Living Life in Terms of Probability

A few years ago, I went through a difficult time. All of us have. You and I already have something in common!

This particular difficult time occurred in my professional life. Things were going great. Then they weren't. Then it all fell apart. It fell apart fast and it fell apart hard and I was left feeling angry, bewildered, depressed, and many other unsavory feelings. Things got bad and at some point I decided to put every ounce of remaining energy into getting back on my feet lest things go in a darker direction.

Of the many lessons I learned in the years following, I'd like to use this post to share one incredibly valuable one - the value of living life in terms of probability.

Before we get to the lesson, let's examine our own lives. For many of us, we have things we want. Maybe it's a job title, or a house, or a family, or respect, or money, or travel, or health. We want things. Also, for many of us, we do things to help us get the things we want. As we try to get the things we want, we learn ways to get those things. Maybe we learn skills, or information, or mindsets. We then put those things to work. We start working towards getting the things we want.

At some point, as we get closer and closer to that thing we want, we come to realize we are on track to getting it. We've saved enough money for that house, or our relationship with that person is going well, or we are crushing it at work. As we get closer, we eventually expect that we will get that thing we've worked so hard for so long to get.

Along this journey, sometimes we make progress and sometimes we have setbacks. Sometimes something threatens our progress. Maybe our car breaks down so we have to spend money fixing it instead of on a down payment for the house, or the person we like starts to feel distant, or a new rock star gets hired who might just be better than we are at that next job title. This continuous cycle of events often whipsaws our emotions. We are on cloud nine one day and then too paralyzed to get out of bed the next. Sometimes this cycles occurs over weeks, sometimes over hours or even mere minutes. Things go good, we're stoked! Things go bad, we're pissed or scared. Up and down, up and down. We're a guest on a hotel elevator that we never get to get off of and someone else is pushing the buttons.

Such is life, right? That's how it goes, and that's how it goes for everyone.

The thing is, that's NOT how it goes for everyone. Damn, I wish I learned this way earlier in life! Well...I've learned it now so it's time to share.

Let's name that elevator "certainty". We are riding certainty to get us to the promised land. We want to know FOR SURE "certainty the elevator" is going to take us to the penthouse! When we go up a few floors we get excited - we're getting there! When certainty takes us down a couple floors we get nervous - going the wrong way! Our dependence on certainty takes our emotions up and down.

It's commonly stated that doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is INSANITY. I'd like to share this lesson I learned in hopes that it helps you stop riding certainty over and over and offers you an opportunity to do something different. When you do something different, you can expect different results. Maybe this lesson will help us claim our sanity!

The trick is to think in terms of probability (instead of certainty).

Let's use a couple simple examples to make the point clear and then we'll go into some real life examples.

So you're going to flip a coin. If it's heads, I pay you $10. If it's tails, you pay me $10. If you grip on to certainty that it will be heads, you'll be elated if it ends up heads and you'll be disappointed if it ends up tails. Clearly you'll be elated roughly half of the time and disappointed roughly half of the time. However, if you switch your thinking away from certainty and towards probability, you will expect it to be heads 50% of the time and tails 50% of the time. Now, when it is heads, you're pretty happy and when it is tails, you are either slightly bummed or not affected in any way. By switching your thinking away from certainty and over to probability, you don't get disappointed or angry any more.

Let's go through the same exercise with rolling a 6-sided die. If it rolls 1-4, I give you $20 and if it rolls 5 or 6, you give me $20. You have a 66% probability of getting $20 and only a 33% probability of giving me $20. So as we roll the die over, and over, and over, you don't expect it to be a 1-4 every single roll. You don't demand certainty. Instead, you know that it will sometimes be 1-4 and sometimes be 5 or 6, and that it will be 1-4 more often than it will be 5 or 6. You think in terms of probability and you don't get upset as we continuously roll the die.

Note that when the die rolls a 5 or a 6, it is a major setback for you. It's just like when our car breaks down so we have to spend money fixing it instead of on a down payment for the house, or the person we like starts to feel distant, or a new rock star gets hired who might just be better than we are at that next job title. It is a significant setback. Because we stopped thinking in terms of certainty and started thinking in terms of probability, even a major setback didn't upset us!

That's some pretty powerful stuff! Simply by shifting our thinking away from certainty and towards probability, life gets better. Instantly!

Even when we have no control, like flipping a coin or rolling dice, we are perfectly chill when we think in terms of probability. Is it going to rain next Friday? Is the plain going to leave on time? Well, there's a certain probability that it will and a certain probability that it won't. Whether or not we know that exact probability doesn't matter. There is a chance it will and a chance it won't, so I won't expect certainty either way, I'll think in terms of probability and life is good.

But wait! There's more!

Here's where the real power lies. In many situations in our lives, we can directly affect the probability of something happening. We can either proactively maintain our car or we can be rough on it. We can learn how to connect with that special someone or we can spend time making them do what we want to. We can learn new job skills or we can sleep in because "he'll just get the promotion anyway". There are many ways that what we do affects the probability of something happening.

If we get angry, or sad, or depressed, or scared - what affect does that have on the probability of us getting what we want? Right! The probability goes down. Instead of me giving you $20 if the die rolls 1-4, because you are sad or scared or angry, the probability changes and you get $20 from me only if the die rolls a 1 or a 2. If we choose negative feelings and negative action, WE CAUSE the probability to go down.

The solution is obvious. Learn ways to reduce the negative emotions and instead be constructive with our time and energy. Proactively maintain the car and not be hard on it. Listen sincerely to that special someone and treat them to things they enjoy. Learn new skills and build a network at work. We can choose to invest our time and energy into thoughts and actions that improve our probability. Instead of you getting $20 from me if the die rolls a 1-4, you get $20 if it rolls a 1-5. It might not be 100%, but it's definitely a higher probability. And the better we get at learning what to learn and learning what to do, the higher WE (YOU) can push that probability.

We should always keep probability in mind - at the end of the day, there's a probability that it will work out and there's a probability that it won't. And we can accept that and we are perfectly ok with that. So in the meantime, we CHOOSE to replace thoughts and actions that reduce the probability with thoughts and actions that increase the probability.

When we do this over and over, and when we do this across so many different things in our life, more and more things work out. And we learn how to do this even BETTER, and even more and MORE things work out! Not everything works out, but more things work out more often. When things happen to not work out, we will be comfortable and confident that we did whatever we could do, and the chips fell as they may. We knew probability was in play, we did our best to improve our probability, we rolled the dice, and it came up the way it did - all good - on to the next one.

Using this trick, we very literally stack the odds in our favor! We can directly improve our life experience simply by shifting our minds to thinking in terms of probability!

Thank you SO MUCH for investing your time in reading this article. I hope the return is worth far more than your investment. If you appreciate the article, or think your friends and family may also benefit from it, please share.

Thank you for leveling up with me!