Say "luck" first. Anyone's success, in addition to their own efforts, but also consider historical ... wrong and objective factors. Some people may have worked hard all their lives, but in the end they have achieved nothing, because of changes in the policy situation, unpredictable changes in their families and so on. When they are so close to success, they are always hindered by force majeure. In this case, we can only say that he is "unlucky" and cannot say that he is "not working hard". For this kind of "luck" related to force majeure, it has nothing to do with efforts and is purely an independent and objective probability event.

However, in addition to this kind of luck, there are some seemingly objective factors closely related to the subjective initiative of individuals. For example, if you work hard or work overtime in the office, the leader will see you and get a chance to participate in a big project, and you will be promoted through this project. Is the source of this success pure luck or pure effort? I'm afraid there are both, and it's hard to say exactly how much each accounts for. However, this situation is the most common.

From a psychological point of view, hard work can bring you positive self-suggestion.

I believe some people may have heard the saying that pretending to be successful is the beginning of success. This sentence is indeed well documented in psychology, and there are many examples. Simply put, body language can affect mental state. The mental state here refers to our thoughts and feelings, and the hormones that make up these thoughts and feelings, that is, hormone levels. The two key hormones in physiology are testosterone (dominant hormone) and cortisone (stress hormone). The male leader of primates has high testosterone concentration and low cortisone concentration. This can also be seen in strong leaders. When primate individuals want to replace the original leader, in those days, their testosterone goes up and cortisone goes down. This proves the influence of the body on the mental state. Similarly, the change of role, even a small change, will have an impact on the psychological state. For example, a common "powerful" posture: standing with your hands akimbo and feet apart for 2 minutes will make you feel more powerful.

Professor Amy Cuddy of Harvard Business School did an experiment about the methods and results of maintaining a strong posture in the face of really stressful social scenes (such as job interviews, speeches, conference speeches, etc.). ). The experimental process is as follows:

Subjects maintained a strong or weak posture for 2 minutes. Then conduct a five-minute high-pressure interview. The interviewer is trained not to give any nonverbal feedback, and looking at you almost expressionless is worse than booing. This can greatly stimulate the cortisone (stress hormone) of the subject.

Next, another wave of participants will watch the video without knowing the premise, and then decide which interviewer they want to hire.

Experimental results: People who maintain a strong posture are more likely to be admitted.

Simply put, when you constantly use "I can" to imply yourself, your endocrine level will also change, and your behavior will become more like "I can". The stronger your self-suggestion, the more real it will be. Say so much "nonsense", what does this have to do with hard work and luck?

Quite simply, efforts are actually a process of constant self-suggestion. Imagine, one is a project that I have never really participated in, and I don't know much about the technical details inside; One is that you have been involved in the project led by the leader, and each key issue has your own ideas and opinions-then when you report these two projects to the leader, the state will inevitably be very different. Everything is like this. Without the results of your own efforts, you always feel "unwilling", then your "guilty conscience" will greatly reduce your influence; On the contrary, if you devote yourself to one thing, even if the result is not as brilliant as you want, you can infect others with your own state.

So back to my conclusion, in a sense, hard work can make you luckier. The stronger self-suggestion brought by more efforts can make you believe that you are stronger, make you look more confident, more powerful, more infectious, more convincing and so on. (not derogatory, it is often our image in the eyes of others that determines your next development trajectory), thus giving you more opportunities and possibilities in life.

Of course, we must also be clear that for purely probabilistic things-such as whether your efforts to write a thesis will increase the probability of passing an American visa-I am afraid the effect is the same as forwarding beyond your sister (or a black hole).