3519: Roughly What You Deserve by Tynan on Choosing Happiness and How to Be Successful

[00:00:00] This is Optimal Living Daily, Roughly What You Deserve by Tynan of Tynan.com and I'm Justin Malik, your personal narrator, reading blogs to you mostly but sometimes books. I got a post today for you from Tynan so let's get right to it as we optimize your life. Roughly What You Deserve by Tynan of Tynan.com

[00:00:26] Back when I was gambling professionally it seemed like everyone had an opinion on which casino was rigged. I never really thought that but I also didn't really think that I was winning as much as I was supposed to. To test this, I recorded every single session I played for over a year. Guess what? I was within a fraction of 1% from where I was supposed to be statistically. I learned that not only were the casinos not rigged, I wasn't very good at mentally aggregating lots of independent events.

[00:00:54] I think that in real life, we all have a natural inability or unwillingness to accept that we generally receive what we deserve. Before I get into this though, I'll say that it definitely isn't true all of the time. I offer the idea here just as a useful tool and framework not to pass judgment. For example, I know people who have lost close family members, people who have been r***ed, and people who have been affected by other horrible things. I don't think that they deserve those things or earned them in some way.

[00:01:24] I think they're an unfortunate side effect of the chaos and variance of life, which is otherwise a good thing. When I was around 20, I knew for a fact that I would become rich by the age of 25. 25 was really old and I knew that I was special, so it made perfect sense to me that I'd be rich by then. I put in a moderate amount of effort and made moderate progress towards my goal, but didn't really even get close. When I turned 25, I was at least a little bit surprised that I wasn't a millionaire yet.

[00:01:54] I'm still not a millionaire, but I'm not surprised about it anymore. I've seen people work harder than me and work smarter than me and become rich. I've seen the dedication it takes and I've seen how that compares to what I have typically put in. I think I've gotten about what I deserve. I've done some interesting things, worked hard some of the time, and I've made enough money to support a simple lifestyle that I like a lot. Strange path, but seems about right to me. Last year, I spent two months getting back into pickup.

[00:02:24] I knew it'd be hard, but in the back of my head, I thought, Hey, I'm a pretty awesome guy and I used to be really good at this. I bet it's going to go really well. It went okay, which is probably what you would expect when you balance those positive with the negatives of me being rusty, naturally introverted, and in full-on hermit programmer mode. On a more positive note, I think I do a pretty good job of being positive and treating people well. And when I think of how lucky I am to have such great friends and family, I think that I've again gotten what I deserve.

[00:02:54] You can adopt this mindset and think of it in a few different ways. The harsh reality is that if something in your life isn't where you want it to be, it's most likely your fault. We're all dealt a different set of cards, and I think that most of us are old enough now that we've been given a chance to do something with them. So if you were born poor and haven't put in enough effort to make money, I think it's time to stop blaming your upbringing and start taking responsibility.

[00:03:19] Of course, if you were born poor or still poor and don't care, that's totally fine too. You got what you deserved and you're happy with it. Some people don't like these sorts of attitudes because they like to imagine that everyone deserves everything, and it's some sort of injustice when they don't get it. I think that's not a realistic outlook, and I don't think it's a healthy outlook. In general, the closer your perception matches reality, the more effective you can be. I think that this is actually a very empowering attitude.

[00:03:48] It allows people to overcome their natural weaknesses and take responsibility for improving them. When we stop relying on luck or having someone give us an opportunity, we can create a realistic plan and feel the importance of follow-through with it. Superstition and hoping gives way to planning and execution. What about luck, which feels undeserved in one way or another? To meet that amazing girl or to make a ton of money or to have a really long life, you will need to have good luck.

[00:04:17] The key is to give yourself as many opportunities to be lucky as possible. We think of luck as some abstract thing, but all it really is is an unlikely event happening. If you roll a 100-sided die, it would take tremendous luck for it to come up as 97, but if you roll it a couple hundred times, it'll probably happen. Finding a girl who's a near-perfect match for you is extremely unlikely, but if you're out there meeting tons of women, in aggregate, it becomes pretty likely that you'll meet one.

[00:04:47] The same is true of making money. Any one enterprise may have the odds stacked against it, but if you relentlessly try to create something of value for other people, you'll one day get lucky and make it. When we look at success stories, even our own mini-success stories, it's easy to hone in on the long odds and the story there. But if you look closer and average in all of the small wins, the small losses, the big wins, and the big losses, more often than not, you'll find that people get what they deserve.

[00:05:21] You just listened to the post titled, Roughly What You Deserve by Tynan of Tynan.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. The grind never stops as a business owner. When you're hiring, you need a partner that works as hard as you do, and that's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. We've been lucky finding our team here at Optimal Living Daily, and I think LinkedIn Jobs would have taken luck out of the equation, finding us the best quickly. With LinkedIn Jobs, posting your job for free is just the beginning.

[00:05:49] You can pay to promote it for three times more qualified candidates, and their new feature helps craft the perfect job description in minutes, putting your job opportunity in front of qualified talent that matters. Plus, you can boost your reach by adding a hashtag hiring frame to your profile picture to double your qualified applicants. Super simple, yet super effective. And the results speak for themselves. Approximately 72% of small and medium-sized businesses on LinkedIn

[00:06:16] say that LinkedIn helps them find high-quality candidates. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash selection. That's linkedin.com slash selection to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. So one thing I wanted to add to this post is a common bias that we all experience where we tend to remember the negative more than the positive. It happens in all areas of life.

[00:06:43] Like for me, this show has hundreds or into the thousands of positive reviews now, but the ones that stick out or I remember distinctly, unfortunately, will be like a negative one. And it's easy to dwell on that because we don't think we deserve it. But with things like luck, you might hit a lot of green lights when you're driving or not hit traffic when you're in a rush home one day. That'll seem normal. You might not pay attention to it. But then another day when you're in a hurry or you're late to be somewhere, you'll find someone slow in front of you or miss a green light by a few seconds.

[00:07:13] But in reality or statistically, that happens all the time. But you remember those moments where it was to your disadvantage and they feel like they're happening more frequently or only on the times when it matters. But that's not actually what's happening. It's just how we choose to remember it. I'm sure there's a name for this, which I don't remember. But the point is to think about that, that story that you tell yourself. So while I agree with what Tynan is saying about it mostly being under our control, the stuff that isn't, well, be careful about what you choose to remember and dwell on

[00:07:42] because it's all a matter of perspective. All right, I'll leave it there for today. I hope you're having a great Friday and start to your weekend if you're listening in real time. And I'll be back tomorrow reading to you where your optimal life awaits.