You can fail half the time and still win in life.

Among all the blogs that I’ve written, only a couple bring me organic traffic. They account for over 90% (approx) of my overall organic traffic to my website. Does that mean my other blogs were bad? 

Well, here’s the thing: it’s very normal for a lot of things to fail in life. If you wrote 30 blogs a year, perhaps only 3 or 4 would do well (Like really well). The rest would be pretty average or, at worst, wouldn’t rank, no matter how best you wrote it. 

Some projects work, some don’t – Just get on to the next.

Brad Pitt

I used to have a colleague, in one of my former companies. He was an artist turned graphic designer. He could paint really great pictures.

He told me, “Anuj, I don’t understand social media. Sometimes, I create great art, and people don’t like it. On the other hand, I’ve seen designs, extremely poor in art sometimes go viral. You never know which ones would resonate with the audience and which wouldn’t.“

The same is true of life – out of the 50 things that you try in life, only a couple would ever succeed, even if you were the best in your field. And that’s okay because that is what is going to bring you success. You just have to keep experimenting till you can figure out YOUR those “couple of things” that are going to bring you the most business or money. You never know which ones will work and which won’t.

Here’s an example – not every penny you pump into the stock market yields massive returns. Most of your returns are pretty average or, at worst, losses. But the ones that drive your profits are usually the ones from a tiny percentage of your overall portfolio. 

Don’t we all love to invest (or gamble 😉) in that penny stock wishing that that would one day become THAT INVESTMENT that would make us rich? 

Well, if you understood the stock market well, you’d understand what I’m trying to say: some investments work, and some don’t. That’s how things work in life. Doesn’t mean you are a bad investor. 

This unfortunate life principle or truth or whatever you’d like to call applies to everyone – entrepreneurs, artists, employees, and ____________ etc, etc (you name it).

That’s the reason also why only a handful (5-10%) of startups ever succeed (even if the founding members or management were the best in the industry).

Read my best-performing blog. It’s not the best (according to me) but it brings me the most traffic and clicks – 25 Life Lessons for Young Adults: No. 19 will surprise you!

You just have to keep trying to increase your odds of winning in life. 

Sometimes success comes early, but more often than not, people would only taste success much later in life.

No one knew who Vincent van Gough was until he died. Neither anyone knew Shakespeare in his prime. 

Walt Disney had produced 400+ cartoons, (most of which lost him a fortune), before producing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs that changed everything for him. That film alone helped pay off all his debts and transformed the Disney Studios that we know of today. 

Read: Top 5 reasons why misfits end up winning in life. No. 2 will surprise you.

Rahul Dravid, the Indian cricketer batted 604 times for India. Out of those, he didn’t cross a 50+ score 410 times. He failed a lot more than he succeeded. Yet he’s called “The Wall” for a reason. He averages 53.31 in Test Cricket, one of the best in the world. Many a times he single-handedly saved India’s face from the likes of Glen McGrath, Shoaib Akhtar, Wasim Akram, Waqar Younis, Brett Lee, Murali, Shane Warne, Ambrose, Walsh and so on. These were the best bowlers in the world. The sheer quality of pace attack in the 90s is something to reckon with, some of whom could clock 160+ kmph, a rare sight in today’s cricket. 

The point is we very often underestimate how normal it is for a lot of things to fail in life, which causes us to overreact when they do. 

• If you are a good stock picker, you’ll be right, maybe half the time. 
• If you’re a good employee or a worker, you’ll find the right company in the right field only after a few trials and errors.
• If you are a good investor, many years will just be OK and plenty of it will be bad.

And that’s if you are good! 

So keep learning and keep working on your project, business, investments, or whatever it is that you are trying to achieve to increase your odds of winning. Take a good decision and stick to it in the long haul. You never know when your efforts will compound.

The process is more important than the results. And if you take care of the process, you will get the results.

MS Dhoni

Key takeaways

Here’s what you need to do:

• Keep increasing your odds of achieving success in life. Keep learning, investing, networking, and praying things will just turn out well 😉 Every successful person does this.

• Warren Buffets owned about 400 to 500 stocks during his life but made most of his money on only 10 of them. And if you were to remove his top investments, his long-term record would be pretty average.

• Stay disciplined and consistent in whatever you do, and results will follow.

It’s that simple 🙂