The Probability of the Improbable Thing

I heard a very interesting quote this week.

“Never underestimate the probability of an improbable thing happening to you”.

We all do it, oh I can text and drive, I’ll be fine. Oh, I’ll have one more beer and head home, oh I can smoke, it won’t catch up to ME. Well, I did it too. I assumed that since I eat right, workout, don’t smoke or do drugs I’ll be fine.

Nope, I got one of the rarest cancers out there. Even my doctor who has done 1000s of surgeries has not seen this. Mary calls me the “rare sinus carcinoma guy”. She’s guessing I’ll be part of some paper sometime. Cool, I’ll at least be famous that way.

The point is this, live your life today. SOMETHING is going to happen that you don’t expect. Get over it. In business, I called these “Scuds”, which as you remember in the first gulf war the Iraqis would hurl these huge inaccurate missiles over at Saudi Arabia and you had no idea where they are going to land.

In my business life, the first big SCUD was the crash of 2002. It killed my business. Crap, well gotta get up again. The second big scud came 6 years later with the 2008 crisis.