Luck or not?
Chapter ten has been added to Four Seasons - Fall. The link is here. (https://dl.bookfunnel.com/wzmr3s51iz)
This past week, I got to thinking about luck versus talent in success and the thought came from an odd place.
When I want to procrastinate, I listen to music. I have a collection of CDs and albums from 40+ years of collecting, but my specific guilty pleasure right now is ‘The Voice’. I watch all of them—USA, UK, Belgium, Germany, Holland, France, etc. I’m constantly amazed at how many great singers there are in the world. Musically, many of them are as good as any commercially successful singer, but very few of them ever go on to anything bigger. They lurk in the shadows or fade away all together.
Why is that?
No doubt there are as many reasons as there are contestants, but to what degree does luck play a role? You can be successful without luck. But can you be successful beyond your wildest dreams without it?
I’m not so sure.
According to Scientific America, luck plays a significant role in success. Parts of this article were a wee bit too academic for me, but here are few examples (not from the article) that everyone can relate to.
Justin Bieber’s mom posted videos of him singing on youtube when he was 12 or 13. Scooter Braun (his first and only manager) clicked on one of the videos by accident. The rest is history. Talent + luck.
Harrison Ford was a struggling actor and carpenter, who happened to do some cabinetry work for George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Both of whom gave him minor roles in movies they were working on in 1973/1974. One thing lead to another and he had his break-out role with Star Wars in 1977. Talent + luck.
Mike Edwards (from the pop band the Electric Light Orchestra) died because he had the misfortune of having a 1,300-pound bale of hay roll down a hill and crush his car (Talent + Bad Luck in this case).
Wishing you the luck of Justin and Harrison and not that of Mike Edwards.
Cheers until next week,
Mark