And sometimes not.
In 2008 I was at Caeser’s in Vegas, sitting at one of the roulette tables. I sat down just before 10AM and had the entire table to myself. For the next three hours, whenever we’d hit red, red, red, the fourth spin would always be black. I’d started off with $100 and probably worked my way up to $2,500 until it was time to go. Lucky for me the table hit red, red, red and I put about $500 on black so I’d walk away with an extra grand.
Red. Shit. Ok, well it will hit black this time, so I put $1,000 down on black. Nope. Red. Son of a bitch. Ok, well, I’m WAY up (and I knew I should run!) so what am I going to lose? I put the rest on black. Not happening. Red again. I pulled another $100 from my pocket and this time it hit black and I ended up even. But that’s how life goes at times too. You may have everything figured out, you see exactly what’s going on, you’re connected and producing great stuff. Sometimes you just land on red. Not always your fault. Your best bet is to grab your chips and move on, but unfortunately just enough of us claw our way back to the top to make it tempting to stay. What’s more, you truly believe in what you’re doing which makes it even harder to walk away. This is where a key attitude, resiliency, comes in to play and your character either grows or collapses. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a numbers game – play enough times and eventually you’ll win. But you have to be resilient, bounce back, and as long as you’re staying true to your beliefs and not selling yourself out, you’ll succeed. Hopefully.
