You argue that luck is a perception, a view of your choices in life and completely up to you.

I argue that it is a word used to describe something positive or negative occuring randomly in everyday lives and actions.

Others believe it is energy, God, buddah, Faith, in fact let’s see what they think if they respond.

And let us leave it at that.

I hope that you continue to choose me as a friend, because you are lucky that I am, or are you?

Lets rather follow your logic. The chances of your sperm fertilising the right egg were over a million to one so you have to agree that you were very “lucky” to be born. I think that if you were to ask people wether they felt lucky that they had been born the answers would vary and a few could possibly say that they were”unlucky” to be born. Hence luck is a perception!

You say born to billionaire’s is lucky. Who are you to judge if you have no idea what they believe is “lucky”. That is quite possibly your perception of luck. The childs existance could be far worse than either of us could imagine.

Every second you live you have an infinitate amount of possibilities and probabilities ahead of you. These are quite possibly influenced by your prior decisions but are definately influenced by your choice at this and every moment. If one of those probabilities happens to be winning the lotto, that is just one of an infinate amount. Who am I to say you are lucky in this? You could possibly have all the money in the world and lose your health or family etc.

I would go so far as to say that my definition of luck is that luck is our own perception of an outcome of an infinite amount of probablities. My point of of view will allow me to either feel “lucky” or “unlucky” in any situation.

Your logic would also have me say that beacause there is only 1 individual in the world (over 6 billion to one chance) I have to believe that you are lucky to be him or her (which I do by the way). If you do not believe you are lucky to be him or her then you aren’t.

To change your luck you need to change your perception.

There is no such thing as luck.

Deons original comment on defining success is : ‘Success = Achieving a personal goal to do, have or be something’ where does society come in with judging this? Morally wrong and illegal habits and actions ‘HAVE TO BE’ determined by society.

Using logic and your argument of there is no luck: Every person who buys a lotto ticket has made a decision to buy one in the hopes of winning the prize. In many cases one or more people win. If they did not buy the ticket (choice I agree) they would not have won (choice has nothing to do with this, it is pure luck).

You did not choose to be born to the parents that you have, unless your beliefs are that some consciousness, that was you, floating around in limbo chose to be born to your family circumstance in which case I cannot argue or discuss this issue with you because we will be talking about two cmpletely different things and the only way to resolve that argument would be for one of us to change their outlook. Not gonna happen anytime soon. So since you did not choose your parents and you were born to billionaires that my friend is PURE LUCK and nothing to do with choice.

I agree with you in terms of what we decide and the choices we make determine our outcome but I know of many people who dare life and live on the edge, stealing motorbikes, taking drugs, having unprotected sex and yet no harm has come to them. I also know people who have done no such thing, go to church, work hard, family orientated who have a stroke and are bedridden for the rest of their lives.

Choice onlly takes us so far, passion and determination only so much further, the rest is up to chance. Just like dice, you cannot choose double six, nor can you never throw double ones. All you can do is throw the dice and WILL the result you want. And sometimes you get it.

P.s. no matter how hard, how long, or how persistent you are, if you are blind, only someone elses intervention can allow you to see again, and those discoveries while based on hard work, often require luck for a breakthrough.

Your favourite billionaires and entrepreneurs did not create their wealth alone, Bill Gates spent thousands of hours on a PC that just happened to be at the school that he attended whic was one of a handful of schools around America at that time. Yes he worked hard, yes he was persistent. But without access to that pc it can be argued that he might not have had his idea at the time that he did to influence the world the way that he did. Right time, Right place Right attitude.

A recipe if you like of 80% work, 15% probability (blue zone, networking, other people) 5% twilight zone.

As far as what you commented on passion, essentially loving what you do so not working another day in your life I completely agree.

Relevance and my comment on the article: Any form of success requires dedication and perseverance more than anything else! Joy in what you do allows you to persevere longer which if you are constantly trying will eventually lead to you achieving your goal which could be considered success.

There is no such thing as luck! You are the creator of your own luck. The harder you work at something the luckier you get. Taking the example from Dion re the 2 individuals, each of those individuals is a direct product of their choices!! One might be in middle management and the other might be lower, here I am only talking about the specific example which is work and not each individuals perception of success. There are no lucky breaks, each of those players put themselves in the position through their choices to get to exactly where they are.

Yes there is a black chance area but it is the way you react and adapt to the chance situations that life throws at you (your choices) that determine where you are going to be.

I am very tired of society in general not taking responsibility for their choices. Make better choices and stick to what you love and there is a 100% chance that you will create the “luck” to be successful.

I’ll try to be ‘nice’.

If the killers definition of success is to kill and not to get caught repeatedly and nobody has been able to catch him then the answer is YES, he is successful.

Of the 7 Billion people in the world, how many actually have ‘killing’ and getting away with it continuously’ as their definition of success?

The ones that do are abnormal and don’t belong in society as history has shown us.

What is the questions relevance to the article or ‘my’ response?

The article refers to a ‘WORK” related situation, did you read the WHOLE article?

M*L*K*

You asked for feedback on factors that influence the blue zone and I believe Les and Penny came up with the ingredients of Networking and clarity to which I agree on both accounts. Nick and I seem to come from the same school of thought in regards to the definition of ‘success’ and Bash always seems to strike a chord within me with his intuitive questions and answers.

I had a little trouble combining all of the ideas that Henk put forth in his post but focused on his initial wording of ‘want to’ and it echoes with my new years resolution of ‘finding my passion/bliss’. Instead of ‘want to’ or ‘desire’ I believe that a persons ‘Passion’ or ‘bliss’ will ultimately affect their blue zone as much if not more than any other ingredient for the following reasons.

