Can you control your own luck? | Richie Etwaru | TEDxMorristown

let's talk a little bit about luck I've been trying to get lucky all my life okay that didn't come out right I've been very intimate with luck all my life and today I'm going to share with you an instrument that I believe that can help you control your luck I assure you that when this video is over you're going to think about at least five people there you're going to go share this on their walls right away because you're gonna relate to what I went through my life now why did I get intimate with luck well it has to do with this flag on my hand this is the flag from a country called Guyana Ghana is what I like to call a pock hold on the planet not a great place to be born in a lot of great things come out of it some good stuff but nothing great when you're born in Guyana you don't have a lot of choice you have to be a dreamer in order to get out if you don't have dreams you're just stuck there I happen to be a really really big dreamer and that's because I had two parents who boat or school teachers which means I grew up with books no toys no games no sports just books you guys have heard of students yeah you've heard of a students you've heard of nerds have you ever heard of B nerds I was a B nerd on the social stack below nerds but I had incredible dreams and I read books all the time and I just dreamed over and over about what I wanted to be I wanted to be a pilot I wanted to be Michael Jackson I mean I wanted to be so many different things and people would say to me all the time every time I tell my aunts my grandfather what do you learn Bay right just do well in school that's all it was that was really good at school is our my thing sounds like I got that but what do I need to do more now I'll just do well in school he'd be fine no one even said work hard one day I decided I wanted to be the president of Ghana I was probably about eight years old I said it to my grandfather and I remember this piece of advice from him very clearly because it's the only time anyone has ever said this to me he said you're gonna need a little luck and I go what is this luck you speak of no I didn't say it like that and so I set out in my first office which looks like this this is the home that I grew out in eight years old figure out how to get lucky apparently grades were one of the things and I was always good at grades but I had to get out of the circumstances that I was in I'll talk to you a little bit about the circumstances this is how you move from one village to another in Ghana you put your camp on top of a cart you put two donkeys in front of it and you move to the next village what are the odds of me being here today being born with those odds I'd figure one in none but the mathematicians in the room would say that's a little bit not right right so one in a billion by 10 I was really good at school figure maybe one in 100 million by 20 I graduated college somehow aids no surprise there right maybe one in ten million by 30 I started companies and sold it I'd been written about I've written patents well then maybe you know one in a million is uh like if you buy 20 bucks of a lotto ticket those are your chances sorority oder I'm here got on magazine covers published books long list of things that I won't bore you with but I got here by studying this thing called luck I've been very intimate with it and I'm gonna share this instrument with you of how to control it and I'll have to take you through the journey of how I found it I study problems very deeply so I started to look around for what do we know about blog I'll tell you guys right now as a civilization we don't know crap about luck we still believe 13 is an unlucky number and 7 is a lucky number think about that that's about the best science we have we don't even understand the luck of the Irish most people think Irish people are lucky the luck of the Irish is actually how to deal with bad luck and the positive attitude that you have of it right I didn't figure it out until like my 7th st. Patrick's Day I studied probability quite a bit how do I get out I'm really good at grades how do I get out if I gave you guys a coin right now and asked you to flip it and you get heads and then I ask you to flip it nine more times and you get heads nine times in a row and then I say okay somewhere any other I convince you maybe I pay you flip it 40 more times and you get heads 50 times most people will believe that the likelihood of getting tails on the fifty first flip is high it's not it's still 50/50 not only do we not understand luck we don't understand probability the only thing we know is that some luck you can control and some luck you can't I love numbers I can explain the entire world in 8020 I think you can control 80% of luck and 20% you can't and I'll tell you how to control that 80% and you're gonna find those five people ago I can't believe we got to help those people the first thing is luck has two sides when you think about luck you start to think about good luck but nobody ever thinks about bad luck how many people here have seen the movie to bronze tale raise your hands okay good you remember Eddie mush in the Bronx Dale yeah I want you guys to finish this sentence for me if it wasn't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all when you start to study luck intimately you recognize that in order to understand how to control it you have to look at good and bad if you just look at the good only you miss the entire other side and you don't know how to control it for yourself the second thing that I learned and this I learned from my teenage years with my mom my mom used to call me that what happened now son I had amazing grades I was in scholarships all over the place but every time she got a phone call it was what happened now crashed cars got into trouble I mean anything you could imagine and I discovered during my teenage years that when good luck occurred I felt like I created it but when bad luck occurred to me I always felt like it happened to me and it took a while in my parenting of my of my mom for me to realize that no you create that stuff on yourself that's my first lesson again intimate with luck trying to beat the odds getting out of that office that I showed you guys the next thing I learned was that good luck in order to get it it equals risk and effort I read a lot it was like opportunity and preparation and all this type of stuff well no that's the 20% that we don't control the 80% are you control is risk and effort I know a lot of people who take risks but don't add effort to it you guys know a lot of these people as well there are people who start stuff all the time and it never goes anywhere you know people like that a lot of people who put a lot of effort don't get lucky cuz they don't take risks good luck is risk and effort and so I focused on good luck quite a bit I was like all right I'm gonna do this I got through my career and started to deliver some pretty amazing stuff but I kept getting in trouble I kept making a lot of money one year and losing it all the next year I've kept getting written up in magazines for good things and written up on the blotter for bad things it took some time for me to realize that I was addicted to risk remember to create luck you have to take risk right good luck equals risk press effort a lot of people are addicted to risk risk is actually an addictive thing it creates the same type of neurotransmitters in your brain that's cocaine a lot of people ruin their lives because there are lists they're addicted to alcohol a lot of people ruin their lives because they're addicted to cocaine a lot of people ruin their lives because they're addicted to risk