The Gambler's Paradigm

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There is an important life lesson to be learned from the professional card gambler – the lesson of risk and reward.

A competent player of cards knows that the entire night of play will hinge on a few choice hands – talent lies in identifying the hands that stand the greatest chance of success and having the confidence to bet everything on them. The gambler knows he might get burned, he might lose everything; but funds can be rebuilt and the only way he is ever going to make the big win is if he lays everything on the line.

Sacrifice must be made to ascend to a higher level.  If he never bets big, the best a gambler can hope for is breaking even.  If he is conservative, breaking even is a rather easy thing to do – but in life, breaking even is not very desirable.

There is nothing but life itself that is not worth risking in the name of growth.  Personal sacrifices of comfort – financial, emotional and especially of pride must be made.  These are states of mind, as such they are minted from one’s own bank – they can be lost and replenished by one’s own strength of will – one is only poor if one feels poor. In a word, these things are replaceable.

Replaceablility is an important concept. The only things that are irreplaceable have beating hearts – everything else is expendable and should be thought of as such. Nothing lasts and everything turns to dust - even our own bodies will eventually decay and be useless. Therefore, ‘preserving’ something rather than using it to its full advantage is a waste. Should a courier limit his business to one delivery a day for fear of wearing out his truck? Holding back for fear of ‘replacement cost’ is detrimental to success (“Work it until the wheels fall off” – is that what the kids say these days?). Your resources, your finances and personal effects, exist to serve you – they can and should be used and risked toward furthering your personal advancement. The boat that fears the rough open sea is bound to its home port.

Resources that are not reinvested in advancement are spent frivolously and lost. It is the costs of dissipation (not investment) that are the ruin of the impecunious. Yes, comfort is progressive to a healthy being and a healthy being is more capable of success than the unhealthy, but comfort is a mental state and can be achieved with the most minimal expense.

There is one thing that can not be lost, no matter how resounding the failure, and that is experience.  Another way to view the preceding concepts is as a process of converting “liquid” financial and emotional assets into “solid” personal assets.  Rebuilding from nothing is not actually rebuilding from nothing if one has a vast store of experience to start from.  But the only way experience may be gained is through sacrifice and risk.

Rather than a concluding paragraph I’ll write a recipe:

Sacrifice, Build, Risk, Repeat