The truth about luck— how to use it to win

I often hear people say, “Luck doesn’t exist,” or, “I succeeded because I set out to do it, so it wasn’t luck.”
Both assumptions are wrong. Here’s how luck actually works.

In life, there’s variance.
When you're on the positive side of variance, you're lucky.
When you're on the negative side, you're unlucky.

Let me explain:

The lower the chance of success, the luckier you have to be to succeed.

Take Tiger Woods. The odds of him hitting a hole-in-one are about 1 in 2,500.
If he hits one, was it not luck because he intended to do it?
If that were true, he’d hit a hole-in-one every time.
The fact is, he overcame enormous odds. He got lucky. Skill played a role, but so did variance.

Now, compare that to flipping a coin and calling heads.
You win half the time. Did you get lucky? Yes, but far less than Tiger did.
The greater your edge, the less luck you need to win.

Why does this matter?

I’m not sharing this to sound smart or give you trivia to quote at parties.
There’s a real lesson here:

You do not have full control over your life.
Bad things will happen even if you make all the right choices.
Good things can happen even when you make dumb ones.

So instead of obsessing over outcomes, focus on how to improve your odds of success.

If you drive home drunk and make it home safely, you didn’t win.
You made a terrible decision and got lucky.

If you drive sober, alert, and careful but still get into an accident, don’t be too hard on yourself.
You did the right thing. You just landed on the wrong side of variance.

When you got behind the wheel, you accepted a risk.
When the other driver left their house, they accepted a risk too.

The best you can do in life is stack the odds in your favor.
There are no guarantees, but I’d rather have a good chance of success, when I’m betting my life.

At High Stakes Finance, we help you make smarter financial decisions with less luck and more edge.
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