Книга "How To Get Lucky" - Как стать удачливым

Братиш, это книга реально одна из лучших, которые я за последние года. Ты просто должен прочитать эту книгу, но если у тебя нет времени, специально для тебя я выписал всё самое интересное. Выписал я оочень очень много. Оценка –

 5 из 5.

… Братиш, я реально кайфую, когда мне попадается классная книга, а ты? Кстати, насчет книг в целом я тебе скажу две вещи:

Во-первых, хорошая книга должна появляться в жизни своевременно. Своевременно означает, что витавшие у тебя в голове идеи ты видишь четко выраженными черным по белому в структурированном виде, и содержание идеально ложится на твой жизненный опыт (помню в 12 лет я читал Бальзака — нах он мне был тогда нужен..?)
Во-вторых, если перед тобой классная книга, очень полезно в конце выписывать интересные идеи.



Итак, не помню уже, как наткнулся на эту книгу, — может быть, я просто был lucky. Название с самого начала меня заинтриговало… “How to get lucky” (как стать удачливым). Неужели можно вообще стать более удачливым, ведь удача – то, что от нас не зависит?.. Сама идея, что можно, показалась мне интересной.

Книга начинается с роли удачи в жизни.

Роль удачи (фактора случайности) в жизни намного более велико, чем думают многие. Обычно люди редко рассуждают об удаче. Во-первых, людям нравится думать, что всё находится под их контролем, во-вторых, удача «принижает» их достоинства. Почти все люди объясняют свои успехи через наличие у себя выдающихся личных качеств и через упорную долгую работу. Никто никогда не скажет, что ему тупо повезло (хотя на самом деле часто так и обстоит):

You will never see a president if the United States standing in front of a TV camera and saying: “Well folks, nobody has the faintest idea of how it happened, but during my term at the White House, no new wars have broken out and the unemployment rate dropped. I’m one of the luckiest presidents you’ll ever have! 

Nor will you ever hear a stock market speculator admit that his great killing, the one that made him rich, was the result of sheer luck. After the fact, he will construct a chain of reasoning to demonstrate how cleverly he figured everything out.

We yearn for life to have meaning. Acknowledging luck’s role takes half the meaning out of it.

Life is like that much of the time: completely random and meaningless.

Далее идут 13 техник как стать более удачливым. Извини, братиш, всё выписывал на английском, но суть каждой идеи в двух словах опишу.

Technique #1 – making the luck/planning distinction:
Различай, где тебе просто повезло, а где успех, — действительно, результат твоей работы. Считать, что успех – это твоя заслуга, в то время как на самом деле это просто случайность, очень опасно.

When a desired outcome is brought about by luck, you must acknowledge the fact. Don’t try to tell yourself the outcome came about because you were smart. Never confuse luck with planning. If you do that, you all but guarantee that your luck, in the long run, will be bad.

Every run of luck must end sooner or later.

Ignoring the role of luck is a recipe for bad luck. In fact, the tendency to make this mistake is one of the most notable characteristics of the chronically unlucky: life’s losers.

When you clearly see how luck affects a given situation, then you become strongly aware that the situation is bound to change. It can change radically, rapidly, without warning, in unpredictable ways. You cannot know what the change will be or when it will happen, but you can be perfectly sure it will happen sooner or later. The one thing you cannot expect is the very thing that the loser does expect: continuity, a repetition of yesterdays’ events.

The lucky personality, entering the situation influenced by luck, deliberately stays light-footed, ready to jump this way or that as events unfold.

In studying the more complicated of your life situations – career and marriage, for example – you are likely to find that luck’s influence is larger than you allowed yourself to believe.

Don’t buy that “tragic flaw theory” that teaches that everything is your own fault. That kind of thinking leads to unnecessary discouragement: “What’s the matter with me?” In all likelihood nothing is the matter. You’ve just been hit by ill luck, that’s all. Pick yourself up and try again.

The first step in controlling your luck is to recognize that it exists.

Technique #2 – finding the fast flow:
Будь в «потоке» — больше общайся. Больше знакомых, друзей – больше шансов. Дай им знать о себе и к чему ты стремишься.

The commandment if the Second Technique is: Go where events flow fastest. Surround yourself with a churning mass of people and things happening.

Sometimes small acquaintance can be the first link of a long chain of circumstances leading to big break.

