Success is the mother of failure

I met Cao Guoqi 40 years ago, he was a classmate of my shanghai university of finance and finance in different departments of the same class, when he often played cello at the school's entertainment evenings, belonging to the multi-talented category. The reason why I want to reprint his article is because the current economy has experienced a cyclical downturn, the capital market is also showing a weak trend, often breaking out of a well-known large company default or huge losses, and some well-known investors who have created super high investment performance in the past have also fallen off the altar.

Among the many successful people, many of them really have a level, but some of them rely on the wind to add leverage to take off, they are often extreme risk appetite, but also a very small probability of lucky people. I once gave an example: let 1,000 monkeys toss a coin, assuming that the probability of each positive is 50%, if all monkeys are tossed 10 times in a row, then the probability of 10 consecutive positives is 50% to the 10th power, which is about one in a thousand, that is, one monkey in a thousand monkeys should toss the coin 10 times in a row. Do we need to take this monkey as a typical case, call on all monkeys to learn from it, and promote its experience of "successful" coin throwing?

When the wind stops, the lucky ones without wings fall because they think they are really omnipotent and can fly in any field. In fact, everyone has their own circle of ability, beyond the scope of ability to expand the career, the future risk will be great. I have always believed that most people's success, or most of the once brilliant enterprises, has a path dependence, that is, the so-called success and failure. Looking back, none of the "century-old stores" in the "Dow Jones Index" constituent stocks have survived today, but compared with the United States and Japan, China's century-old stores are even fewer. As of last night, the Dow has fallen for six consecutive days, but the most difficult moment has not yet arrived, and everyone seems to be unprepared about the inflection point of this unprecedented large cycle. (Li Xunlei, please indicate the source when reprinting: WeChat public account lixunlei0722)

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Success is the mother of failure

Cao Guoqi

Losers want to make a comeback and often masturbate with "failure is the mother of success." But for many people, failure makes people depressed, and it is difficult to achieve without super perseverance, wisdom and luck to turn over the salted fish. On the contrary, "success is the mother of failure" is the other, success makes people confident, self-confidence is too much, often bad luck follows.

First, the cause and effect of success or failure, the cycle of everything

When it comes to success or failure, probability is an unavoidable topic, investment guru Buffett once said that the probability of profit multiplied by the amount of money and the probability of loss multiplied by the amount of the difference, is your profit. Therefore, the winners of investment are the winners of probability. The Hollywood blockbuster "Blackjack" tells the story of several MIT "math men" who use probability theory to beat the casino to win.

Since it is probability, there is no impermanence to victory over the general. People with a little common sense know that after multiple random bets on the larger, the probability of the next "small" will rise. The kind of people who think of themselves as "Evergrande" all the way will often hang their lives in the balance. And those who win more and lose less must have found the law of high probability and strictly implemented it.

In real life, winning less and losing more is a high probability event. Successful people are generally prone to overestimate their abilities, knowing that success is like fighting for "tangrams", setting all the favorable factors and eventually reaching a balance point. Failure is only one step away, and it destroys the decay. Hemingway famously said in "The Sun Also Rises": "How did you go bankrupt?" The answer was, "Gradually, and then suddenly." Only these four words in English, the process of failure.

For the successful, "it is advisable to chase the poor and the poor with courage", take advantage of the victory to pursue, and expand the results of the battle. As everyone knows, overconfidence is often harmful, success is self-confidence, failure, is conceit. The success of a million costs and the scale of ten million are like the world of primary school students and college students, and the previous carving insect skills can no longer support the big scene. From childhood to adulthood, there is a gradual process, when you think that winning is endless, your energy does not keep pace with the times, "look at the Zhu Lou, watch the building collapse".

