Are Rewards and Amount of Effort Expended Necessarily Connected?

When I was a little kid, one of the life lessons I was taught was that if you worked hard, you would get ahead in life.

Although I never had a great deal of ambition, I have typically been quite willing to work hard for the results I hoped to get. "Free lunches?" Not so much.

It's NOT That Simple...

Most conventional thinking on success building doesn't like to look at — or even admit to — the "luck factor" as anything real or relevant.

But the (sad?) truth is that working hard, applying yourself and choosing wisely isn't always enough. Aside from my own firsthand experience, it's also something we we in the world around us. Someone who seems to "have it made" runs through a string of misfortunes beyond their control, and end up with nothing. Someone else who's no-one and nowhere happens to end up seated next to a marketing genius on some flight to visit their parents, and suddenly they go from nowhere to fame in a matter of months.

The success industry doesn't like these things because they are not teachable and tangible parts of success building.

Sometimes "doing your best" is simply not enough. I had a fairly successful and rapidly growing retail business many years ago... until the city decided to was time to upgrade the main road next to the shop from "street" to "freeway."

18 months of construction that made our shopping center hard to both see and get into pretty caused the slow death of something really quite worthwhile... through no fault of our own.

The example with the passenger on the plane was actually a friend of mine who had created a fledgling online dating site in the early days of the Internet. That chance encounter on the plane enabled him to sell his project for $6 million, and it became the foundation of what is today Match.com.

Apologies to those who came here to read about a connection between your blog posts and rewards... that's a whole different kettle of fish!

Although... whether or not your post is seen/rewarded by one of the SteemCurator or Booming accounts is often also more a matter of luck than skill and effort.

Anyway... there are many factors involved in building success, and we don't necessarily have control over them all.

Thanks for reading, and have a beautiful Friday!

How about YOU? Do you believe there's an element of LUCK in building success? Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 2023.02.02 00:16 PST
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