Your chances of getting a break improve in direct proportion to the number of people you know. But don’t engineer your social life with the cynical goal of meeting the rich and powerful.

Big breaks flow through contacts between people.

Make efforts in many places many times.

You must make something of yourself known to those who are your primary links in the network. It is necessary for them to know what you would consider a lucky break.

Don’t be a sideliner.

Technique #3 – risk spooning:
Не впадай в крайность полного неприятия риска. Рискуй. Если не будешь рисковать, так и останешься посредственным лошком. Как еще ты хочешь вылезти из серой массы?

There are two ways to be an almost sure loser in life. One is to take goofy risks; that is, risks that are out of proportion to the rewards being sought. And the other is to take no risks at all. Lucky people avoid both extremes.

There is an old fable about a race between a tortoise and a hare. The prudent tortoise carefully conserves his capital, his energy and winds. The crazy hare bets his entire capital in a single wild speculative spree and loses. The moral thus derived is that it is best to choose the plodder’s way. But is it true? Not in real life, it isn’t. The straight-line plodder, shunning risk, also avoids the possibility of lucky breaks. On the whole, plodders are unlucky.

You must take risks.

Many people, especially of the prodder breed, hate a successful gambler. They hate him largely because they hate themselves for not having had the guts to take their own risks. He stands there rich, happy and having a world of fun; a living advertisement for what they might have been.  Seeking acceptable reasons to dislike him, they cultivate the notion that gambling is, in one way, impure.

Thus, antirisk mentality keeps it dominance. Even the very biggest risk takers and the very luckiest gamblers are determined to who they are nothing of the kind.

What really seems to drive a risk craver is not a desire to lose but just the opposite: a desperate yearning for the experience of a big win. It must be a big win: a twenty-to-one shot at the track, a stock market gamble that pays off in six figures. Modest successes aren’t enough for the risk craver. He is like a heroin addict who started by injecting small amounts of the drug, got hooked, built up a tolerance, and now cannot get a kick except from large amounts.

When a big win happens the young risker gets a million-volt jolt of pure gambler’s pleasure and is hooked for life.

Technique #4 – run cutting:
Не искушай судьбу… Умей вовремя остановиться.

Technique #5 – luck selection:
Не застревай в неудачных затеях/отношениях/сделках. Выходи из них и иди дальше вперед.  

“Cut your losses” they tell each other on Wall Street. It applies everywhere.

As you enter any new venture – an investment, a job, a love affair – you cannot know how it will work out. No matter how carefully you lay your plans, you cannot know how those plans. What if the luck is bad? The lucky reaction is to wait a short time and see if the problems can be fixed or will go away, and then, if the answer is no, bail out.

The unlucky are always getting themselves stuck – sometimes for life – in bad relationships and losing money ventures.

One reason why luck selection is so difficult for most people is that it almost always involves the need to abandon part of an investment.

Loser is likely to get stuck in soured love affairs, for essentially the same reason. “I’ve given so much of myself to this relationship. I’ve worked at it so hard. All that time, energy and commitment – how can I just abandon it?”

Much more often what starts to go wrong stays wrong – or goes wronger. In a souring situation, with no compelling reason to think things will get better, you are always right to cut your loss and go.

Lucky people, as a breed, are able to live with knowledge that some decisions will turn out wrong.

Technique #6 – the zigzag path:
Не упорствуй слишком сильно в одном направлении, если это не твоё. Порой лучше поменять генеральный план. Пробуй разные занятия, будь многосторонним.

It is fundamental assumption of the Work Ethic that people ought to have goals and should struggle toward them in a straight line. But here is a puzzling fact. It turns out that lucky men and women, on the whole are not straight-line strugglers.

Use long-range plans for general guidance as long as they seem to be taking you where you want to go, but whatever you do, don’t get stuck with them. Throw them in the trash heap as soon as something better comes along.

Technique #7 – constructive supernaturalism:
Если нужно сделать выбор, но данных для разумного выбора просто недостаточно, можно сделать выбор на основе каких-то суеверных предположений (этот совет для ситуаций, когда нужно сделать хоть какой-то выбор и если просто ждать, будет еще хуже).

Sometimes your worst reaction is to stand there and do nothing. A supernatural belief, even a trivial and humorous one, helps people get lucky be helping them make otherwise impossible choices. That’s how the lucky individual gets into the game.

Real life abounds with examples of frustrating situations in which we must make choices and take risks without nearly enough data.

