That is hard to answer.
I have had periods when everything of significance went well - made plenty of money, got promoted again and again, met a beautiful woman and married her, health great - one might have said I had a charmed existence.
But how much did "luck" have to do with it. Money - I was in a good profession that was on the upswing. Promotions - I was working hard and talented and well-liked in a successful firm. Beautiful woman - mutual attraction is a mysterious thing but I think it is something other than luck, there is personality and judgment and seizing of opportunity involved. Health - well I was <30 y/o so good health would have been expected.
You see - yes, things went well, but those things were not the sort of discrete, random chance events that fit my, and I think the accepted, definition of "luck".
Maybe that is the crux of it. Are we taking literally about "luck"? Or are we talking about good decisions and being well-positioned and well-prepared and alert to opportunity and having the right timing and all of those things coming together in a wonderful string of good fortune?
By the way, I have also had periods where exactly the reverse of the above has happened, excepting the beautiful woman - she has never left me - and there again the causes were not that coins kept flipping the wrong way, but rather more fundamental, non-random reasons.
I think a lot about luck, actually. The area in my life where luck is seemingly most involved is my job. I work in the stock market. Many people consider the stock market a big casino. There's academic research to that effect. In the business we even talk about "making bets". So some would say my profession is primarily about luck. I agree there are a lot of events that, at a certain level, look like purely random chance. Does company A's earnings report beat or miss consensus estimates? Is it simply a coin flip? Clearly not - the night before, the company doesn't flip a coin to decide if they're going to beat or miss. The outcome was determined months or quarters ago. It has fundamental causes - the economy, the industry conditions, input prices, demand for the company's products, management decisions, analysts' views on these things, etc. If you had enough data on these things, and could analyze it accurately, you could perfectly predict the outcome. In the real world, you have sometimes more data, sometimes less data and sometimes good analytical ability, sometimes not so good, so your ability to predict is sometimes good and sometimes bad. But you don't have to swing at every ball or, in the language of the casino, you don't have to bet every hand. You can bet only when you judge that your ability to predict is good enough. If you do that, you can have the probabilities in your favor. Let's suppose you choose your bets such that the probability of winning is 55%. Over time, assuming a large enough number of bets are played - investments are made - you should make money 55% of the time and lose 45% of the time. If you can do that, you're successful, in my business. I would argue that "luck" is not the cause. If you are making only 50% probability bets, but still were successful over time, then you've indeed enjoyed a long string of "luck". But if you are making 55% probability bets, then success over time is what you should expect.
To me, luck is not probability. Luck is when the results, over repeated instances, is consistently better than the probability inherent in the situation (good luck) or worse (bad luck).
Sorry to ramble.
P.S. I was explaining to my daughter what I do all day. I explained that if I can be wrong only 45% of the time, I'm pretty happy. She was not very impressed.
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So has no one here experienced long term, consistent luck specific to a unique portion of their lives?
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