Most people don’t understand that easy financial gain is one of the worst things that can happen to them. Ask a lottery winner. According to author Don McNay’s book, Life Lessons From the Lottery , the lives of lottery winners are usually a wreck within about five years of winning. Lottery winners get a ton of money they didn’t earn without any practice at hanging onto large sums of money. It’s really, really hard to handle that. It’s like ordering a drink at your favorite watering hole and being dropped into a giant vat of beer. Technically speaking, you got what you asked for... just more. More is bad when you’re not prepared for it... when you didn’t do more to earn it. Aspiring to easy financial gain might be normal, but it’s also self-destructive. Gribbohm was trying to win a $100 prize by playing a $2 carnival game. His results speak for themselves. Investors make this same mistake as well. They buy risky options and hot tips from friends in the pursuit of fast, easy gains. They see the stock market as a lottery... rather than a place where people can buy pieces of world- class businesses that they can hold for decades. Gribbohm’s next big mistake was giving in to a bias toward action. Nobody likes to sit still. And that’s too bad. Famous 17th-century French mathematician and scientist Blaise Pascal said, “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”
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How to WIN at Carnival Games The first rule of winning at carnival games is simple: Even winners are losers. You can buy that polyester-and-formaldehyde- stuffed, six-foot-tall teddy bear for about $3 direct from China. But if you must fail miserably at impressing a date, here's a few secrets straight from the carnies... Aim for the bottom of the stack of weighted milk jugs, not the middle section. Don't try to bank off the backboard in the basketball games. It's intentionally bouncy, the rim is probably bent, and the ball is overinflated. Swishes or nothing. Use backspin for any games that require tossing balls into baskets, milk jugs, or fishbowls. Snap your wrist to add sideways spin for any games involving tossing rings around bottles. If you really want to win something – anything – for your kids, head to the goldfish bowl toss. Of course, even in winning you're really losing. Enjoy the rest of the fair as you juggle fried food with a bag of water and a 15-cent fish... that if you're lucky, will only last for a week.
– American Consequences editors
American Consequences
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