Technique #8 – worst-case analysis:
Продумывай худший вариант. Принимай хоть маломальские на случай worst case.

We are now in position to ask a question that has baffled amateur gamblers for centuries: why do professionals usually win? They win because they reject optimism.

Technique #9 – the closed mouth:
Меньше болтай лишнего. Сказанные слова тебя «связывают» и могут потом ограничить свободу твоих действий.

Unnecessary talk can become a barrier against lucky breaks.

The problem with too much talk is that it can constrict that valuable freedom and flexibility. Talk can tie you up, lock you into positions that seem right today but may be wrong tomorrow.

“I have often regretted my speech, but never my silence” – P. Syrus.

A wise old owl sat on an oak.

The more he saw, the less he spoke.

The less he spoke, the more he heard.

Why can’t we be like that old bird?

As a matter of fact, in talky time such as present, people often find silence pleasantly surprising and refreshing.

Since life is ruled by luck and you can never predict what actions you will need to take, it is best to say as little as possible about what you are doing and thinking. Then, when action is required, the only person you must argue with is yourself.

Talkiest marriages often seem to be the shortest lasting. These “frank” and “open” kinds of relationships are volatile and tend to blow up.

Be aware that anything you say may become against you.

It doesn’t mean you must take a vow of eternal silence. You must have relationships, take chances, talk to people. But when there is no good reason to say something, say nothing.

Technique #10 – recognizing a nonlesson:
Бывают в жизни ситуации, из которых просто никакого урока извлечь нельзя. Просто так произошло и произошло. Люди часто делают ошибочные выводы из абсолютно random events.

There are experiences in life that seem to be lessons but aren’t. A noteworthy trait of the lucky is that they know what they can’t learn from.

History simply does not repeat itself. Why should it? History is the product of what billions of men and women are doing, thinking, and feeling at a given time. It is in constant flux. It is entirely unpredictable. Lessons? As Henry Ford put it “History us bunk”.

Technique #11 – accepting an unfair universe:
Вселенная несправедлива. То, чему учит религия (что якобы с невинными людьми ничего плохого не происходит и Бог всем воздает на этой земле по заслугам) — ерунда. Будь беспристрастен.

The bible says not once but many times that God runs a fair world. “Consider, what innocent ever perish, or where have the righteous been destroyed?” asks the Book of Job. And in Proverbs it says, “No ills befall the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble”.

Unfortunately, I believe it simply isn’t true. There is a lot of wishful thinking in the Bible in my opinion. Ills do befall the righteous and conversely the wicked are often allowed to live happily ever after.

The fact is that fairness is a human concept. The rest of the universe knows nothing of it.

How can it teach a moral lesson to punish somebody without saying what lesson is supposed to be learned?

Rabbi Kushner thinks God may still be in the process of creating order from chaos. In the six days of creation, it’s still Friday afternoon. God may get the universe straightened out in a few billion years from now, and then life will be orderly and fair. Meanwhile we’ve got to deal with what we see around us today, and that is chaos.

If you automatically assume that every bad thing that happens to you is in some way your own fault, then bad luck will almost always become worst luck.

Chaos is not dangerous until it begins to look orderly. Look around at human life and accept it the way it comes: disorderly and unfair. Shun the ancient belief that God plans and directs every event in your life.  

Technique #12 – the juggling act:
Пробуй разные дела. Не бездействуй. Порой мелочь раскручивается в крутое дело. (Фактически повторение техники 6).

The luckier are the busier.

You never know what seemingly unpromising activity is going to be the one that catches fire for you.

Technique #13 – destiny pairing:
Порой на пути встречаются люди, которую кардинально меняют твою судьбу в лучшую сторону. Если чувствуешь такого человека, не отталкивай его.

Destiny partner is the one who changes your life radically.

If your potential partner walks into your life – a person with whom you feel a quick, strong and positive reaction – don’t let that person simply walk back out. At least keep the newborn relationship alive while you assess it and see where it might go for such a change might not come around again.

…

If there is any single truth that a lick-seeker should comprehend above all others, it is that life is disorderly and cannot be lived successfully according to a plan. No matter how fine and flexible a plan one might devise, there will be times when restless tides of life will make that plan unworkable.

One good way to get started on luck improvement is to ask yourself which technique has been most notable lacking in your approach to life. Re-read books with techniques in mind.

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