When a person does something that is a passion, they overlook things such as fatigue, discomfort, even pain to a certain extent.

The act of partaking in the event that is giving them this bliss is enough of a motivational factor to neglects feelings of how good they are at it, or what others perception of them or their act is and moreover how much money they make out of it as they will usually do it as long as they can get by comfortably and more importantly ‘feel’ the passion/bliss, I believe you were once in this ‘Nirvana’.

When passion drives a person to wake up and is the motivation for them to ‘work’ as many philosophers, and motivators and feel good bashers have said IT IS NO LONGER WORK. There are no risks when you passionately ‘open your new restaurant’, risk infers that you can choose a safer option but decided on that particular one, with passion, there is no other option.

As an example I will use a nurse: I have no Idea what would motivate a person to become a Nurse other than this Passion or Blissful feeling when doing it. They save peoples lives and that can be a powerful cathartic experience for any of us, akin to holding your newly born child, but the demands are exponential in terms of work, minute in terms of monetary return and emotionally draining for the lives that they could not save or passon on while they were on duty.

And yet so many people around the world dedicate their lives to doing it.

So for a long winded suggestion for your blue zone, I believe Passion is a major ingredient and in your model might just be that little bit of the twilight zone sprinkled in for flavour.

Keep it coming amigo! The waves are definitely getting bigger, and the surfers are amazing.

I remember saying…”what factor should one attribute to his/her success (depending on however it is defined). Could we even say that success have the same definition to everybody?”, and from one of your points (in which I agree), the element of success is different for individuals.

Like you always say Deon, discussions like this are not intended to “tell” what is right and what is wrong, but to challenge the minds and brains on how to view (and act on) certain philosophies of life. In this, i feel challenged.

Nick and Penny made some vital points: “…success equals happiness…I have much more time to spend with my family, and to do the leisure things” [Nick].

“…rather than simply having a goal like “I want to earn R50 000 a month”, it is much more useful to imagine, and even write down what your life will look like when you are earning R50 000 a month”[Penny]. These are points that should not be ignored.

However, I think people should measure their goals in life relative to their interest and target (putting their efforts into consideration), and not relative to other people’s achievements. For we are one separate individual, and we have different opportunities. Our goals are also different, to reiterate this, and that is why it is very important to determine, first, “what do we really want to achieve”. A builder does not just start mounting bricks without having a plan of what he intend to build.

I know that more ideas will still come through people’s comments on this. I look forward to reading them. Good job Deon

I write as I think so no offense intended and if I used the wrong words or grammar or what ever then go and read something else.

So here I go.
If I can use your example of the person that wants to win the lotto, yes the person needs to purchase a lotto ticket, however there is a step that needs to be decided on firstly and that is do I want to play lotto. ‘And the word ‘want to’ relates back to a dream or a goal that needs to be put in place and then acted upon. However there is more to the acting part then just standing up.

The last couple of years I’ve been working on a Performance Coaching Model that helps me in my personal life and also clients in the sense of daily actions and reaching goals in life.
The model is formulated from a few books I’ve been reading, the first one being “The inner game of Tennis – Tim Callway”. This book is where the discipline of coaching started.

So it starts of with the POTENTIAL of an individual. The word potential states that we as humans have the potential of being, doing and/or having anything in life, not limiting ourselves to our historical paradigms(as you wrote: Believing in yourself). However there is a few subcategories under your POTENTIAL, and the first one is to have DREAMS/GOALS in place(written down), so – How badly do you want it?

And this is where everything starts – yes, the two individuals have the same education, language and ethnic background etc.However the one might have been from a relative successful and driven family and the other might come from a workers class family where mediocre is enough and this cause them to ‘not want to’ go further in life.

The next two sub-categories to look at are: 1) Knowledge(as mentioned) What to do? 2) Skills – How to do it? Two very important points to consider when writing down your goals. Do I know what to do and how to do it? You might want to be a doctor, then you need some knowledge around the subject and you need some kind of skill. Its not just “take a disprin and call me in morning” scenario.

And then the last point under POTENTIAL is the ATTITUDE (You must WANT TO DO IT?). Everything in life is connected to this thing/word called attitude. Maybe the clerk didn’t want to be a manager(as mentioned).

However the biggest issue to discuss is the INTERFERENCES/BARRIERS that stop us from performing to our potential and these are things like: fear, boredom, anger, frustration, lack of confidence(that originate from the lack of knowledge), haphazard and the biggest one I believe is procrastination. If you can get rid of your interferences then you can start to perform optimally within your sphere of expertise.
You will most probably find that for example: if you put the clerk into a bushveld scenario looking after wild animals then he/she will excel just as quickly in his work environment as the other person in the managerial position because you will now find that this is what the clerk wants to do(back to attitude).

So to summarize: I believe that people are not successful, I even want to go as far as saying that the word success doesn’t mean anything. I rather want to believe that people perform within their circle of control and portrays a feeling of success(accomplishment). My suggestion is to anybody reading this comment, start focusing on your goals and dreams and then start working towards it and then in your personal capacity you will find success(accomplishment). These accomplishments can’t always be reached by yourself as self discipline also plays a big role in ‘success’, get a personal coach to assist you with this, contact Deon to help you or if he is busy call me.

Easier said…..

Regards

Henk van der Kruit
henk@vanderkruit.co.za
http://www.vanderkruit.co.za
http://www.henkvanderkruit.wordpress.com