tickets to fly back to a friend's wedding. Just me as my fiancee was not my fiancee and not planning to move to California when I bought the tickets (we got engaged about three weeks before we moved). When I flew home, I told my dad how tough things were and he loaned me $150. I was ecstatic. We could eat and I could even get my suits cleaned for work. When I flew back we went straight to the beach. Wanted to show my fiancee how California cool I wsa, I showed her a trick I had learned the prior summer. I buried my walled int he sand under my towel. Perfectly safe as no one would ever suspect it was there. Then I was able to go swim in the ocean without ruining my wallet. We dried out on our towels, picked up our stuff and started home. That is when I realized that I had left my wallet with the precious $150 buried in the sand. We remembered that were not far from a trash can and there was a coke bottle filled with snd laying on the beach near us. We found the location and sifted through the sand in an ever expanding area for over an hour. It was getting dark and so with great sadness and me feeling like a complete loser we headed home. Shortly before getting to the sidewalk, I exclaimed "Oh God Damn it!" and kicked the sand in frustration. Something flew out of the sand and landed on the sidewalk. It was my wallet. Looking around we discovered a second trash can on the beach that had a coke bottle filled with sand laying about 20 feet away from it. We had been searching the wrong spot.
Those are little things, there are dozens of little really unlikely things like that, but there are also some big ones. Some involving the near death of a child, or me, or a sibling. Some not really big deal things but just incredibly unlikely.
I am writing a book about it, but it will not be of general interest because everyone will be convinced it is BS.
I have met other people who are plagued with extreme luck and many people who seem to have no real luck good or bad at all.
I think there may be more to luck that we currently realize. It may be some sort of measurable quantifiable thing with a cause that we cannot even imagine right now. Some day it will get sorted out.
I wouldn't say, "luck" personally. I'm a religious person & give all praises & thanks to God when good things happen. I've had many situations in which 1 thing ended like w/ jobs throughout my life & God's blessed me w/ something else right at the RIGHT TIME. It's happened quite often, so I don't fret when things end, I know something else will coming along!
Luck may be just another word for God acting in our lives. For people without faith, it can also be just something happening that is incredibly improbable. Luck might also be considered God choosing to act in your life in some dramatic and obvious manner, when he does not always do so. even though I am a religious person I do not believe that all improbable events that occur are caused by God. I do not think that God is all that interested in our material well being. He is more concerned with our spirit.
I think there may be more to luck that we currently realize. It may be some sort of measurable quantifiable thing with a cause that we cannot even imagine right now. Some day it will get sorted out.
How do you propose it get sorted, given it’s not measurable? Particularly relative to this forum (Psychology), it’s a matter of sorting our own thoughts/behavior regarding such as opposed to something ‘we’ realize or attempt to quantify. If someone thinks they are unlucky, their thoughts will reinforce the concept and may ultimately affect (or believe it excuses) their behavior.
Took me 40-some years to learn the hardest lesson of my life is to let go.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Coldjensens
Luck may be just another word for God acting in our lives. For people without faith, it can also be just something happening that is incredibly improbable. Luck might also be considered God choosing to act in your life in some dramatic and obvious manner, when he does not always do so. even though I am a religious person I do not believe that all improbable events that occur are caused by God. I do not think that God is all that interested in our material well being. He is more concerned with our spirit.
Google George Carlin's stand up when it comes to "God." Funny how Superbowl Champs thank God after the big win but never mention God in any of the losses.
The God comes in multiple levels to many people because they can attribute anything to God (good or bad) because its unverifiable. TV preachers down to your local churches all prey on this unverifiable part.
ME: Why not do the right thing all the time and not worry about the formalities of physical church, specific bible language interpretations? To me the folks in the front row of church are there to "show off their holiness" and have likely screwed over the group of people sitting behind them!
I don't need any book to tell me: Thou shall not kill! Wouldn't that be common sense? Look at the 10 commandments, pretty straight forward stuff yet we need weekly meetings to reinforce those 10 things?
God and Luck are completely unrelated but frequently interchanged.
How do you propose it get sorted, given it’s not measurable? Particularly relative to this forum (Psychology), it’s a matter of sorting our own thoughts/behavior regarding such as opposed to something ‘we’ realize or attempt to quantify. If someone thinks they are unlucky, their thoughts will reinforce the concept and may ultimately affect (or believe it excuses) their behavior.
It comes down to rational reasoning.
It is not measurable today because we have not figured it out. We do not know a whole lot more than we do know.
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