You win or you lose. Well that may occassionally depend on serendipity but don't be surprised if I tell you that your victory or your loss largely depends on your Mindset.
Mindset is a set of beliefs you nurture that helps you interpret the events that you experience in life. That interpretation of events decides on your subsequent approach that you would adopt and will also determine the discretionary energy you will invest to achieve the desired results. That makes you ultimately, a winner or a loser. Not knowing the subconscious mechanisms operating within us, we choose to label the outcomes conveniently as serendipity !
There are two mindsets - the 'Growth Mindset' and the 'Closed Mindset'. The closed mindset blocks and rejects anything that it has not experienced or accepts anything that it has rejected in the past. No experimentation, No Risk. Maintaining status-quo is its central approach. That is its Achilles heel leading to failure.
The Growth Mindset is exploratory. Experimentative in nature. Nurtures new ideas. Gets fatigued by repetition and constantly searches for new ways. It's flexibility and ability to adapt is its hall-mark to success.
Have you ever played the 'Indian Royal Flush' ? The popular 3 card game. Whilst the 'Closed Mindset' player gets terrified by the poor combination of the 3 cards dealt to him and packs his bets in the first round believing he can't do much, the 'Growth Mindset' player may use his skills to try and smartly make the others believe that he is sitting on 'The Royal Flush'. He guages the behaviours of other players, tries to read the patterns, calculates likely probabilities, tries to read behaviours of the other players and then decides on his strategy - how far to go and when to pack his bets ! Often, a weak closed mind-set player on the other side even with stronger cards may pack-up and lose to the strategies of the growth mind-set player.
People over-estimate the power of luck but grossly under-estimate the power of mindsets and that is the folly which explains why some constantly win and some others consistently lose.
Good news is - Mindsets can be changed. Someday, will share my thoughts on that.