Page 40 - Psychology of Money - Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness-Harriman House Limited (2020)

Risk and luck are doppelgangers.

COBACOBA
This is not an easy problem to solve. The difficulty in identifying what is
luck, what is skill, and what is risk is one of the biggest problems we face
when trying to learn about the best way to manage money.

But two things can point you in a better direction.

Be careful who you praise and admire. Be careful who you look down
upon and wish to avoid becoming.

Or, just be careful when assuming that 100% of outcomes can be attributed
to effort and decisions. After my son was born, I wrote him a letter that
said, in part:

Some people are born into families that encourage education; others are
against it. Some are born into flourishing economies encouraging of

entrepreneurship; others are born into war and destitution. I want you to be
successful, and I want you to earn it. But realize that not all success is due
to hard work, and not all poverty is due to laziness. Keep this in mind when
judging people, including yourself.

Therefore, focus less on specific individuals and case studies and more
on broad patterns.

Studying a specific person can be dangerous because we tend to study
extreme examples—the billionaires, the CEOs, or the massive failures that
dominate the news—and extreme examples are often the least applicable to
other situations, given their complexity. The more extreme the outcome, the