but we never diagnosed him I struggled with this quite a bit I kept going all the way to the right going all the way to the left it felt like the further I went to the right the further I'd have to go to the left you guys probably know this in your lives if you don't feel like when something good happens to you something bad must be coming yeah or do you know people like that as soon as something good happens to them something bad must be following good luck seems to lead to bad luck and I couldn't understand it I thought it was just me maybe these are just my odds so I started to look around I started to ask people everybody said yeah it kind of feels like that but we didn't know exactly what was going on behind the scenes here's Bill Clinton risk and effort to become president here's Martha Stewart risk and effort to become one of the most successful businesswomen in the world don't say that when Oprah incident room okay here's Tiger Woods right one of the most successful golfers risk an effort on the good luck side here's Bill Clinton explaining Monica Lewinsky here's Martha Stewart explaining insider trading here's Tiger Woods explaining what I will just call shenanigans we're not gonna get into it it seems like because you take the risk on one side to create good fortune in your life and risk is an addiction you can't help yourself but take risk on the other side you can't control the left side that's how addiction works on the right side it feels like you're climbing a hill I can control how hard I work I can control how much I invest I can control how much risk I take on the right side on the left side it feels like you're slipping down a slippery slope you don't even know you're doing it I do you want to hear of it did anything stupid okay if you have not done anything stupid ever and you're sitting next to your spouse ask your spouse spouses are really good at reminding you about stupid things that you did in 24 hours after your reaction is I was like what was I thinking about a week or four weeks after you start to go that wasn't even me and about three months after you say to your loved one I just had a little bad luck but in the moment you can't control it no one can stop you from that slippery slope that's the addiction of risk there is no kill switch is absolutely no kill switch for it I'm gonna share with you an instrument that I call a kill switch that takes you through it even Dilbert feels that ways like camp you know you just can't turn off awesome so I had about two years of my life where I kind of lived taking no risks whatsoever I had a nine-to-five job it was very unusual for me I took no risks to create good luck but I didn't create any bad luck for myself either so I I basically gave up I figured there's no kill switch I'm just gonna do this interesting thing happened about these during these two years of my life no one called me arrogant and I started to think about that what is it about risk that I just don't understand how can I figure out a way to catch myself from that slippery slope how can I get back to the stuff that I love to do which is to take risk and add effort and make awesome sauce and just not screw it up with the bad luck that seems to be an automatic thing I just didn't understand invincibility and ambition and I got to this by getting some good advice from one of my ex-girlfriends and I'll tell you guys right now you get some of the best advice you can get from the people that love you and I'll tell you how to look out for the advice when it's coming here's how you know when you're about to get really good advice from someone that loves you it starts with the following phrase you know what your problem is when you hear that phrase my friends when you hear you know what your problem is you're about to get the best advice in your life she loved my ambition she absolutely hated the fact that I thought I was invincible she said to me in one of my meltdowns do you know what your problem is you think you're invincible and it was that point that I realized that I can categorize the risk that I take on the right side and the risk that I take on the left side and all I had to do is figure out a kill switch in between you see when you take risk on the right side you're feeding your ambition when you take risk on the left side you think you're invincible that was the dichotomy of the addiction that allowed me to get back to where I am today and beat the odds and get on this stage I had learned how to create just good luck without self-destructing with what seems like an automatic tax that I have to pay on the left side of that circle I've learned how to do this completely take it out I could forget about the Bronx Tale my favorite number in the word is threes there's a three-step process okay the kill switch comes with three things that you have to think about I'll talk you through them why do I like threes we're all good things come in threes Three Stooges three wise men three little pigs yeah see maybe three is a lucky number not seven we don't know squat about it here's how I started to catch myself about two and a half three years ago and it's been the best discovery I've ever made and I can't wait for to walk you guys through this because I think there are tons of people that live with a risk addiction and they can get through this the first thing I do is when I take risk I've learned that the risk on the right side that creates good luck requires effort the risk on the left side requires no effort I'll use an example to walk you guys through this on the right side let's say we're starting a company it requires risk it takes effort on the left side running a stoplight requires risk zero effort that's how I started to catch them the second one on the right side when you're creating good luck the likelihood of failure is high and the likelihood of success is low we'll use the same examples starting a company likelihood of failure really high likelihood of success really low running a stoplight likelihood of failure I mean when you get caught you get the ticket if it feels really bad but think about how many times you ran stoplights before right a likelihood of failure is very low on that side the last thing that I use to catch myself is when I look at my risks I understand my addiction and I go okay if I succeed who benefits the risk on the right when you succeed someone else benefits other than yourself your employees your family your neighbors your community when you take the risk on the left and you succeed you're the only person that benefits this is what I call the kill switch for luck this is how I've gone about controlling it and the only way I was able to do it is because I got behind the scenes we're trying to beat some terrible odds and studied the problem very deeply to figure out where I was Bill Clinton high risk no effort there's a joke in there somewhere right Martha Stewart insider-trading likelihood of failure very low she's Martha Stewart for heaven's sake mr. shenanigans this ladies and gentlemen is a discovery that I landed on accidentally it has helped me tremendously and for anyone that you know that has an addiction to risk I hope that you shared us with them and I hope that you can help them catch themselves when they're on the slippery slope because I can tell you is a recovering risk addict no one could have stopped me while I was slippin thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 277,757

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Achievement, Behavior, Career, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Hack, Ideas, Impact, Life Hack, Personal growth, Self improvement

Id: ncZoNORFDGs

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2015