Life Is Like Craps

A long time ago, back when I worked at a cable company in Canada, my boss and I travelled to Las Vegas for a computer show – if you’ve been in the tech field, you must remember Comdex. Anyways, while we were flying down, my boss introduced me to Craps, which I’d never played before. For 3 hours, he described this game to me, which sounded very complicated on the outside.

When we got there, after the show we played craps, and won a crazy amount of money. Of course after that we preceded to lose it, but in the end I ended up going back with more than I lost.

One interesting thing about craps: when everyone at the table is winning, the person who is throwing the dice (the shooter) keeps going and going, while they are winning. As soon as that shooter loses – and in most cases everyone at the table loses – they move on to the next shooter. They don’t focus on the guy who just lost them all that money, they move on quickly to the next winning opportunity.

And I thought: what a great analogy for life. When you fail, and you will, just move on quickly to the next win. Learn from your mistakes, of course, but why dwell on the failure. Like in craps, don’t focus on the loss, focus on the next opportunity to win.