Conventional vs unconventional

This blog post is inspired by people around me and my reading habit. Also this blog post is related to all three pillars of life i.e. health, wealth and happiness.

I like reading or listening to the interviews of great achievers, I like reading their autobiographies. So naturally whenever our brain sees 2 things of similar nature, it starts comparing them. Here in this case, extraordinary men (great achievers) in autobiographies or interviews and the common people with common or average achievements.

What I notice is that, world is full of random occurrences. Even if we try to do something good, we take care of every possible glitch, every imaginable problem, but still something unexpected can happen and ruin everything (like we are driving in the road cautiously, obeying traffic rules but a drunk driver comes out of nowhere, breaking all traffic rules and hits us). Or sometimes, we don't do anything but things gets matched on their own and we get a great results(like we see a lottery ticket lying on the street, we pick it up and it turns out to be a winning ticket).

We get following 4 relationships between effort and results-

1) No (or very little) effort -> Poor result

2) No (or very little) effort -> Great result

3) Great effort -> Poor result

4) Great effort -> Great result

 We get fascinated by stories matching with relationship number 2 & 3. That is almost no effort can bring great results and great effort can give poor results. All human beings are suckers for stories. Remember our childhood days when we used to nag our grand parents to tell us stories??

Even grown ups watch TV serials and movie because they tell a story. This fascination about stories brings us to believe that great efforts does not guarantee great results and without any efforts or with very little effort we can get great results. So most of us don't bother putting any efforts even with the things which matters to us and hope that one day everything will align itself and we will get great results. Or some even believe in destiny, they think, if it's in their destiny, they will get it or otherwise no matter how much they try, they won't get it.

Now keep aside the thoughts about the destiny and fascinating stories and think about the following cause and effect relationship in a mathematical, logical way-

1) No (or very little) effort -> Poor result

2) No (or very little) effort -> Great result

3) Great effort -> Poor result

4) Great effort -> Great result

Now logically speaking, here in our world, everything is interlinked, ever heard about butterfly effect?

A thing as small as the flutter of a butterfly can cause a typhoon half way round the world.

In plain English, if conditions favor, a small trigger can cause massive results.

So a cause of devastation caused by a typhoon can be a harmless looking little flutter of the wings of a butterfly.

So no effort resulting in great results and great effort resulting in poor results are bound to happen time to time. 

But what about other conditions? That is, no effort gives poor results and great efforts give great results. Well they are bound to happen when external things don't intervene in negative way.

Probabilistically speaking even if 10% is in our hands and 90% depends on external factors and we put in all our efforts then the possibility of favorable outcome happening will increase by 10%. And generally in my observation, more than 50% of the influence is in our hands and rest are the external factors. But external factors are also 50-50% in nature, that is 50% time they are positive and 50% times they are negative. If we consider only the positive things, that is we are doing our 50% part, and out of the remaining 50% there is 50% chance of positive i.e. 50% of 50% is 25% so, this 25% positive plus 50% by our efforts gives the success rate of 75%.

Isn't it great!! In the contrary if we don't do our part then the success rate is around 25%.

(These are assumptions, but I think I made my point that if we put in our efforts, the possibility of good results increases.)

In real world when such things-

1) No (or very little) effort -> Poor result

2) No (or very little) effort -> Great result

3) Great effort -> Poor result

4) Great effort -> Great result

happens, ordinary people exhibit following attitude-

When I am right I am genius, when I am wrong, it's due to bad luck.

Almost all Ordinary people believe in it, this is the conventional wisdom. Someone have said that,

In financial world people are famous for being right once in a row.

When you read the interviews or autobiographies of unconventional people, you will quickly find out that, they can separate the luck part and effort part of any achievement. If they encounter a failure, they try to analyse the root cause. They don't just blame it on luck, they find it out if they have done their part properly, if they are missing something. In this way they keep on improving themselves, keep evolving. They keep on becoming better version of themselves, day after day, they never stop learning.

Actually we already do this thing, and we have to. Any guesses where??

At our job. We try to stay relevant. We keep on updating our knowledge, updating our skills, we don't say I encountered failure because of bad luck and I can't do anything about it. We find the root cause until we get the success.

Then why not in our personal life?

Have a nice day..

Sumit,

The POWER is when,
You use ODDS,
To get EVEN.