 Is success hard work or luck? We believe a lot of foolish things to be true. Trust me I am a hypnotist, I know! Sometimes though, the silly things we believe are good for us. I want to talk about one particular delusion that can help us in life. Perhaps you have heard of success bias or survivor bias before? The basic idea is that if we have done well at something then it is because we are better at that thing than other people. To get you to where I’m going with this we need to take a small detour. I want to tell you about an infamous story. During World War II the British Royal Air Force noticed that a bunch of planes were coming back with holes punched in them from enemy fire. They catalogued where the most holes were and it looked something like this:  Is success hard work or luck?
We believe a lot of foolish things to be true. Trust me I am a hypnotist, I know! Sometimes though, the silly things we believe are good for us. I want to talk about one particular delusion that can help us in life. Perhaps you have heard of success bias or survivor bias before? The basic idea is that if we have done well at something then it is because we are better at that thing than other people. To get you to where I’m going with this we need to take a small detour. I want to tell you about an infamous story. During World War II the British Royal Air Force noticed that a bunch of planes were coming back with holes punched in them from enemy fire. They catalogued where the most holes were and it looked something like this: (image courtesy of Wikipedia) They wanted to improve the survivability of their planes but could not afford to add much weight. So they concluded that the places most damaged needed to be reinforced and protected. This is a case of survivor bias because they only focused on the winners, the planes that survived. Planes that were hit anywhere else tended to crash and therefore not make it back to be examined. It turns out they were reinforcing exactly the wrong parts of the planes. We make this mistake all the time, especially when we are looking at ourselves. We look only at success and not at failure. We look at the people who have made it in life and ignore all the people who are just as talented and hard working who haven’t. For example, astronauts; In 2019 NASA had over 18,000 applicants who were all hard-working, skilled, and passionate people. NASA selected 11! If you interviewed those few successful applicants, they would almost certainly attribute their success to their hard work, to the drive to succeed at an early age, to a love of mathematics or space that was encouraged by a mentor or parents. That they just got lucky is not something that would ever cross their mind. And fair enough, if you have worked hard for something and you get that thing it is natural to assume that you got that thing because you worked hard and were talented! But what about all the other, unsuccessful applicants who worked just as, if not harder, or even, what about the people who grew up in poorer neighbourhoods and couldn’t afford to take time off work to apply for the role? No-one gets to be an astronaut without being lucky… The converse of this is also true, when we fail at something we tend to believe that it is because we are somehow less worthy, that we didn’t deserve it. Certainly the people who succeeded, who made it to the top have a tendency to believe that we just aren’t as ‘good’ or ‘competent’ as them. Essentially, we like to believe that we succeed or fail based on our own personal qualities. We have a tendency to ignore external factors (also known as ‘luck’) and to believe that it was all us. This is a stupid thing to believe, but it is also a useful thing to believe. If we truly thought that it was all just random chance then there would be no point in even trying. It would demotivate us to the point that we would remove any chance of our own success. We all know someone who hasn’t accepted the delusion, perhaps it is you? Knowing that there are a bunch of talented and hard working individuals out there who are competing with you prevents you from even trying. Well, you have to try to succeed but more importantly you have to keep trying when you fail! You have to act as if it all comes down to your personal qualities and efforts. At the same time, win or lose, it is vital to accept the role that luck plays in the process. A final thought: numerous psychological experiments have shown us that people who chalk their success up to external factors, who essentially feel like they got lucky, are judged as being far more likeable than people who say that they got where they did through their own hard work.
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 I had a lady come to me, years ago… pre 2020 if you can remember such a time. She came to me because she wanted to lose weight.
Almost the first thing she said when I met her was “I have to get this done in a month!” I replied that that shouldn’t be a problem but I asked why the urgency? What she said next made me laugh, but in hindsight made perfect sense. She was booked to fly to France for a month-long gastronomy tour. She was going to get on a bus with a group of like minded foodies. Together they were going to travel from café to bistro to restaurant around France enjoying fantastic meals. I promised I would have her on track in time but in return, when she got back, she would have to tell me how it went. A few months later she got back in touch with me. She had loved every minute of the trip she told me. One of the first things that happened was that she made a new best friend. He was a big bloke who soon realised that she rarely, if ever finished her meals. So, being a gentleman, he polished them off for her. She soon realised though that she was getting much more out of the trip than anyone else around her. Where everyone else was ploughing into their meals with gusto she was instead savouring the flavours, imagining how the food was being made and enjoying the contrasts. The highlight of the trip was a Michelin starred restaurant where she had had a lovely meal consisting of several courses. She was content and her friend was very happy with his share of her meals too. Then she noticed the dessert menu. It would be a criminal shame to be at the restaurant and not try a dessert, right? So, she ordered some chocolate coated truffles with some sort of complicated sounding rich sauce. When it came out her eyes grew huge, his eyes grew even bigger. As a pyramid of heaped truffles in this sauce was placed in front of her. She thanked the waiter and proceeded to take the top truffle off, she sliced it in half and swirled the half truffle in the sauce and then slowly and thoughtfully bit into it, savouring the flavours and textures, admiring the composition. Then she was done! She passed the rest over to her friend and sat back to digest her meal and enjoy the company and atmosphere. She had got exactly what she was wanting out of the meal and out of the trip. The best part was that she was continuing to lose weight the whole time she was there. |
Daniel
Certified hypnotherapist. Archives
August 2024
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