The Chance Part Of Success
Often, people excessively blame others (or themselves) when success eludes them, as though we’re solely responsible for our successes. I’d suggest however that there’s a chance component to success as well, particularly when mass competition for few rewards is fierce. Watch the Grammies or the Oscars for example, and you’ll hear performer after performer thanking God above for providing those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities which were instrumental in the achievements of those stars.
Those who regard their successes with thankfulness and humility truly understand that much of their good fortune did not arise from their own doings. They appreciate the chance part of success. For competitive successes, only so many people can win. Practically all of those who try for positions of renown (for millionaire status for example) fall short. For each person who enjoys the good life, thousands more do not. So it seems like the highest positions of financial success are reserved for a very small few.
This reminds me of my years in Amway. I don’t remember the exact numbers but I believe that in order to achieve “Silver” status in the company, a person and the people beneath him in his pyramid had to sell ten thousand dollars of [in my opinion] substandard and expensive merchandise per month. A Diamond member began receiving the residual incomes that so many people want these days, myself included.
But as it was, higher rewards got harder to reach. The hill that lead to the top got steeper and steeper, the higher up you went. It was like this at [work] as it is in any competitive situation. In our system of business, there’s only room at the top for a very small percentage of the people who strive to get there. So when a person falls short, there may be nothing wrong with him. It could just be that Lady Luck favored someone else more, or that there just wasn’t room at that table-at-the-top for him.
Thus, striving for financial success is a long-shot gamble at best, and because of this, I suggest that once again, we have to limit the amount of kudos we attribute to successful people, and our reverence toward them. We also should blame people less when they fail, because for most every successful person and business, luck played a significant part of getting them to that point. Without that chance piece that favored them, there would be far fewer successful businesses I’m sure.
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