Those who get rich overnight tend to lose worse, especially those who are mistaken for necessity by luck or other fortuitous factors, and the end result is not too good. That sudden success is like a tarot card built on the desert, where a gust of wind can make him collapse. Once many people have the capital to succeed, many outrageous things are also possible. There is a lot of wine and meat, adrenaline rushing, bold words, sounds and colors, inexhaustible, and the weaknesses in human nature are at a glance. In fact, God tests the successful more than the loser, because the successful person represents the hope of mankind, and He must be upright, kind, wise, diligent, and self-disciplined. For those who are overwhelmed after success, success is the beginning of the nightmare, which is definitely a high probability. Therefore, when you are proud, you keep three points, and when you are frustrated, you can endure three points, and the wins and losses in life are like the size of the bet, and everything is cyclical.

Second, the cycle law that cannot be escaped

Spring, summer, autumn and winter, clouds and clouds, from prosperity to decline, from excitement to depression, neither the natural world nor human society can escape the law of cycle.

Russ Tweed analyzes the course of the Western economic cycle over the past 300 years, revealing the law of the economy falling from its peak to the abyss. Another economics with a deep insight into this law is None other than Schumpeter, who believes that the cycle is the key force driving creative destruction and revival, and that successful people who have not experienced devastating suffering will not have a long time to stand on their toes.

None of the "century-old stores" in the "Dow Jones Index" constituent stocks on Wall Street have survived today, and the only remaining "General Electric" has completely collapsed two years ago, and there is no day to turn around. Many companies that were in full swing at the time didn't even think about their fiasco, and all crises often started at the peak of success.

Another manifestation of the cycle law is the rise and fall of the family, and the iron law of "rich but not more than three generations" is like the spell of "thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi", and the accuracy is breathtaking. "The first generation seeks a life, the second generation seeks a good life, and the third generation is keen on seeking happiness." The initial entrepreneurship of the first generation mainly relies on diligence and opportunity, the second generation after success is ambitious and is magnified by small and broad leverage, and by the third generation, the down-to-earth has gradually drifted away, and once the starting point is high, the feeling of "seeing the mountains and mountains" is spontaneous. God wants you to perish, first to make you crazy, crazy to the extreme, and the moment of sadness is not far away. If you want to die a miserable death, it seems that the sense of crisis in success is the best medicine for hedging the law of the cycle.

Third, the tragedy of success

Imagine traveling back in time to ancient Greece, traveling through the city-states and finally finding Socrates. You ask: What are the commonalities of successful people? Socrates replied: Tell me, what does success mean?

Successful explanations, heard a lot, vary widely. One teacher said that in fact, Chinese success, the closest meaning is to the achievement of merit. Hangzhou Lingyin Temple has a torii with the inscription: Mo asks for it.

If you are successful in your translation, which word will you use? Most people think of success. In fact, the English word for success is not exactly the same as success. Dismantling the root suc is the meaning of going down, submissive; ceed is to go on. So the success, from the bottom up, continue to go, the starting point is in the bottom, the direction is up, continue to go, in order to get closer and closer to success.

As time progresses, probabilities and cycles continue to evolve, and success at any point in time has the potential to be engulfed in the next. Yin and yang grow each other, a moment of success or failure, far from being able to cover the coffin, live a long time!

If time and space were transferred to Confucius in the East, he asked, "What is success for?" The answers of traditional Confucians are all bold words of the Qi family to govern the country and the world. In fact, taking the world aspiring is only a game of a few people, since ancient times, the king has failed, but the hero is the hero, the success is also the hero, and the defeat is also the hero. For most people, on those battlefields where there is no smoke of gunfire, in the dragon gate array of the heavens, once they enter the game, some are full of mourning, but it is rare to see flying dragons in the sky, which can be described as people are not as good as heaven!

It is said that standing in the eye of the storm, it is a peaceful world, and it is not known that what is about to be ushered in is the speed of life and death, and only a very small number of people with a sense of crisis may be spared. In this changing world, people need to always ask themselves if they have the courage not to panic, to sleep well at night, and to sleep well! Wake up tomorrow morning and thank you for another day.

I am most afraid to ask the original intention, and the big dream will come to naught. Young and determined to become a hero, hesitant to do thousands of miles without defense. Half a life, gao tang all white hair, broken silver a few folded wind bones, only sigh too hurried!