There is something called the Pareto principle or more popularly the 80/20 rule that I am sure you have heard about before. Basically, it states that for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

When I first came across it, I thought to myself that it was a ridiculous idea and it simply can’t be that way. But when I started reading more about it and the real life examples, I became convinced that this was applicable in a surprisingly large number of places.

In fact, this principle comes from the observations of Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas and also that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population.

Quite interesting if you think about it how random things and events in nature can follow a mathematical rule like that. Anyways, I started thinking about if the same principles applied to life and the non stop decisions we make in it too.

Life - A Superset of Decisions

I have always thought of life as a sum of all the past decisions we have taken, no matter if they were big decisions or small ones. Every single day we make a large number of decisions, from what to eat to how to strike a deal with a potential client and those decisions shape our lives in many different ways.

But it is not always our decisions that shape our lives. Even though we try our hardest to try and keep things under our control as much as possible, we all know that life has a habit of making you stumble or even stopping you dead in your tracks.

So, this made me think if the 80/20 rule applied to life as well. How much of your life is decided by what happens to you and how much by the way you handle it in terms of your decisions?

I asked my friends and family to see what they thought and it seems like all of them believed that it does apply to life as well. This thought was reflected online as well in many, many articles. Some said its 80/20 and some said its 90/10 but most people believe that life mainly depends on how we handle situations.

Life Is What You Make of It

I don’t know about you, but throughout my life, I have been around too many people who just gave excuses about how life was cruel to them and how its just their own fate that they couldn’t be successful and I always felt that it was the wrong way of thinking.

And after watching interviews of highly successful people and reading about them and hearing them echo the 80/20 principle, it was clear to me that this was the right approach to life. It also made me understand why those people are, where they are.

Yes, difficulties will always present themselves to you, but that’s how life is supposed to be because, the hardships shape you into who you want to become, they help you grow and make you stronger than ever.

It only depends on you whether you let those hardships overcome you or you overcome them. If you truly want to succeed in life, no one can stop you. Yes, you can fail and fail terribly but you know what? Just get up.

Some Real Life Examples

I want to share with you real life examples of how people turned their failures into successes and turned their lives around even though life pretty much effed them up!

J.K Rowling, the popular author of the Harry Potter books, was living off welfare, she was divorced and jobless and saw failures that most of us won’t see, but she states that those were “gifts” that she “painfully won” that helped her achieve great success.

Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple was fired from his own company and he went on to found NEXT whose operating system was the reason that brought him back to his own company and then his meteoric rise to power and popularity along with his company.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and the richest man in China, was rejected from dozens of jobs but is enormously successful today thanks to a company he found against all odds.

The world is full of such examples and there is no reason you can’t do the same. Just remember that 80% of the time, it’s you who is driving the car. Steer well, my friends!